My name is Paul. I enjoy a good movie and consider myself the “George Costanza” of films. Over the years while watching the Oscars, they would name the category of Best Documentary. All the time I would wonder where do you see these films? Serendipitously, I saw IDA’s screening of films at the Landmark for free. Free can’t be all bad. Can it? I saw my first IDA Documentary Screening Series film, The Witness, in 2016. It was the story of the rape and murder of Kitty Genoves that was reportedly observed by 38 people who did nothing to stop it. I went with a friend who was convinced of the
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Today, IDA and Doc Society, with support from the Knight First Amendment Institute and the Brennan Center for Justice, filed a lawsuit against the State Department on behalf of documentary filmmakers. New rules issued earlier this year by the State Department as part of the US administration’s “extreme vetting” program require almost everyone applying for a U.S. visa to disclose all social media handles they’ve used in the past five years on some 20 platforms, including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, as well as China’s massively popular Weibo and Russia’s VK. They enable the U.S. government to
For doc filmmakers, the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) is above all where you can find your people. It's a networking paradise. Held in a variety of quaintly historic locations throughout downtown Amsterdam, it's where you can arrive with questions and leave with answers—and possibly new friends. Not only are there opportunities for newbies and the just-arrived to parachute into the action—there’s a nightly gathering, a coffee house and a one-stop information center, for starters—but also a myriad of curated convenings where peer education and socializing nicely mix
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering December 6 on Netflix, The Confession Killer, a new series from Robert Kenner and Taki Oldham, digs into the story of Virginia-born convict Henry Lee Lucas, who in the 1980s began claiming responsibility for hundreds of murders across the US. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the scenes and even documents and witnesses placed him in completely different locations, the Texas Rangers still took Lucas at his word in order to close the cases and
Creating happiness is hard work. Making something beautiful that brings joy to many, in reality entails, perhaps not blood, but certainly a lot of sweat and some occasional tears. That is aptly illustrated in Leslie Iwerks' sweeping, six-part docuseries, The Imagineering Story. The series, currently streaming on Disney+, chronicles the nearly seven decades of hard work that the designers, artists and engineers—or Imagineers—have poured into realizing the vision and dreams of Walt Disney. Part dreamer, part impresario, Disney had the ability to corral a unique army of talented people to think
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering November 25 and 26 on PBS, College Behind Bars, a four-part series directed by Lynn Novick, tells the story of a small group of incarcerated men and women struggling to earn college degrees and turn their lives around in one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in the United States--the Bard Prison Initiative in New York State. Alter-NATIVE: Kitchen, a series of shorts now streaming on Independent Lens, profiles three talented young
Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! Writing for Mubi Notebook, Sofia Bohdanowicz reflects on Agnès Varda's final film, Varda by Agnès. In Varda by Agnès, Varda’s last film, the director states that beaches are a paysage mentale (a landscape of mind). For her, they were a place of inspiration. With Varda, things come in threes. Beaches are composed
Though "Doc Star of the Month" has spotlit cops in the past (the NYPD's Sergeant Edwin Raymond of Stephen Maing's Crime + Punishment; Oakland Police Department Deputy Chief LeRonne Armstrong of Peter Nicks' The Force), this is the first time Documentary has showcased men in uniform who are breaking every conventional policing rule as part of the job. Partners in fighting crime in the San Antonio Police Department Mental Health Unit, Ernie Stevens and Joe Smarro don't wear a uniform to work and are slow to draw a gun. The subjects of Jennifer McShane's mesmerizing (and SXSW Special Jury Prize
The Truth to Power Award, a new addition to the IDA Documentary Awards roster, recognizes an individual or institution that has shown conspicuous fortitude, tenacity and resoluteness in holding those in power to account. This inaugural honor goes to actor/producer/author Leah Remini, who, as an outspoken critic of the Church of Scientology, of which she was formerly a member, has been subjected to a withering series of attacks—from online trolling to death threats—from the Church. Three years ago, Remini did the unthinkable when she produced an A&E documentary series that exposed the Church of
Freida Lee Mock has, over the past few decades, witnessed a sea change in the documentary space—from the artistry and craft, to the distribution channels and platforms, to representation and inclusion. While her academic background—she majored in history and English at UC Berkeley and did graduate work in law and history—might not immediately signal a career in documentary, the individuals Mock has profiled— architect Maya Lin, playwright Tony Kushner, writer Annie Lamott, law professor/activist Anita Hill, gang intervention activist Gregory Boyle and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg