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 Indiewire, Eric Kohn reports on the indie film career of Trump's senior advisor Stephen Bannon. Ten years ago, Bannon oversaw the distribution of independent films released by Wellspring Media, a company that supported a wide range of international cinema as well as gay-themed and other "transgressive" titles
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Stanley Nelson has, for the past quarter-century, established himself as an indefatigable chronicler of the African-American experience, bringing to light the neglected stories of intrepid warriors who fought for their rightful place in the ongoing American narrative. From Madame C.J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire, to Ida B. Wells and the daring legion of African-American journalists in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, Nelson and his team at his company, Firelight Media, have created a living history of America's ongoing struggle
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 Indiewire, film critics discuss how the film world will respond to Trump's election. "Perhaps the most important thing we need to do is survive. Trump is about to declare a holy war on the press, and while he's definitely thinking more about David Fahrenthold than he is about David Ehrlich, we nevertheless have
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 Alternet, Michael Moore shares his post-election to-do list. You live in a country where a majority of citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in
Since Alex Rivera earned the inaugural Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award back in 2003, the honor has gone to a distinguished company of filmmakers who have more than met the criterion of having made "a significant impact at the beginning of his or her career in documentary film." Marshall Curry, Jehane Noujaim, Natalia Almada, Danfung Dennis, Zachary Heinzerling: These are a few of the honorees who have gone on to earn Academy Award nominations, Emmys, Peabodys and, for Almada, a MacArthur "Genius" Grant. Dennis has since launched Condition One, a leading VR technology company. This year's
The Pioneer Award, a staple of the IDA Documentary Awards since 2003, acknowledges those individuals who have made "extraordinary contributions to advancing the nonfiction form and providing exceptional vision and leadership to the documentary community." Past honorees have included Ted Sarandos, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. The 2016 Pioneer Award goes to Ally Derks, the founder and director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), who has tirelessly worked towards advancing the non-fiction form and nurturing the
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 the POV blog, Tom Roston reports on documentary filmmakers directing political ads. Super PACs are by nature partisan, and Local Voices' opposition to Donald Trump might just be creating a new model for future elections to come, channeling what feature documentary filmmakers do best: create impactful
Shortly after Facebook acquired Oculus VR, which developed the Oculus Rift headset, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview in MIT Technology Review, asserted, "Immersive virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people's everyday life. History suggests there will be more platforms to come, and whoever builds and defines these will shape the future and reap the benefits." In the short time since that 2014 acquisition, VR has dominated the conversations among the tech and media cognoscenti, establishing itself as a must-program topic among festival, market and conference mavens
At DocLisboa, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in October, slow cinema is front and center. Or, as co-director Davide Oberto says, "It's cinema; it's not television. Our central character is curiosity." Don't come here for the trendiest or best-selling doc in the nonfiction market. Come for the New Visions section, this year featuring the city symphony-esque art explorations of the late US experimental filmmaker Peter Hutton. Come for the retrospective of the first frenetic years of Cuban revolutionary cinema. Or for Ta'ang, the latest from Wang Bing, the Chinese filmmaker whose observational work
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 Indiewire, Anne Thompson profiles three executives who produce some of the world's biggest docs. Each has their strengths and strategies. Nevins and Weyermann feel strongly about social justice; Nishimura taps into the global power of documentary. Nevins and Nishimura both want to lure more subscribers, but