Jack Pettibone Riccobono’s debut feature, The Seventh Fire, which opens today in New York and July 29 in Los Angeles through Film Movement, takes an elliptical approach to exploring gang culture on the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. The film is a powerful work of social advocacy that pushed its case for criminal justice reform all the way to the White House. At the same time, it’s a poetic and immersive work of cinema that bears the official imprimatur of visionary director Terrence Malick. Riccobono’s camera vividly depicts the reservation’s Pine Point Village as a stagnant and
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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 AL Monitor, Mazal Mualem argues that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a battle against public broadcasting. This delay raises enormous questions about the future of public broadcasting in Israel. It now seems that as long as Netanyahu is prime minister and communications minister, public
Crossing the Anacostia River back toward Northwest Washington, DC, tails between our legs, I thought, "Pick-up shoots are supposed to be easy." We'd spent all day driving around the entirety of Southeast DC searching for iconic establishing shots for City of Trees, a doc we were making about a nonprofit organization working in this area. We stopped on top of a beautiful hill overlooking a small valley of medium-sized homes and blooming trees that climbed up over the opposing horizon, where I set up my tripod. It was a good shot. Behind me, a woman started hollering. Like a dutiful shooter I
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 Variety, Maureen Ryan calls attention to two documentaries of particular relevance to a heartbreaking, chaotic week in America. News organizations need to be offering much, much more in the way of in-depth coverage of how we got to this point, when it comes to both police-connected violence, gun violence and
Editor's Note: Aman and Zeshawn Ali were among five film teams selected to participate in the second annual filmmaker Camden/TFI (Tribeca Film Institute) Retreat in partnership with CNN Films. The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF), Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) and CNN Films held this five-day intensive seminar in Camden and Rockport, Maine, to provide five US-based filmmaking teams with professional guidance, master classes and mentorship, led by a cross-section of industry experts to help the emerging talent advance their documentary filmmaking careers. The projects selected for the
Cinephiles the world over are just beginning to come to terms with the loss of the restlessly inventive Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who died of cancer last week in Paris. Working within the religious and political constraints imposed by the post-1979 Iranian government, Kiarostami eluded all generic categories, using each new project to express a new challenge to film form. In his art, he brushed aside censorship in order to set up a series of self-imposed limitations, creating a recognizable sensibility that wed postmodern skepticism to neorealist humanism. It risks cheapening the
Most Americans know about the "War on Drugs," but fewer people are aware of the "War on Sex Crimes." Over the last 25 years, the punishments for these transgressions have gotten harsher, especially for crimes against children, and once individuals are convicted, the crime stays with them for the rest of their lives. In many places sex offenders are prohibited from living near, or even having contact with, children. One Florida-based woman, who struggled to find a place for her son to live after he got out of jail, established a motor-home community to help offenders transition back to society
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! In advance of the IDA's Getting Real conference, Realscreen presents a special report on documentary financing and the economic pressures on filmmakers. The democratization of technology and abundance of distribution platforms allows most anyone to make docs, but with so many opportunities and a saturated market
The annual AFI DOCS Filmmaker Forum, presented in association with IDA and Women Make Movies, was held this year from June 23-26 at the AFI DOCS Festival Hub in downtown Washington, DC. Diversity and inclusion were the central themes of the first two days, which was sponsored by the Center for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In her introduction, Jennifer MacArthur, CPB Filmmaker Forum Producer, acknowledged her initial reluctance to take on the topic. "I felt like the conversation around this area had been stalled," she admitted. "But what's exciting to me is to see the conversations happening out
Docaviv, based in Tel Aviv, is one of the most animated and serious documentary film events of the year, as well as the most important annual showcase for Israeli documentaries. This year's edition, which ran May 19 through 28, showcased over 100 international and Israeli films, alongside events, platforms, workshops and master classes, and attracted over 50,000 attendees, and 30 national and international print and media journalists. In October and December, Docaviv will tour with smaller curated programs to Ma'alot Tarshiha at the center of a mixed Muslim/Jewish/Christian population in the