A caption in Alison O’Daniel’s film The Tuba Thieves (2023) refers to “quiet air”—a description of sound but also of sensation and (shared) substance, reattuning what it means to listen away from hearing and toward the material means by which listening occurs. When I experienced the film at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight 2023, fresh from its premiere at Sundance, the way I listened to this quiet air was not just through my ears. Balloons were distributed to each audience member, conducting vibrations into our hands. Held together with a room full of other people holding balloons, literally holding their
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During the height of the pandemic, I participated in SXSW virtually, which meant watching films online from my living room couch, which didn’t invite the same emotions I felt at festivals in person. Thankfully, I was able to go to Austin for the first time this March, and I hit the ground running. It was an experience full of remarkable films, brilliant filmmakers, delicious barbeque, and confident networking.
Bitchitra Collective: Indian Women in Documentary announces their inaugural cohort for the Bitchitra Collective Film & Media Fellowship. The seven selected filmmakers are based in India and the US and of Indian heritage. Each will receive a grant of $2,000 for an ongoing short or feature-length documentary project, in addition to a year-long mentorship with an established filmmaker. Bitchitra Collective was started at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to raise emergency funding to support audiovisual artists in India. Members of the collective include established filmmakers Nishtha Jain (
Responding to the “permacrisis”—a 2022 “word of the year” meaning “an extended period of instability and insecurity” and the title for one of the talks at this year’s CPH:DOX film festival and conference in Copenhagen—was a prevailing theme at this season’s March event.
Mexican director Rodrigo Reyes (Mexico City, 1983), makes films deeply grounded in his identity as an immigrant artist, crafting a poetic gaze from the margins, using striking imagery to portray the contradictory nature of our shared world, while revealing the potential for transformative change. He has received the support of The Mexican Film Institute (IMCINE), Sundance, and Tribeca Institutes, while his films have screened on PBS and Netflix. His film “499,” won Best Cinematography at Tribeca and the Special Jury Award at Hot Docs. Rodrigo is a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim and
Wesleyan University is a liberal arts college located in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831, Wesleyan is a school “where critical thinking and practical idealism” are encouraged to intermingle. With a student body of approximately 3,000 undergraduates and 200 graduate students, it boasts alumni as varied as composer/writer/director/actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, filmmaker Michael Bay and writer/director Joss Whedon. However, we would be remiss if we did not mention that other Wesleyan alums include Fulbright Scholars, MacArthur “Genius” Grant Fellows, Academy Award winners, and Nobel Prize
Over the past week, IDA collected tributes to Judith "Judy" Heumann from those who knew her and were influenced, advised, or galvanized by her disability rights activism, mentorship, and relational world-building. These written memorials are introduced by Jim LeBrecht, who wrote a piece that places Judy's interest in documentary film and the representation of people with disabilities in context within our nonfiction film ecosystem. Judy Heumann was a mentor and friend for over 50 years. Called “the mother of the disability rights movement,” Judy was that and so much more. Her connection to our
This year’s Getting Real conference was marked by a constant debate around ethical choices in documentary filmmaking. Every aspect of the process was assessed: not only the role of filmmakers but also those of editors, producers, and funders were subjected to critical scrutiny. Even the rights of documentary participants had a space to be debated. But there was a missing link: without deep discussions around actual films that everybody in the room had seen, how could we evaluate documentary ethics from the standpoint of the viewer? In his classic book Le documentaire, un autre cinéma, French
Australian filmmaker and academic Lisa French’s latest book, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film—An International Perspective, published by Palgrave Macmillan, shoulders the fairly exacting responsibility of deconstructing the female gaze in documentaries. French’s research finds that women find it easier to gather funding for documentaries as opposed to fiction, owing to smaller budgets and crews involved. This fact sets the premise for her inquiry.
In 2018, I received the “3 Days in Cannes” pass, which allows passionate lovers of cinema from all nationalities and backgrounds between the ages of 18 and 28 to attend the Festival de Cannes. To get the accreditation, I needed to submit an essay about why I loved cinema, and two weeks before the festival opened, I received an email confirming that I had been selected. But soon, my joy turned to anguish; my pass included neither accommodations nor travel. I was a film festival worker in Mexico, and I used that experience to write about my love for cinema; after all, given the working