On January 24, by unanimous vote, documentary filmmakers got a big boost from Congress. The House of Representatives passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act (aka the PRESS Act). It’s a journalist-protection bill that could easily have been called the Protect All Documentarians Act. Although the PRESS Act makes no specific mention of documentary filmmakers, federal courts uniformly include documentary filmmakers in their definitions of journalists. In fact, documentarians stand to be one of the bill’s biggest beneficiaries.
Advocacy
Rebecca Day and Malikkah Rollins speak with Documentary magazine about the ever-present need for mental health resources for documentary filmmakers: “What we are really trying to focus on here is the filmmakers’ key role, rather than the hierarchical structure that puts them in this massive power game.”
It has been deeply troubling to watch our peers in the Ukrainian film community have their lives and work unraveled by the horrors of war. The
Nearly three years after being deported following the world premiere of Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra’s The Infiltrators at Sundance, activist
Last June my debut feature film Pray Away premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is a career milestone I am grateful for, and one I’ll never
For over four weeks, a small team of colleagues from the D-Word online community has been frantically working to help our list of 75 Afghan nationals
By Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei We are writing this with sleepless eyes, shaking hands, and knots in our stomachs that grow tighter with
Several of my former 'Angels are Made of Light' are targets for execution by the Taliban because of their work for US-funded projects in Afghanistan. We hope that with your help, we can draw attention to the SIV applications of my friend and bring him to safety.
Dear Documentary Community: In 2019, many of you joined our call to federal immigration leaders to release Claudio Rojas, the protagonist of the
We write today to express deep concern that during this pandemic, millions of freelance and self-employed workers are experiencing unprecedented income loss and have been unable to access the government assistance that they desperately need.