While the documentary field has only become more and more inclusive over the last few years, the more formative role of women in the documentary artform has been largely ignored, both in academia and mainstream film history. As Cynthia Close writes, in her book review in Documentary magazine of Shilyh Warren’s Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary Film, “[Female filmmakers] continue to be underrepresented and their early contributions to the genre struggle to assume their rightful place in the canon.” Moreover, the films of numerous female pioneers in early cinema, including Japan’s Tazuko
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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! Writing for No Film School, Mythily Ramachandran talks to filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh about their Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary Writing with Fire, which tells the story of a group of Dalit women in the Uttar Pradesh state of India who start up a newspaper, then a digital platform that calls the power structure into account. “As a
An omnibus project from the DCTV Youth Media Program, COVID Diaries NYC, which began airing March 9 on HBO, is exactly what its title implies—a cinematic journaling of sorts from five young New Yorkers (the team includes Marcial Pilataxi, Aracelie Colón, Camille Dianand, Shane Fleming and Arlet Guallpa, with original animation provided by Rosemary Colón-Martinez) forced to navigate the many landmines of budding adulthood during a once-in-a-century pandemic. Ranging in age from 17 to 21, and of varying backgrounds and ethnicities, the quintet all bravely place themselves and their equally
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now streaming on Starz, RUTH—Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words, from 2019 IDA Career Achievement Award honoree Freida Lee Mock, takes an intimate look at the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her inspiring rise to the highest court in the land. Along the way, the film explores through archival footage of Ginsburg herself, how she broke down barriers in her personal and professional life, and she became an iconic advocate for gender equality and women’s rights
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! Allen vs. Farrow, the HBO documentary series from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering about the 1992 child molestation allegations against Woody Allen, has been a hot topic of discussion this week, with some pundits, such as The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman taking issue with what was omitted from the story. “For the past 20 years he was able to run amok,” Dylan complains, and it
Looking Back—2020 The Sundance Film Festival is the largest and, arguably, the most prestigious festival in the country. The job of the Sundance Institute is to foresee the future of the film industry. They often serve as an example for other festivals to navigate issues of diversity and sustainability. The 2020 festival was the second year of the Sundance Institute’s Press Inclusion Initiative, with the aim to “cultivate a more representative press corps at the Sundance Film Festival… by providing top-tier access to freelance critics from underrepresented communities.” Of the 317 applications
Istanbul has a special relationship with their street dogs. It’s not merely tolerance; it’s collective care. Elizabeth Lo discovered this after the death of her childhood pet prompted her to examine how cultures around the world act towards the canine creatures with whom mankind has evolved. Thus was born Stray, a feature documentary that gets inside the life of one dog in particular, Zeytin, and shows how full of agency and rich with encounters her life is.
Gatsby in Connecticut: The Untold Story was unceremoniously removed from Amazon Prime two weeks ago, one of many independent films vanquished by The Prime Pandemic Purge. While this purge has apparently been happening for some time, Amazon announced in early February that they were “no longer accepting unsolicited licensing submissions via Prime Video Direct for nonfiction and short-form content..” As the independent film community assesses the impact of Amazon’s new stance toward independent film, I hope my story may help propel the conversation. I wrapped my first feature-length documentary
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Ondi Timoner’s Coming Clean, streaming through Laemmle Virtual Cinema, explores the depth and breadth of the deadliest drug epidemic in America’s history: the opioid crisis. Weaving together animation and deeply personal stories of loss and recovery, Coming Clean is a story of empathy and action. Launching March 6 on ShortsTV, FIVE is a documentary film series, commissioned by Mastercard, that follows the journeys of five women from five countries around the world—Croatia
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! IndieWire’s Steve Green talks to writer Sasha Stewart about the process of creating the Netflix docuseries Amend: The Fight for America, which tells the story of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution—the foundation for due process and equal protection. Picking each word for each episode was incredibly challenging. But having those words as our North Stars was so