In concert with IDA's Getting Real '16 conference, the Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program, under the guidance of (now former) Film Fund Director Rahdi Taylor and former NYC Film Commissioner Cynthia Lopez, published the Doc Film Money Map, a state-by-state guide to tax incentives. A year later, the team, including Betsy Tsai, brings you the new and improved Doc Film Money Map 2.0. Following Taylor and Lopez's September 7th presentation at IDA's offices about tax incentive programs, and just prior to an NEA Webinar on the subject, we caught up with them for a few questions about how
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By Katie Townsend & Adam A. Marshall Federal, state and local governments possess a wealth of current and historical information that can be of great use to documentary filmmakers. From emails to photos, and even video footage, public records can be valuable source material for documentarians. Moreover, there are generally few or no restrictions on the use of public records. While the process of obtaining such material under state and federal public records laws isn’t always easy, understanding your rights can improve your chances of getting what you need. Public Records 101 At the most basic
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now streaming on Netflix is Jenner Furst's Time: The Kalief Browder Story, a series tracing the tragic case of a Bronx teen who spent three horrific years in jail, despite never being convicted of a crime. Premiering September 22 on Filmstruck is Errol Morris's Tabloid, which acquaints viewers with the eccentric woman at the center of the Mormon-sex-in-chains case, a story that lit up British papers in the seventies. The New York Times called it "astonishing." New to Amazon
A fact is a truth, that verifiable, reliable backbone of the documentarian's work. But in an era when information is filtered through the lens of belief and agenda, truth to one group may be heresy to another. Fact-checking has never been as complex or vital, whether to provide authenticity to a report or recapture a flailing public trust. Post 9/11, the documentarian has become a pivotal witness to a world in uproar, taking on many a journalistic mantle. But according to the Center for Media and Social Impact's report Dangerous Documentaries: Reducing Risk When Telling Truth to Power
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 Sundance Institute, Grace Lee shares learnings gleaned from working collaboratively with filmmaking teams on their rough cuts. In that first session, I saw how universal the editing process is, whether you're making a film in the U.S. or in China, as a first-timer or a seasoned pro. Everyone gets stuck with an
Vietnam looms large in the American psyche. It was a war with no news blackouts or selectively embedded journalists, and it was discussed at the dinner table in nearly every home. We sat rapt in our living rooms as the news broadcast the faces of weary young soldiers, Buddhist monks aflame, and dead and wounded bodies littering rice paddies and roads. It was, for many of us, among our first memories of television, a jarring juxtaposition to The Brady Bunch and Batman. The war remains so polarizing and lingers so heavily, that 40 years after its end, it continues to agitate. In 2016, Senator
Los Angeles, CA (September 12, 2017) – The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced today the honorees to be feted at its 33rd Annual Documentary Awards. The ceremony will be held on December 9, 2017, at the Paramount Studios Backlot. This year’s awards will honor several outstanding individuals: Abigail Disney will receive the Amicus Award; Lourdes Portillo will receive the Career Achievement Award; and Yance Ford will receive the Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award. Notably, IDA’s Courage Under Fire Award—which is given from time to time to a filmmaker who demonstrates
In his latest film, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, Frederick Wiseman takes his camera into the boardrooms, auditoriums, classrooms and reading nooks of the various branches of the titular institution as it struggles to adapt to a digital present. The nation's flagship city library needs to strategize not only how to digitize rare books for future scholars, but also how to provide crucial connectivity to the three million New Yorkers who lack access to broadband Internet. Though the three-hour-plus film, in properly rigorous Wiseman style, refrains from editorializing about the library
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering tonight, September 11 on POV is Jin Mo-young's My Love, Don't Cross That River, which captures the twilight days of a South Korean couple that has been married for 76 years. The Los Angeles Times calls it a "moving tribute to the beauties and mysteries of life and death." Premiering Wednesday, September 13 on KCET and KCET's website is City Rising, which looks at the history of discriminatory housing laws and analyzes six California communities undergoing
Since IDA's DocuClub was relaunched in 2016 as a forum for sharing and soliciting feedback about works-in-progress, four DocuClub alums have premiered their works on the festival circuit over the past few months. In an effort to both monitor and celebrate the evolution of these films to premiere-ready status, we reached out to the filmmakers, as they were either winding their way through the festival circuit, or gearing up for it. In this edition of "The Feedback," we spotlight The Judge, which, following its DocuClub screening last spring, director/producer Erika Cohn will premiere at the