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! Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. checks in with Allen Hughes about his docuseries about the late rapper Tupac Shakur and his activist mother Afenie Shakur, and how the tumultuous events of this year have impacted the tone of the series. “There is this fragility and vulnerability laced through all the interviews now, like everyone had been affected by the preciousness of
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“When you are a member of a marginalized community, most film and television is not made with you in mind. And so, if you are a person of color, an LGBTQ person, a person who is an immigrant, a person with a disability, you develop a critical awareness because you understand that the images that you’re seeing are not your life.” —Actress/activist Laverne Cox in Sam Feder’s Disclosure When the history of cinema has failed to accurately portray our communities, how can we find a new path forward to right the decades of wrong? Disclosure, directed by Sam Feder, tackles the issues of Trans
“Above all, do no harm “is a maxim held sacred by doctors and medical students all over the world. But in Alexander Nanau’s Collective, a blistering exposé of the Romanian healthcare system, when medical treatment is hindered by corruption, negligence and incompetence, the consequences are tragic. The documentary was recently chosen as Romania’s entry for Best International Language Film for the 93rd Academy Awards. On October 30, 2015, the band Goodbye to Gravity was celebrating the release of its new album at the Bucharest nightclub Colektiv. The underground nightclub, popular with Romanian
Safe to say that Joy Buolamwini, civil rights star of both the tech world and of Shalini Kantayya’s Coded Bias, a globetrotting investigation into how the building blocks of AI (built, of course, almost exclusively by straight white men) have basically charted a course for systemically embedding universal inequality into our everyday lives, never set out to be either. The MIT Media Lab researcher just wanted to create a feel-good “aspire mirror” (which she eventually did) and was having trouble getting the facial-recognition software to see her face. This sent Buolamwini, a Rhodes Scholar and
The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced that executive director, Simon Kilmurry, will step down in mid-2021.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering November 23 on Independent Lens, Erika Cohn’s Belly of the Beast tracks down a previously little-known story about enforced—and illegal—sterilization of female inmates in California's correctional facilities. For nearly 40 years after a 1979 law was passed in California banning enforced sterilization, this practice continued with impunity in prisons. Premiering November 17 on WORLD CHANNEL, Drew Nicholas’ Blood Memory follows Sandy White Hawk, who at age 18 months
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 York Times’ Holland Cotter reviews two concurrent shows featuring the work of Indigenous American filmmaker Sky Hopinka. The video suggests that Mr. Hopinka finds himself, despite his ethnicity, having doubts about his role here. Supporter? Recorder? Critic? His panoramic shots of sprawling camps and wide-open landscapes catch the epic tenor of the occasion
I attended my first conference in yoga pants and a t-shirt with snacks and a coffee mug on my desk, a cat and dog, and stretch breaks whenever I wanted.
The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards honorary awards recipients.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. November is Native American Heritage Month, and WORLD Channel and Vision Maker Media are commemorating with a rich showcase of work from the Indigenous community, entitled We Are Still Here. Among the films in the showcase include Warrior Women, by Getting Real 2020 Programmer Christina D. King and Elizabeth Castle, which, through the stories of Indigenous rights activists Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert, explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood as