Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. R.I.P. Tom Petty. Streaming at Netflix is Peter Bogdanovich's four-hour Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream, which tells the story of the legendary rock band and its magnetic frontman. Premiering on POV tonight, Monday, October 2 is Lara Stolman's Swim Team, which chronicles the extraordinary rise of three diverse young athletes, capturing a moving quest for inclusion, independence and a life that feels like winning. Premiering Saturday, October 7 on HBO is
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Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! At S ight & Sound, Helen de Witt writes in praise of Kevin Jerome Everson's new Election Day-set 16mm film Tonsler Park. At the time of filming an election, the outcome is unknown, and on this occasion, the result was a great shock. This timeshift of awareness gives the film a palpable irony. Instead of being
American flags, open roads, mixed drinks and Andy Warhol eating a Whopper: In 66 Scenes from America, Jørgen Leth's collection of cinematic postcards from a road trip across the country, the Danish director accepts Sei Shonagon's challenge, by way of Chris Marker, to compose a "list of things that quicken the heart." I saw 66 Scenes in a class taught by the filmmaker Dick Rogers. It was my first documentary production course, and Dick screened many films that have become touchstones for me, like Portrait of Jason, Titicut Follies and Sans Soleil, but Leth's film has left the greatest impact on
By Steven Beer, Jake Levy and Neil Rosini Lawyers from Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo answer frequently asked legal questions by documentary filmmakers. In this column, the focus is errors and omissions (E&O) insurance. Future columns will include questions about financing, production and distribution, and content. What is E&O Insurance? Documentary producers obtain various types of insurance to mitigate the risks of their productions and general operations. These policies include general liability, automobile liability, workers compensation, excess liability, accidental death and
Dear IDA Community, IDA recently announced some of the honorees that we'll be celebrating at this year's IDA Awards. It's an illustrious bunch whose work stretches the boundaries of documentary's artistic ambitions, and screams for justice and accountability. Lourdes Portillo, the Career Achievement Award honoree, has been documenting the Latin American, Mexican and Chicano/a experience for almost 40 years, always through the lens of an artist, and simultaneously inspiring and mentoring a generation of filmmakers. Amicus Award honoree Abigail Disney, as a funder, producer and director, has
Dear Readers, Thanks to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, IDA is well into Year One of its Enterprise Documentary Fund, a program designed primarily to provide development and production support for projects that infuse journalistic practices with documentary storytelling. But beyond the grants program, Fund Director Carrie Lozano has assembled a formidable advisory committee of representatives from law, academia and media to provide guidance and counsel to our community. Carrie worked closely with the Documentary magazine team to develop ideas for a series of interrelated
Once considered the red-headed step-child of the academic film world, documentary has become popular in academia, where experience with nonfiction filmmaking is providing students with a skill-set that is increasingly in demand by social and news-based media providers. Documentary spoke with the New York Film Academy's Andrea Swift, current chair and founder of NYFA's Documentary Conservatory on the East Coast, and Sanora Bartels, recently appointed chair of NYFA's Documentary MFA Program on the West Coast. Full disclosure: I teach screenwriting at the NYFA's high school program in Burbank
In the face of perceived dominance in the documentary marketplace by such major SVODs as Netflix and Amazon, an international coalition of broadcasters, led by ro*co films international, is pooling its resources to acquire and co-produce a small number of high-profile documentaries that otherwise might have been gobbled up by the giant digital platforms. Formed just prior to the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, the coalition is made up primarily of European Public Service Providers, along with a smattering of commercial broadcasters and satellite networks. At Sundance 2016, the coalition acquired
Since its inception in 2015, the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival in Washington, DC, has served as a rare meeting ground for investigative journalists and documentary filmmakers, two breeds of storytellers who sometimes differ in goals and methods but face many of the same challenges. The festival, which operates in the literal shadow of the White House, enters its third year with a renewed sense of purpose, given the state-sanctioned hostility to reporters and the daily drumbeat of hard-hitting scoops from The Washington Post and The New York Times. In addition, over the past few
Talal Derki is making a film in an area so dangerous, he and his wife must treat each departure as if it might be his last. After all, he explains, "I don 't know if I will be back." Such solemn regard is hard-earned. Derki 's current project follows a father and son who are both active Al Qaeda members. His 2014 Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning Return to Homs was also set in a war zone, shot entirely on the front lines of the Syrian Civil War. High-risk projects have forced Derki to become an expert in working in hostile environments. Likewise, producer/cinematographer Singeli Agnew, an Emmy