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! The New Yorker’s Hua Hsu speaks to Stanley Nelson about his career, Attica, and a lifetime of chronicling America’s history. Other than A Place of Our Own, Nelson doesn’t consider his films to be personal. Yet, his works, such as his retelling of Emmett Till’s murder and his chronicling of the Attica uprising, manage to uncover small, sometimes forgotten, spaces of
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On US National Pet Day (April 11), we celebrate the special members of our family who are there for us unconditionally. From the day-to-day companionship, warmth, and laughter of family pets, to the life-saving roles of service animals, our lives are much better off with them around. Here are seven documentaries to watch for National Pet Day this year. Stray (Elizabeth Lo, 2021) Turkey has a no-kill, no-capture policy toward all stray animals. Elizabeth Lo’s Stray follows a trio of canine outcasts roam the streets of Istanbul and shows us an intimate portrait of the life of a city and its
By Bedatri D. Choudhury and Tom White We at IDA have felt a devastating string of losses in the documentary community over the past few weeks: Michelle Materre, Brent Renaud and now, Marina Goldovskaya. Each loss, however, has afforded us a chance to reflect, with gratitude, on the great gifts that these individuals have left us and honor their art, their wisdom and their grace. Marina Goldovskaya, who passed away in her native Russia on March 20, came from a rich artistic legacy and honed her artistry at the legendary Moscow Film School, where her father taught and was friends with such
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. We have been spending this awards season celebrating the talent and genius of all the filmmakers whose works got nominated for awards. Our work here at Documentary magazine gives us a rare sneak peek into the intense labor and multiple heartbreaks that go into the making of these films. This week, we celebrate them, and every other filmmaker who still finds it in themselves to continue telling stories. This week’s Screen Time, in honor of the Oscars, goes down the dusty lanes
The International Documentary Association turned 40 this year which is a huge milestone for our organization. As you can imagine, over the last four decades, we have seen many organizations come and go. We have also been confused for other organizations, many times, as we worked to build our reputation as one of the leading documentary organizations in the world. In honor of April 1, the silliest of holidays, we wanted to make a list of our favorite other IDAs that have been stealing the spotlight from us over the years. International Door Association (IDA) When you think of IDA, you obviously
Debuting March 30 on HBO is veteran writer-director (30-plus films over the last four decades) Jay Rosenblatt’s 2021 Sundance-premiering, Oscar-nominated When We Were Bullies. Inspired by a stranger-than-fiction coincidence from 25 years ago, it’s an astonishingly personal journey (a "spiritual quest") back in time to a schoolyard bullying incident that the filmmaker participated in, a half-century past. It’s also one wildly creative documentary short, packing contemporary phone interviews with classmates (and a now-nonagenarian teacher); archival material, found footage, and even whimsical
Missoula, Montana is a lively university town, beautifully situated at the confluence of several mountain valleys. But let’s be honest, visiting windswept Big Sky country (as the state likes to call itself) in the dead of winter isn’t on too many top-ten travel lists. Except perhaps documentary film aficionados, who are drawn like frozen-toed snowshoers to the toasty cinematic campfire of the town’s annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and DocShop Filmmaker’s Forum. Held every February, Big Sky is a standout example of a regional film festival, showcasing adventurous programming grounded
By GRACE LEE, Chris Pérez, Amir Shahkhalili AND Marcia Smith Dear IDA Community, We are taking this opportunity to introduce ourselves to you as the new Executive Committee of the IDA Board of Directors. In the spirit of greater transparency, we want to use this space to keep in regular contact about IDA and its future. IDA is grappling with an existential crisis. Over the last year, we have experienced internal conflicts and multiple transitions at the staff, executive and board level, including sadly, a number of resignations. These internal changes came fast and furious, with little
IDA announces two new senior staff members, Abby Sun and Keisha Knight, who will serve as Director of Artist Programs and Director of IDA Funds and Enterprise Program as well as Louise Rosen, a senior consultant to the organization.
We at IDA feel the full, devastating weight of the tragic death of Brent Renaud. On March 13, he was killed by Russian troops while making a documentary in Ukraine; his was the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the 2022 war. In expressing his condolences, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted, "We are thankful to Brent for his professionalism and commitment to the values of compassion, ethics and justice." Renaud was a fighter for truth and humanity, and he went to the most foreboding places to seek out stories, ask the hard questions and show the rest of the world