Many of you in our community are parents of young and teenage children, and you’re negotiating the tricky balance between keeping the cash flowing and keeping the kids at bay. We came up with a list of docs that just might help achieve that balance! Watch these documentaries that are sure to entertain, inform and spark curiosity in viewers both young and old. They're not just kids, though; adults can always stand to learn or revisit something about themselves with these films. Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018) Morgan Neville's 2018 box office hit profiles the Presbyterian minister-turned-PBS
Latest Posts
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Streaming on Amazon, iTunes and Sundance Now is David France's Oscar-nominated How To Survive a Plague, which documents through archival footage the evolution of a movement during the worst days of the AIDS epidemic, when a group of men and women, faced with indifference and hostility, teamed up with the science community to fight for effective treatments that helped to tame the disease. In an interview in Variety, France noted the parallels and differences between the AIDS
In the grip of the coronavirus pandemic, we at IDA continue to monitor new resources and initiatives, as well as discussions on moving the community forward and reflections on the larger implications of this crisis. Although not technically a doc-specific read, this essay by Amy Semple Ward, CEO of NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network) speaks to the value of community and team-building as essential precursors to technological needs. Only then, after you've focused on your people and your processes, should you add in new technologies. If you do this first, you won’t have the
Get to know some of IDA's Fiscally-sponsored projects that are available to stream from the comfort of your home, on widely available platforms! We hope you'll continue to support bold, brave and informative storytelling by exploring these titles on HBO. You can also donate to our current roster of fundraising projects at documentary.org/sponsored-projects. Foster (Deborah Oppenheimer and Lisa Remington) With one in eight American children suffering a confirmed case of neglect or abuse by age 18, there are currently more than 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S., a number that continues
Since IDA's DocuClub was relaunched in 2016 as a forum for sharing and soliciting feedback about works-in-progress, many DocuClub alums have since premiered their works on the festival circuit and beyond. In an effort to both monitor and celebrate the evolution of these films to premiere-ready status, we reach out to the filmmakers as they are either winding their way through the festival circuit, or gearing up for it. In this edition of "The Feedback," we spotlight Brent Wilson's Streetlight Harmonies, which had its festival premiere last fall at DOC NYC and makes its VOD premiere on March 31
The documentary community is no stranger to the devastating impacts of COVID-19 in the arts and media world. With festivals, screenings and any kind of production completely on hold for the time being, filmmakers and film lovers must turn to digital avenues as a means to support and circulate meaningful work. Luckily, there's a tried and tested method in place already: streaming! We'll be doing a blog series introducing IDA's Fiscally-sponsored projects that are available to stream from the comfort of your home, on widely available platforms. We hope you'll continue to support bold, brave and
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Yesterday, March 22, 2020, marked the 125th anniversary of the very first documentary ever produced: The Lumière Brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory. It's only two minutes long and the title is pretty much what the film is about, but it laid down the foundation for an amazing century-and-a-quarter of mind-blowing reality! And, as if to mark the occasion, what won the Academy Award for Best Documentary this year? American Factory! A century before COVID-19, there was
Who would've thought that summer camp could lead to a movement that has made a significant impact in the USA and worldwide? In the early 1970s, a group of teenagers with disabilities got off the bus at Camp Jened in upstate New York, not realizing this would be a transformative experience. They were in awe to see so many wheelchairs in one place. At Camp Jened there was music, drugs and sex. It felt like freedom in every sense of the word—freedom from their families, from an oppressive society and from their own self-doubt. Out of this summer utopia, many activists were born, and over the next
As the updates on COVID-19 take on an uptick in urgency—we at IDA have been working from home for the past week and will continue to do so as long as the Safer at Home decree from California Governor Newsom remains in place (at least another month)—we have been tracking the latest impacts on our community. So this edition of Essential Doc Reads will be, for the most part, an amalgamation of announcements, industry responses, check-ins with filmmakers ( see our interview with Todd Chandler and Danielle Vega) and more. But first, we have all been beaming out positive mantras to Chicago, where
Since AB5 (Assembly Bill 5) took effect in California on January 1, 2020, documentary filmmakers have found themselves facing drastically increased costs, confusing new rules, and unresolved questions about the law's implementation. Documentary asked attorney Leslie S. Klinger, vice president of the Motion Picture and Television Tax Institute, to explain the basics of AB5. "For the typical production of a documentary, most everyone is going to be an employee of the production company. That's the bottom line," Klinger says. This may come as a surprise to filmmakers who have built careers