Jalal Nuriddin: The Grandfather of Rap. Photo: Carl Hyde" src="http://www.documentary.org/sites/default/files/images/magazine/Sum16_IntPers_2014_JalalSingsCU-byCarlHyde.jpg"> As a Manchester, UK-based documentary filmmaker for over a decade, I, along with the small, diverse team with whom I work, have sought fair and meritorious access to opportunity. In my view, we simply have not been able to achieve it in our own country. Beyond what this means for us, far more important is what it means for others. As a genuine Manchester production company rooted in the culture of Northern England, we are
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It was the spring of 1988. I was living in Boston, working as a first-time producer on the epic documentary series Eyes on the Prize. I heard about a screening at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge of a documentary about the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. It was directed by the photographer Bruce Weber. I did not know what to expect; films about jazz musicians were usually not that great. The mid-1980s yielded a plethora of jazz-themed films: Robert Mugge's documentary Saxophone Colossus, about Sonny Rollins; Bird, Clint Eastwood's feature film on Charlie Parker, which was less about him and more
Dear IDA Community, Like most people, I have been gripped by politics this year. Having recently been naturalized as an American citizen, I get to vote this year for the first time and, like many thousands of others, my decision to go from Green Card holder to citizen was precipitated by the impending elections. It’s hard to think of a time when the choices have been more polarizing, or the stakes higher. Beyond the individual personalities involved, and how favorably or unfavorably you may think of them, at the core of the matter are the underlying issues that are suffocating Americans. I
Documentary filmmaking is in a special moment. Digital technology and Internet distribution have led to unprecedented new opportunities for filmmakers and a new role in popular culture. Meanwhile, as our media ecosystem becomes increasingly fragmented and traditional journalism outlets face ever more attrition, documentary has taken on a new role as a center of in-depth investigative journalism. While these changes are surely good for our democracy, they don't always match up neatly with longstanding laws and policies around freedom of speech and the media. From copyright to telecom to the
Author, filmmaker/camerawoman and professor Alexis Krasilovsky, along with her colleague Harriet Margolis, have been working together for over three decades on projects highlighting women's struggles for equal access to work on the production side of the film industry, as well as recognition of their contributions to the art and craft. Women Behind the Camera: Conversations with Camerawomen, published in 1997, was the initial manifestation of their collaboration, which led to the award-winning documentary of the same title in 2007. The original book dealt with both documentary and feature film
Editor's Note: After we went to press with the Summer 2016 issue, the Brooks Institute announced that it would close on October 31, 2016. The Brooks Institute was originally founded in 1945 by Ernest Brooks as the Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. Relocating this summer to nearby downtown Ventura for the fall 2016 semester, Brooks offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and a Bachelor of Science in Visual Journalism, or documentary photography and film. Graduates in both programs complete 120 semester credits in four years. To find out more about Brooks Institute's
In 1990, Alek Keshishian was an unknown 26-year old music video director when the most famous woman in the world decided to get in touch. "I literally picked up the phone and heard: 'Hi, it's Madonna.' As if that's the most normal call you could get." She told him she liked the way he filmed dancers. "Four days later, I was on my way to Japan." What was supposed to be a trip to collect backstage footage for an HBO special about Madonna's groundbreaking "Blond Ambition" tour turned into Truth or Dare, a multilayered concert film that became one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time
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 Keyframe, Yoana Pavlova considers the new politics of "docufiction." It is noteworthy that two new docufictions - both of which problematize the act of performance and our perception thereof - premiered simultaneously earlier this year, amid the ultimate political show that is the U.S. presidential election
I want to call Cinefamily's upcoming Frederick Wiseman retrospective one of the key documentary events of the year, but that would be selling it short. The 43-film series will actually run over the course of four years - every late summer and early fall from now through 2020 - taking Los Angeles viewers through the complete filmography of the Cambridge, Mass.-based nonfiction icon. Wiseman's documentaries follow a subtly recognizable house style. They are immersive and famously unobtrusive studies of mostly American institutions, capturing the interplay between people and structures while
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! Part three of the Realscreen special report on doc financing focuses on commissioning and distribution. "Docs will always be the strange hybrid of something that people love, but they get made in a borderline miraculous fashion and there really isn’t any way of industrializing them, because if they’re any good