By Marissa Woods and Patricia Aufderheide The need for journalism about documentary filmmaking has never been greater. But this work is underfunded, undervalued, too little and too white, says a new report from American University’s Center for Media & Social Impact. A big part of the problem is that documentary filmmakers have never established any shared standards for journalists to hold them to. Raising the Alarm In an interview about his most recent film Roadrunner (2021), director Morgan Neville cheerfully revealed that he used artificial intelligence to recreate the voice of Anthony
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Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The New York Times critic James Poniewozik recently wrote in this piece, “Is 9/11 a Day, or Is It an Era?”: “For 20 years, the refrain has been: Remember, remember, remember. Memory is so ingrained in the language of Sept. 11 — “Never forget” — as to imply that it is obligatory, and sufficient, for future generations merely to remember by revisiting the narrative and imagery of one terrible day, rather than to connect it to the years of history that followed.” As important as
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! Variety’s Manori Ravindran reports on the unfortunate turn of events at the Sheffield Doc Fest. We stand in solidarity with the programming team. “The exchange established between artists and curators over the last two years to develop an artistic approach to various aspects of the festival is now in vain,” reads the statement. “What is the future of the artistic
“Memories, that is all you travel with,” Ibrahim Mohammed, a young man from Harar, Ethiopia, tells a much younger Mohammed Arif in Jessica Beshir’s debut feature documentary, Faya Dayi. Beshir, like the men in her film, grew up in Harar. “It was the Cold War and Harar was a military strategic point. My father is a surgeon, and I grew up in the hospital watching droves of soldiers coming in from the front,” Beshir tells Documentary, shortly before the theatrical release of her film, following a festival run at Sundance, Hot Docs, Full Frame and others. She moved to Mexico during Ethiopia’s
Since last summer, I’ve been reflecting on what the poet/essayist Cathy Park Hong describes as “minor feelings.” She identifies these as a range of negative emotions, built from racial experiences of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed. It reminded me of the countless times I’ve been asked, “Where are you from?” as a way for white strangers to signify my foreignness even after I disclose I’m a second-generation Korean-American. Whenever these microaggressions occur, I find myself contemplating whether or not I should feel upset or brush it off as unintentional
Richard Ray (“Rick”) Pérez took the helm as executive director of IDA this past May, following a six-year period of expansion, growth, impact and innovation under the leadership of Simon Kilmurry. Pérez brings to the table a 20-year career in documentary, and a tangential association with IDA throughout those two decades. As a filmmaker, he made Unprecedented: The 2020 Presidential Election with then-IDA Board Member Joan Sekler; his second feature, Cesar’s Last Fast, was a project in IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program; he has moderated various panels and convenings at IDA’s biennial Getting
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. If you feel like starting the week on a sweet note, watch DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ 2009 documentary Kings of Pastry on Criterion Channel. Join in as the adrenaline runs high in the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France—the Olympics-like intense three-day competition where the best French pastry chefs bake it out. From France to rural southern India. In Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Timbaktu, streaming on YouTube, a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh takes over acres of barren
The 10th Annual BlackStar Film Festival, which took place in Philadelphia and online from August 3-8, could not have been timelier. After nearly 18 months of increased coverage surrounding the state-sanctioned murders of unarmed Black people and the disparities revealed in COVID-19’s impact on global communities of color, the long-held resilience of these communities has been taxed. I am no stranger to this weariness as I have personally been overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness against the racist and white supremacist systems that continue to perpetrate and perpetuate injustice. But one
On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadors and their allies, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes returned to the locations of his hybrid work, 499 . Reyes screened his film throughout Mexico, with the protagonists in attendance; he also hosted a series of dialogues around the current crisis of violence in Mexico and its relationship to a history of five centuries of oppression. Here, Reyes shares some impressions from the journal entries he wrote during the tour which concluded earlier this month. Returning Eduardo arrived from Madrid
Dear IDA Community: We are excited to share that IDA will begin programming in-person public events in Los Angeles this fall. These events will complement our ongoing virtual events to ensure we serve our community wherever you are. As we re-introduce the in-person component of our public programming we will prioritize the health and safety of our members, audiences and IDA staff. With this in mind I would like to update you on the safety measures IDA is putting in place for our upcoming events. We now require that all IDA staff, volunteers and attendees be fully vaccinated against COVID-19