Dear Readers,
No Other Land is both narratively explosive and achingly personal. In terms of craft, it’s one of the most impressive examples of verité scene-making in recent years—though its directors, a collective of four Israeli and Palestinian journalists, aren’t format purists in their story of how Israeli state legal machinations and individual soldiers force expulsions of Palestinian villagers in the West Bank. Mackenzie Lukenbill examines how the quartet of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Billal, and Rachel Szor made the film their story in every mutual way possible. After No Other Land was selected to be this issue’s cover feature, IDA’s board selected the film’s directors to receive the Courage Under Fire Award at the 40th IDA Documentary Awards.
The first IDA Awards (in 1985, for films made in 1984) took place in a very different landscape of film production and general public awareness of documentaries. To better understand the import and challenges of the awards, we asked two writers to critically examine the past four decades. Dan Schindel cross-referenced IDA Award and Oscar winners in his essay, which compares the whims of the awards voting bodies with a more general history of documentary film development. Documentary has covered the rising costs of Oscar campaigns for documentary filmmakers many times over the past decades. Zooming out, Noel Ransome takes a look at the general practice of awarding documentary films, from film festivals to the Oscars and newer awards. Does the proliferation of entities awarding documentaries mean that more and better films are receiving their roses?
We also commemorate another 40-year anniversary. Ruarí McCann finds an interesting model of making and disseminating activist films in the Miners’ Campaign Tapes. The feature looks into the tapes—six short videos—and how their funding, collaborative production, and unique distribution were all enabled by the 1982 Workshop Declaration, the result of years of campaigning by radical filmmaking collectives.
The “Making a Production” profile on sports powerhouse Religion of Sports has been in the works for five months. Nora Stone makes her Documentary debut with her reporting on this Santa Monica–based production company utterly dedicated to making creative work out of the celebrity bio-doc format. For “What’s in My Bag,” we asked cinematographer and director Zac Manuel, whose work spans public broadcasting and streamer fare, to write down why big rigs aren’t always better for filming intimate, observational work. “Screen Time” continues with capsule-length reviews on notable new winter releases, some of them pegged to Oscar-qualifying runs as the awards season ramps up.
There are crises around the world, including in film, arts, and culture. After many recent government changeovers, we have already witnessed funding cutbacks and anticipate state-level support of documentaries to further erode. Since August, I’ve been on a partial leave of absence from IDA to research media policy that supports independent documentary filmmaking around the world, including already existing local, state, and national policies in the U.S. This work is supported by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center Documentary Film in the Public Interest program, where I am a current fellow. I will return to full-time work at IDA by the end of 2024 and will share the results of my research in the next issue.
Until then,
Abby Sun
Editor, Documentary