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! Hyperallergic’s Justine Smith argues for Oscar categories for documentary editing and cinematography. The days of nonfiction film as a niche are over. Encouraging greater understanding and appreciation for how documentaries are made could serve an essential role in increasing media literacy. This may be overly optimistic, since most of the public and Academy voting
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Sue Kim is the daughter of Korean immigrants. She was raised in Detroit, Michigan, and she graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English Literature. Before moving into documentary filmmaking, she spent 20 years as a commercial producer, making award-winning content for brands like Nike and Adidas. Her directorial debut, The Speed Cubers, follows the lives of two Rubik’s Cube-solving champions, Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs and the friendship that ensues. The film premiered on Netflix in July 2020, and has been nominated for a Critics Choice Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award for
Newly appointed IDA Funds and Enterprise Program Director Poh Si Teng is no stranger to challenges in nonfiction storytelling. From her childhood as an ethnic and religious minority in Malaysia, where media is heavily regulated by the state, to her experiences working as a journalist in predominantly white newsrooms in the United States, Poh has a deep understanding of the interplay between media, politics and power. She brings an impressive array of global experience to IDA. She worked as independent filmmaker in India for years, and then as an award-winning staff reporter for The New York
Beth Bird—filmmaker, activist, educator, scholar, former IDA Board member, wife, mother—passed away on March 28; she had been struggling with cancer. She was 54. Beth, by all accounts, was both a passionate advocate and a compassionate listener. She pursued her life and her art with an open heart and an open mind. Her educational trajectory—from Brown University to CalArts to UC Irvine to UC Berkeley—laid the foundation for her filmmaking practice, one for which she earned multiple awards. Her 2004 film Everyone Their Grain of Sand documented the impact of globalization on land ownership in
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The 93rd Academy Award Nominations are out, and with it are the five incredible mini-narratives in the running for Best Documentary Short Subject. This year's nominees' topics range from the 2019-2020 Hong Kong Protests to the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising—the films are sharp, succinct and powerful explorations of these deeply political incidents and histories. Take a look at the contenders and find out where to stream them before the ceremony on April 25, 2021. Do Not Split
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 Richard Brody examines Raoul Peck’s new series Exterminate All the Brutes, a contemplation of the history of white supremacy. For Peck, the goal of his historical analysis isn’t only to elucidate current events, it’s to inspire activism and to achieve change: “What must be denounced here is not so much the reality of the Native American genocide, or
After living in relative captivity for more than a year, sharing our work lives through the flatness of Zoom meetings and events, and talking actively about racial justice, inclusivity and equality in a post-George Floyd world, I can’t help but wonder how our interactions will be different when we go back to the in-person space. The pandemic has opened the possibilities of how we can network, exchange ideas and collaborate remotely. While going through it, we have been shaken and forced to truly evaluate how non-inclusive the documentary industry has been at all levels, from leaders in our
To say that longtime civil rights attorney Larry Krasner was a long shot to become the very head of the agency that had been his most despised nemesis is an understatement. As one skeptical progressive puts it in in Ted Passon, Yoni Brook and Nicole Salazar’s riveting, eight-episode docuseries, Philly D.A. (Prods.: Nicole Salazar, Josh Penn, Michael Gottwald; Exec. Prod.: Dawn Porter), he had about as much of a chance as David Duke taking the reins of the ACLU. And yet not only did Krasner win his election campaign back in 2017, he did so in a landslide. And that’s when the real drama began
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering April 13 on PBS’ FRONTLINE, American Insurrection, a collaboration with ProPublica and University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, investigates the rise of far-right extremism in America—from the deadly Charlottesville rally in 2017, to a neo-Nazi group that has actively recruited inside the US military, to the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Correspondent A.C. Thompson, director Rick Rowley and producers Karim Hajj and Jacquie
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! Screen Daily’s Geoffrey Macnab talks to IDFA Festival Director Orwa Nyrabia about some new programmatic changes for this year’s edition. The IDFA director acknowledged “classical” feature documentaries are still the films “making the headlines” and being acquired by big US distributors. “But it seems there is also a movement of filmmakers from around the world, and