What was the first documentary film you saw that shifted something within you? That helped you see an issue differently? Changed your behavior? Spurred you to take political action? While it may not have been the first documentary to change me, I have never forgotten how Justin Schein and Laura Gabbert’s No Impact Man, a year-long profile of Colin Beavan trying to eliminate his family’s carbon footprint, permanently transformed my consumption habits. For author/educator/filmmaker Caty Borum Chattoo, it was Kartemquin’s Hoop Dreams and Stanley Nelson’s The Black Press that opened her eyes to
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Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! Following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week, Deadline published a joint statement by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, directors of the Academy Award-nominated RBG. “Like so many Americans, we are crushed by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” West and Cohen said in a joint statement. “Even had
This month, we’re featuring one of our newest Organizational Members, Black Documentary Collective (BDC). BDC was founded by the late, great documentarian—and former IDA Board Member St. Clair Bourne, to support the artistic development and professional advancement of documentary media makers of African descent. We spoke with its Co-Chair, Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, on how the organization got started and the goals the collective has set over the next year. The mission of BDC is “to support the artistic development and professional advancement of documentary media makers of African descent”. Can
When planning began for Getting Real '20, IDA’s biennial conference on documentary media, Maggie Bowman, the newly hired director of programming, anticipated a three-day, in-person event in Los Angeles. “I got to LA on February 26,” Bowman recalls. “We had a meeting with LA filmmakers the next day. During the course of my two-week stay, we went from being 100% certain it would be in person to starting to consider the possibility that COVID might make it impossible to do in person.” Such circumstances required a quick strategic shift, demanding unprecedented logistical and programmatic agility
On September 7, 2020, Michael Rose, a dear friend of IDA, died of complications from a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. His wife and creative partner, Carol King, was by his side until the end. Michael served on IDA’s Board of Directors for four years, but he didn’t just serve—he worked. Michael really enjoyed IDA. We were his people. He made friends easily with other Board members and loved working with creators, editors, writers and emerging filmmakers. He knew how to tell stories, both the glossy variety and the hard-hitting issue-oriented docs. His love for nonfiction filmmaking came
The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced their annual curated screening series lineup, which begins Thursday, October 8 with a screening of Amazon Studios’ Time, directed by Garrett Bradley.
Dujuan Hoosan is a precocious 10-year-old from Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Australia, considered a healer by his Arrernte tribe and a delinquent by his colonialist-minded school. For more than two years, Australian documentarian Maya Newell followed Dujuan, capturing both quotidian moments and broader patterns of racism, with special focus on the educational and juvenile detention systems.
One of the more unlikely Instagram stars of our “Trump Show” era (with 2.3 million followers and counting), Pete Souza is likewise a surprising choice to star in a documentary. (Which of course is one reason Documentary has chosen Souza as our September Doc Star of the Month.) Having arguably spent more time around the Oval Office than any US president, the Chief Official White House Photographer to President Barack Obama (from 2009-2017) and White House Photographer to President Ronald Reagan before that (from 1983-1989), Souza now allows the spotlight to be turned on himself in Dawn Porter’s
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now streaming through October 5, the Vision Maker Film Festival, presented by Vision Maker Media, is a free showcase for the best in American Indian, Alaska Native and worldwide Indigenous films. Accompanying the films, the festival is hosting a series of conversations and panels with the filmmakers in the festival. The 1991 shooting death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins at a South Central Los Angeles convenience store became a flashpoint for the 1992 civil uprising in LA
Since our founding in 2016, the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) has grown to include over 300 members from 53 cities, eight countries and counting. Originally founded to advocate for producers whose role was misunderstood and chronically underpaid, the DPA’s work allowed us to realize that the issues we were facing were not due to our professional failures but to systemic ones larger than ourselves. Our goal as an organization is to identify and advocate for best practices for a field that is largely unregulated.