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! Fast Company’s KC Ifeanyi catches up with filmmaker Jeff Orlowski about his latest doc, The Social Dilemma, about how the digital giants heavily influence human behavior and politics. “Everybody’s on their own island of thought now, and you see the algorithms are customizing a worldview for each and every one of us,” Orlowski continues. “And it becomes more and more
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Lisa Cortés and Liz Garbus’ new documentary 'All In: The Fight for Democracy,' explores the long history of voter suppression in the USA, with Georgia's 2018 governor race as a focal point.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang’s Our Time Machine opens September 11 in over 35 virtual cinemas nationwide through Walking Iris Media and POV. The film, winner of the Best Cinematography Award at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, is a personal and intimate look at Chinese artist Maleonn (Ma Liang) as he sets out to stage an ambitious performance piece about time and memory when his father, Ma Ke, the former artistic director of the Shanghai Chinese Opera Theater, is diagnosed with
One of filmmaker Judith Helfand’s earliest works, the Peabody Award-winning A Healthy Baby Girl, documents her diagnosis with cervical cancer—the result of a drug (diethylstilbestrol, or DES), that Helfand’s mother was prescribed to prevent miscarriage and ensure the health of her child. Decades later, Helfand underwent a radical hysterectomy, and while she was recovering at home, she started filming. A Healthy Baby Girl documents not only the love she and her mother shared, but also the filmmaker’s political awakening and commitment to community activism. Some 25 years, many films and two
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! Honeyland was one of the most acclaimed documentaries of 2019, having opened the year with three awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and having wrapped it up a year later with two Academy Award nominations. Filmmakers Ljubomir Stefanov, Atanas Georgiev and Tamara Kotevska felt an obligation to their protagonists, Hatidze Muratova and Hussein Sam, in the wake of this
While we are missing being with each other in person, we’re looking forward to nurturing our relationships with members of the documentary community online. Here are 10 reasons why you won’t want to miss this year's edition of #DocsGetReal.
COVID-19 exposed and accentuated long-standing fault lines in our industry: a financial sustainability crisis, the absence of labor protections, and a growing movement to reconcile decades of structural inequities between white and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) filmmakers and communities.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now streaming via Alamo On Demand Virtual Cinema is Ai Weiwei’s latest film, Coronation, about the COVID-driven lockdown in Wuhan, China, which went into effect January 23, 2020—a month and a half after the first patient with COVID-19 symptoms was identified in Wuhan. Coronation, which Ai Weiwei directed and produced from his residence in Berlin and which was filmed by Wuhan citizens, examines the political specter of Chinese state control over the course of the lockdown. The
The first time an episodic series was programmed on opening day of the Sundance Film Festival happened a lifetime ago—i.e., just this past January. And the series to be awarded the unusual distinction was similarly unconventional. Love Fraud is unsurprisingly well-crafted, considering that the Oscar-nominated duo of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady ( Jesus Camp; Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You) are the filmmakers behind this four-part docuseries premiering August 30 on Showtime. The series takes an often noirish approach to the inspired feminist takedown of the truly bizarre Richard Scott
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! René Otero, one of the protagonists featured in Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ Boys State, reflects on his experiences in the Texas-based program for teenage political aspirants in an Op-Ed in The New York Times. Boys State immersed me in a culture that refuses to criticize America, confusing praise with patriotism while ignoring the fact that with love comes