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!
From Mubi, Simran Hans critiques two recent docs about Whitney Houston—Kevin Macdonald's Whitney and Nick Broomfield's Whitney: Can I Be Me?.
It's curious that two middle-aged white men from the UK—Macdonald is Scottish, Broomfield English—are the designated authors of a story about a black American woman. Which is not to say that identity politics automatically beget authority, but rather that a stake in the material matters, especially given the emotional acrobatics of code-switching Houston was forced to perform throughout her career.
IndieWire's David Ehrlich polled a cross-section of critics for their choices for the greatest bio-docs ever made.
I found it almost impossible to shake Asif Kapadia's Amy which played out like a horror film, except the inescapable monster was fame. It made those of us in the audience—who consumed her records, went to her concerts, and laughed along as late-night comedians joked about her debauched and desiccated state—feel complicit in her death. At the same time, it was a powerful, often funny and touching, tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent.
From The Local, Rupali Mehra talks to Indian filmmaker Dheeraj Akolkar about his 2012 documentary Liv & Ingmar, the story of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's relationship with frequent collaborator and de facto muse Liv Ullman.
Lack of love seemed to have marked him from his childhood. I saw a documentary which showed Bergman talking about how he used to go to hug his mother and she used to push him away. In my mind this is a man who always felt abandoned. His films are so full of longing--of people who cannot belong!
IndieWire's Anne Thompson talks to A&E Indie Films' Molly Thompson about her storied history with the division she launched, the upcoming slate of docs and series, and A&E's new partnership with the Sundance Institute.
With streaming, "It's harder for the films to stand out. Theatrical is good for films. You have a whole year to go out to festivals and theaters before they come to A&E. We're the opposite of HBO and Netflix."
From The Hollywood Reporter, Eriq Gardner speculates on the ramifications of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh regarding television broadcasters and copyright holders.
In other words, the Supreme Court nominee is getting to a topic of enormous stakes — what does one do when new technology outpaces the law? Many judges might look at the intent of lawmakers and consider the subsequent interpretation by regulators, but Kavanaugh seems to side with the alternative view that only Congress can come along to provide new guidance.
Edmund Lee and John Koblin of The New York Times report on a recent HBO employees town hall meeting—their first after AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner. John Stankey, the new chief executive of Warner Media, presided over the meeting, laying out his directives for HBO.
"We need hours a day," Mr. Stankey said, referring to the time viewers spend watching HBO programs. "It's not hours a week, and it's not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes."
RealScreen's Barry Walsh delves into the recently released annual report from BBC, as it braces itself for heightened challenges from the SVOD giants.
BBC Chairman Sir David Clementi, in his statement, addressed the changing global media landscape, saying: "…the market around us is becoming more global and competitive. We face a threat to British content from the west coast of America, and we need to respond to the rapidly changing habits and needs of our audiences in the digital age. All this must be set alongside the BBC’s tougher-than-ever financial context."
From The Wrap, Juliette Verlaque talks to Independent Lens' Lois Vossen about some of the highlights for the fall-winter season.
"Documentary film is soaring right now, because it's doing this incredible deep work of telling stories from around the country, different kinds of people who hold different kinds of beliefs from different political parties…People see a lot of the news as divisive, and we’re not the news. We're character-driven stories, and we feel as though we have a lot of people across the country who support the mission of public television."
From Filmmaker, Lauretta Prevost reports on the recent DOC NYC Pro Doc Distribution Boot Camp.
"On different days I alternatively think I’m doing this the best way possible and the worst way possible," Gary Hustwit says. "I've always seen distribution and creation as being the same thing. It's all about the conversation with your audience, the creators and people in other parts of the world… Don't sell out, don't give up your art to a corporation; who knows what they'll do with it."
From the Archive, June 2015: "The Life of Nina Simone as a Nonficiton Musical"
"In reading her diaries," Liz Garbus recalls, "you really see a person who was very close to suicide and wanted to die. In one of her notes she said, 'Can't they all just see that I'm dead and only my ghost is hanging on?' And with the bipolar [diagnosis], there would also be a mania which would feed the other side of that—the performing and sex and all those other things. So all those psychological aspects of her personality—how could we know? And I don't think it's until you get deep into those diaries and talking to her family members that I was able to understand that."
In the News
The 70th Emmy Awards Nominations
European Broadcasting Union Announces Rose d'Or Nominees
NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Program Recipients and Finalists Announced
YouTube Pledges $25 Million in Grants to Fight Fake News
Shark Island Institute Backs Six Australian Doc Projects
Rotterdam Film Festival Appoints New Managing Director
Center for Investigative Reporting Names Christa Scharfenberg as CEO
Arts and Culture SVOD Platform Marquee.TV Launches
Jenny Phillips, Award-Winning Documentary Maker, Dies in Drowning Accident