Dear Readers,

The risks documented in this issue’s thematic strand of “Dangerous Territory”—physical danger, political pressure, institutional exploitation—are not aberrations of our current moment. They have persisted since the earliest days of documentary practice. When the Lumière company sent camera operators to French colonies to record travelogues, they worked in a world with an established visual economy of organized conflict, from war photography to muckraking. Robert Flaherty risked hypothermia to protect his cameras while filming Nanook of the North. Before they made King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack trekked hundreds of miles for Grass, and faced a stampeding elephant in Chang. Joris Ivens dodged fascist forces to make The Spanish Earth during the Spanish Civil War. In fact, the success of these early documentaries benefited from the danger the filmmakers experienced while making them.

Our editorial line does not attempt to glorify the threats that filmmakers face today; rather, it seeks to explain them. This issue’s cover feature on Petra Costa’s Apocalypse in the Tropics places her in conversation with Bernardo Ruiz, another filmmaker who has also deeply investigated the evolution of an electorate across multiple election cycles. Costa was publicly denounced by Brazil’s then-President Jair Bolsonaro for “slandering” her country. In this interview, she describes why she nonetheless chose to make a film on the religious forces that brought Bolsonaro to power.

The three other articles in the “Dangerous Territory” strand feature other filmmakers under fire. Mstyslav Chernov’s transformation from war reporter to filmmaker is chronicled by Sonya Vseliubska, who is interested in how 2000 Meters to Andriivka employs cutting-edge camera and sound technology. Lauren Wissot’s profile of the Renaud brothers, Brent and Craig, illuminates the price of their vérité approach to conflict journalism, which is also covered in Craig’s recent mid-length film, Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud. Journalist Steve Brooks investigates how even nonprofits designed to nurture mediamaking can become sites of exploitation. Brooks, the former editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, also details how the appropriation of two incarcerated filmmakers’ creative labor echoes decades of similar struggles inside California’s prisons.

While the methods of censorship, financial exploitation, and violence might differ now, the entanglement between vulnerability and profitability remains. Outside of the thematic strand, I interviewed David Osit on Predators, his slippery exposé of the crime sting journalism of To Catch a Predator, after finding the film to be a compelling, unexpected critique of true crime—and the limits of personal documentaries.

Our recurring segments include two festival dispatches. Natalia Keogan considers independent documentaries amid Tribeca’s rampant commercialization, while Tayler Montague returns to BlackStar, which has become a vital U.S. stop for BIPOC filmmakers. For “Producer’s Diary,” Robin Berghaus gathers the ups and downs of Bonnie Cohen and Jon Shenk’s In Waves and War, a Participant-funded film caught in the middle of the company’s shutdown, from Cohen, Shenk, and producer Jessica Anthony. And “Screen Time” continues with capsule-length reviews on notable new releases.

Until the next issue,

Abby Sun
Editor, Documentary