There’s been much talk in the documentary ecosystem over the past five years about “The Golden Age of Documentaries,” and short docs have enjoyed more visibility than ever. Over the past 20 years, the digital age has revolutionized how documentaries are made and distributed, and a proliferation of platforms launched over the past decade, such as Field of Vision, The Guardian, The New York Times OpDocs and The New Yorker Documentary, have further transformed how short form cinema thrives online. When Ben Proudfoot, who won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short this year for The Queen of
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Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Well, the juries and the people have spoken. The 38th edition of the IDA Documentary Awards is now part of IDA lore, but you, as IDA Members, can still check out the Member Voting Portal through December 17 at 11:59 p.m. PT to watch the nominees and winners in the Features and Shorts categories, including multi winners All That Breathes (Best Director—Shaunak Sen; Best Editing—Charlotte Munch Bengtsen, Vedant Joshi; Pare Lorentz Award) and Fire of Love (Best Cinematography
On the morning after Julia Reichert left us—but before I found out that she had—I dreamed that I was on a retreat in King's Canyon in Northern California. We were all eating dinner in the dining hall, and someone stood up and started singing "Hallelujah," and I stood up and joined in on the second verse. Then everyone else joined in. Then I woke up. Then it started to rain. Then I logged into Twitter and found out about Julia. She was a warrior, an artist, an activist, a mentor, a teacher, a friend, a partner, a mother, and a grandmother. For half a century, she was a fierce advocate for the
My main takeaway from last year’s DOC NYC was the festival community’s growing discontent with the status quo of the industry. At 2021 Pro Panels, attendees demanded safer set conditions, fairer distribution deals, stronger filmmaking ethics, and guidelines to facilitate and standardize such improvements. What stood out to me about DOC NYC 2022, which ran in person from Nov 9-17 and virtually until November 27, was collective anxiety about the caliber of the response so far to last year’s concerns. Executives pressured to make structural change spoke in false confidence about their nascent
As we get ready to say goodbye to 2022 and welcome 2023, we thought you could spend the holidays watching and learning about some wonderful films and series that are available to stream from the comforts of your home. Film and television viewing has evolved over the years and documentaries have found a way to adapt. Everyone loves documentaries and streaming seems to be giving a new breath to the nonfiction genre. For over 40 years, the International Documentary Association has been doing its part to support nonfiction filmmaking and filmmakers. We strive to champion the vital work of
A Conversation with Gordon Quinn and Amir George For over 50 years, Chicago’s Kartemquin Films has been at the vanguard of social issue nonfiction. “Sparking democracy through documentary since 1966,” as it states on the KTQ website, the group is known for such cinéma vérité milestones as Inquiring Nuns (1968) and Chicago Maternity Center Story (1976); their most famous chronicle of American inner-city struggle, Hoop Dreams (1994); more recent Oscar-nominated breakouts Minding the Gap (2018) and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016); and a boatload of other penetrating, consciousness-raising
IDFA, the largest documentary film festival in the world, sprawls throughout Amsterdam in mid-November. It’s also an industry mecca, where you might not only attend the high-profile Forum (the grandmother of all pitch forums), but also pop into one room and find aspiring Korean filmmakers doing pitches, turn around and find a group of Palestinian filmmakers doing the same, to their interested funders. Or you might revel in IDFA DocLab, the bleeding-edge, experimental zone of XR/immersive. Since its origins with founder Ally Derks in 1988, IDFA has proudly celebrated the role of documentary in
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Older Than the Crown, from Derrick Lemere, investigates the trial of Rick Desautel, a Sinixt tribal member who, while hunting elk on his ancestral land in Canada, was charged with hunting without a permit and being a non-resident. In 1956, Sinixt people were said to be extinct by the Canadian government. The documentary delves into the limits of law and its unjust origins as Sinixt tribal members demand their rights. Available to watch on PBS. The two-time Emmy-winning
In 1994, workers demolishing an old toy shop in Blackburn, Lancashire found three milk churns stuffed with hundreds of spools of film. The negatives—bound for the junkyard but deposited at a local video library that happened, fortuitously, to be on the way—turned out to have been the work of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon. Pioneers of early commercial cinema, the Mitchell and Kenyon Film Company roamed the British Isles at the turn of the 20th century and documented everyday life in the Edwardian age. Subsequently restored and preserved by the British Film Institute, the rediscovered trove
Miroslava is an indigenous, Mexican-American mother and storyteller on a journey to reclaim her indigeneity. Throughout her life, Miros’ insatiable curiosity was nurtured by the wealth of oral culture and traditions passed down to her from her ancestors. As such, she has always been a storyteller with a desire to share stories reflecting her cultural richness, a point of view integral to the world and our humanity, although often grossly underrepresented. Miros began her journey as an emerging filmmaker with her first project, The Bears On Pine Ridge (Co-Producer and Executive Producer). This