By Steven Beer, Neil Rosini & Julie Angell How can geoblocking impact the video-on-demand marketplace? Geoblocking technology restricts access to internet content based upon the user’s geographical location. International film distribution companies rely on geoblocking as the foundation to their core business model—pre-selling and licensing premium video-on-demand (VOD) content on a territorial basis. Copyright law, which grants rights holders with authority to designate the locations where their property is distributed, is also served by geoblocking. Netflix, HBO and numerous other VOD
Latest Posts
Apple TV+ recently premiered Home, a new docuseries about nine of the world’s most innovative abodes. The series was set to debut at SXSW in March, but due to COVID-19 the show never made it to Austin. That said, the city is featured in one Home episode called “Edgeland House.” Chicago (“Listening House”), Malibu (“Xanadu”) and coastal Maine (“Soot House”) also make appearances on the show. In addition to the US, Bali (“Sharma Springs”), China (“Domestic Transformer”), India (“Wall House”), Mexico (“The 3D Printed Home”) and Sweden (“Naturhus”) are highlighted in the series. Two of the series’
Since March, filmmaker Juhi Sharma has been grounded in Chennai, India, where she's been working remotely on the post-production of The Vinyl Records: Destroy Phallus Oppression, a feature documentary about India's only feminist punk rock band. It was on a trip home to shoot that the implications of the pandemic started to strike from all directions—loss of income, travel cancellations, and attempting to cover rent in New York while unable to return due to lockdown. "I'm trying to do some online work, but I'm a cinematographer and a director, so there's not much I can do," Sharma says. Staring
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 Eric Kohn talks to filmmaker Roger Ross Williams about his plans to grow his company and support young black filmmakers. At the same time, he wanted to manage expectations. "We can’t reverse 400 years of racism overnight," he said. "Hollywood has a short attention span and could forget about this when you see don't see riots in the streets anymore. And we
Dear IDA Community, We recognize that we are living in a time of enormous injustice, but also of potentially historic change. The deep injustice on which our society is built and that has been quietly tolerated has been exposed by both a national uprising against systemic racism and a pandemic that has hit communities of color disproportionately. Statements of solidarity are not sufficient. What counts is the commitment to do the hard work of making lasting change over the long haul. To support this change and the demands for racial justice, IDA commits to: Amplifying Black voices. We will
During this historic time, many of you are using your cameras to witness and capture unfolding events in hostile environments. Reporting in the US on unfolding events, whether COVID or protests, presents an unprecedented amount of physical risk. Citizen journalists, activists and independent media makers are working without institutional support and without the visibility and protection of journalists associated with media organizations. The International Documentary Association (IDA) and WITNESS will be gathering ongoing resources to inform your activities, which are critical to the health of
Dear Readers, This Spring issue comes to you late in the season, with summer, the season, just weeks away, and Summer, the next issue, in progress and on schedule for an early summer release. This has been a tumultuous spring, one defined by, first, a global pandemic and, over the past two weeks, a global uprising in response to three brutal murders of unarmed Black citizens at the hands of white people, culminating the latest in a long, 400-year series of cycles of systemic racism and white supremacy in the US. And this particularly virulent virus persists at all levels—the public sector, the
It was March 12. I remember sitting in my home office looking at the bulletin board filled with the spring/summer tour schedule for my latest documentary, DO NO HARM: Exposing the Hippocratic Hoax. It was fully booked. That's when the first cancelation came in. Then, just like dominoes, over the next two weeks every event across the country canceled. DO NO HARM takes an in-depth look at the medical training process, a toxic cutthroat, bullying environment where doctors, impaired by sleep deprivation, are forced to care for patients. The film exposes the hidden epidemic of physician suicide
Since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd, Americans have risen up in protest against age-old scourges of police brutality and systemic racism—and cities around the world have taken notice and have staged their own protests in solidarity. We have witnessed arrests of journalists, we have witnessed attacks on protestors by the state—and we have witnessed communities coming together to call for justice and systemic change, all while our national leadership tries to divide us. This week's Screen Time brings you documentations of other civil rights movements in the US, from Ferguson to Los
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 Eric Kohn spoke to filmmaker Stanley Nelson about the need for black filmmakers to tell the story behind the George Floyd protests. It's important for documentary filmmakers at this point to understand that we are the news. There's a lot of reporting that's not news, or slanted. One of the things we believe strongly at our company, Firelight, is that