Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Saudi Women’s Driving School, which premieres October 24 on HBO and will stream on HBO NOW, HBO GO and HBO On Demand, tracks the year since Saudi Arabian women were first legally permitted to drive. Directed by Erica Gornall, the film takes viewers inside The Saudi Women’s Driving School, the largest such complex in the world, as well inside the lives of Saudi women who are actively challenging their country’s gender dynamics, despite the ongoing risk of censure and jail time
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Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering October 14 on POV and streaming through the month on POV.org Assia Boundaoui's The Feeling of Being Watched, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee, takes viewers to the Chicago neighborhood where Boundaoui grew up, where most residents in her Muslim immigrant neighborhood believe they are under surveillance. Boundaoui investigates and uncovers FBI documents about "Operation Vulgar Betrayal," one of the largest pre-9/11 counterterrorism probes conducted on
For the hundreds of delegates who attend the six-day event in Malmo, Sweden, from the five Nordisk countries—Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland—the Nordisk Panorama is the most important of the year. Its impact can be seen on screens and in global festivals throughout the year in the abundance of generously supported and carefully nurtured quality documentaries that have made their way through Nordisk Panorama’s range of industry events. In addition to its film program, the festival runs a pitching forum, a marketplace, and a number of other industry-focused events. Each year the
For over 50 years, Chicago-based Kartemquin Films has been a leading voice for social justice in the documentary field. Founder/Artistic Director Gordon Quinn works to develop filmmakers, produce films and advocate for the field of documentary. This collaborative group of socially responsible filmmakers is dedicated to promoting dialogue and seeking justice as they examine and critique society through stories of real people. Kartemquin has earned four Academy Award nominations, six Emmy awards and four Peabody Awards, among many other accolades. Their films include the iconic 1994 film Hoop
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! Filmmaker Laura Poitras is stepping down from her role as executive producer of Field of Vision, which she co-founded with Charlotte Cooke and A.J. Schnack in 2015. She shares with IndieWire's Erik Kohn her reflections on how far the streaming platform has come and where the documentary field and form is today.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has completed its transitional year quite well, with the expected kudos abounding from international critics and professionals. The co-head duo of Artistic Director Cameron Bailey and Executive Director Joanna Vicente is functioning well. A main goal of the festival was to increase representation by women directors, and this was achieved spectacularly. Fifty percent of the gala screenings were directed by women, and 114 films were directed or co-directed by female filmmakers. TIFF Docs, curated in the main by Thom Powers, came in for its fair
Celebrated around the world on October 10, World Mental Health Day is an important occasion to not only encourage conversations around mental health, but also promote education, awareness and advocacy reducing the social stigma surrounding it. The documentary landscape at large, in particular, is no stranger to the intersection of one's career with physical, emotional and financial struggles. On this day, it is critical to seek stories that openly discuss mental health in an open and honest way. IDA recommends these five documentaries as just a few places to spark conversation, as well as
Here I am, three weeks out from the immersive experience of the Camden International Film Festival and Points North Forum, and the rhythms of everyday life are tugging on me hard once again. Still, my mind's eye keeps finding its way back to the vivid imagery of the weekend—young children laughing and playing in the most ordinary way while in a refugee camp in Bulgaria ( Midnight Traveler); a female truck driver combing her hair in a roadside truck stop ( Driver, the Points North Pitch winner); buckets of silvery baby eels writhing and shimmering after being harvested late at night on the
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering October 7 on POV is América, a portrait of a family--three brothers, their declining grandmother and their father, who is imprisoned for elderly neglect of his mother. Round-the-clock elderly care is the catalyst that reunites Diego, Rodriquez and Bruno in their boyhood home in Colima, Mexico, but it also instigates fraternal tension amoid the challenge of putting their lives and livelihoods on hold. Directed by Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside. Premiering October
Los Angeles, C.A. (October 11, 2019) – The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced today its latest cohort of 12 films receiving its Enterprise Documentary Fund production grants at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival in Washington, D.C. With major support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund supports feature-length documentary films telling urgent, revelatory stories underpinned by rigorous journalistic approaches and exemplary artistic achievement. The films selected are to receive a total of $850,000 in funds