It's been a bit of a hiatus since the last Essential Doc Reads—what with Sundance, the Oscars, DocuDay LA and IDA's impending office move—but we're back with 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 Ryan Lattanzio reports on the reaction of Cao Dewang, chairman of the Chinese-owned, American-based factory at the heart of Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar's Academy Award-winning American Factory. "I am really sorry that
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In a relatively sane world—or at least nation—Victoria Gonzalez would never have been one of the guiding lights of Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman's documentary After Parkland. A student at the time Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida became shorthand for the latest mass murder by a young man with an assault rifle, Gonzalez lost both her innocence and her boyfriend, Joaquin Oliver, on that Valentine's Day in 2018. And even as there was no bringing back either, Gonzalez herself was forced to carry on—searching, struggling, and finding not answers, but her own voice
Check out the new report of findings from IDA's 2019 Tools of the Trade: Documentary Equipment Survey, providing a robust narrative about the optimal tools of the trade for making your best work.
Syrian documentary filmmaker Feras Fayyad has been battling his whole professional life. First, he was battling to keep his family safe (he's still fighting for this today) amidst the growing unrest in Syria, then he was battling to get his voice heard as a filmmaker in a dictatorial regime. He battled through torture, through seeking refuge in Europe, through continuing to make his films and continuing to be persecuted in his homeland because of them. He continues his battle with the American government as they keep trying to reject his Visa applications as he follows his latest film, The
When IDA launched the Enterprise Documentary Fund at Sundance 2017, the festival coincided with the Women's March and Trump's inauguration. The blizzard conditions underscored an overall feeling of sobriety, as attendees reeled from the unexpected electoral outcome. The whiteouts and slippery roads were the appropriate mise en scene, reflecting the uncertainty that so many felt. But there was also a palpable energy, with lots of planning and organizing, though, no one seemed sure to what end. Looking back, who could have foreseen the Muslim Ban, Cambridge Analytica, the crisis at our border
When filmmaker Laura Nix walked into a dance studio in the San Gabriel Valley to find 40 people ballroom-dancing in the middle of the day, she thought, "What is this beauty? Why is this happening in the middle of the workday?" Intrigued, Nix signed up for classes and befriended Paul and Millie Cao, a middle-aged married couple who have dedicated themselves to hours of rigorous dance training and competition in addition to their full-time jobs. She began filming the Caos; as she explains, "You have to start every film with a question, and the question I had was, 'Why are you dancing so so
In the Absence begins with the usual narrative markers of a ship tragedy: a drone camera sweeps over the site, we hear a 911 call, security camera shows ominous developments inside the vessel, and we read a title: "On the night of 15 April 2014, the Sewol ferry departed Incheon Port, Korea. 476 passengers, including 325 students on a school trip to Jeju Island, were on board." Next morning the ship began to sink amid confusion and delayed governmental rescue efforts, and nearly an hour later the captain fled with half the passengers still aboard. The media reported that all had survived. But
John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson co-directed the Oscar-nominated documentary short Life Overtakes Me, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee. Set in Sweden, the film offers an inside look at refugee families caring for children experiencing resignation syndrome, a trauma-related condition inciting a coma-like state lasting months or years. Interviewed together, the married filmmakers discussed their creative choices and production strategies. DOCUMENTARY: As a production crew of two, how did you structure your roles? KRISTINE SAMUELSON: John shot the film. I did the sound. We boomed
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in an ultra-conservative patriarchal society? If your answer is, "No, it's already depressing enough waking up in the nightmare of Trump’s America," read no further. However, if you've ever wanted to know what it is like to be a female in Afghanistan, to peek behind that particular curtain, then Grain Media and Lifetime Films have a documentary for you. Documentary recently spoke with director Carol Dysinger about the making of the IDA Documentary Award-winning Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl), and the significance of
After the success of her feature documentary A Suitable Girl, Al Jazeera's Witness series asked Smriti Mundhra to make another film. It wasn't long before she knew who she would like as her subject. In the wake of the 2016 US Presidential election, with everyone despondent and the news cycle intolerable, she had been looking for inspiration in local stories. Through online trawling she discovered Bruce Franks Jr., a celebrated battle rapper who had won a seat on the Missouri State Legislature. Franks had been very active in the Ferguson protests over the 2014 murder of the unarmed African