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!
IndieWire’s Phillip Lopate interviews artist Laurie Anderson about her new documentary Heart of a Dog:
“All of my work is always flowing between about four things: the music, the text, the structure, the images. This film could have been called a few other things. It could have been called How to Feel Sad without Being Sad, courtesy of my Buddhist teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche. It could have been called The Lake, which is the music that runs through the whole thing. It could have been called A Story about a Story, because it's about stories and how they're made. Or it could have been called Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story.”
Producer Effie Brown talks to Thompson on Hollywood about her experience on Project Greenlight:
“I'm happy with the experience. I'm super grateful that at the end of the day, no matter what, the show showed a beautiful, qualified, inclusive crew making a great movie. On the TV, you see people reflecting African-Americans making a movie, so that many people can join the experience. That was important to me, one of the reasons I did it. We accomplished that.”
BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow on the financial repercussions of investigative journalism:
“But the real issue here is that the 0.0001% have a powerful weapon in their arsenal: punitive civil lawsuits through which they spend less-resourced news-agencies into the ground to prevent the truth from being reported or kept in the public record.”
FilmsforAction.org profiles Australian Olympian Peter Norman, the forgotten man in the iconic photo of 1968 Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos-- and the subject of a recent documentary, Salute, by his nephew, Matt Norman.
New York Times columnist David Brooks on Greg Whiteley’s documentary Most Likely to Succeed, about new models in education:
“The better approach, the film argues, is to take content off center stage and to emphasize the relational skills future workers will actually need: being able to motivate, collaborate, persevere and navigate through a complex buffet of freelance gigs.”
From the archives, February-March 2005: Cutting Comments: A Women Editors Roundtable
“Documentary assembled a group of top editors to discuss the art, craft and process of their work, as well as issues of ethics and economics, and particularly for this magazine issue, the difference in editorial style—if one exists—between men and women. Kate Amend, Lillian Benson, Yana Gorskaya, Yaffa Lerea, Ondi Timoner and roundtable moderator Lisa Leeman represent a range of experience, sensibilities and award-winning work.”
In the news:
Participant Media Names New CEO
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IDFA Reveals Projects for 2015 IDFA Forum
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The Cinema Eye Honors Releases its 2016 Influentials List
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