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Essential Doc Reads: Week of June 6

By Tom White


From Kirby Dick and Amy Zeiring’s <em>The Hunting Ground</em>

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!

 

Amy Ziering, producer of The Hunting Ground, which addresses sexual assaults on college campuses, and Kamilah Willingham, one of the film’s subjects, appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the recent Stanford University rape case and verdict.

“And what’s so interesting is that the reception to The Hunting Ground was much more like what you see—you know, what we’ve seen played out with the Stanford case, not post-letter, but pre-letter, in that the focus and the concern was more on—was sort of questioning and challenging, "Oh, is this really going on? Is there really an epidemic? Could this be true?" as opposed to saying, "Oh, well, thank you for pointing this out, and let’s go take care of it." You know, there’s just a difference in leadership that we’re seeing on campuses. You know, where is—as you said, where is the letter of apology from Stanford for this happening? Why, you know, actually, in the last 10 years, has there not even been—I think there’s only been one expulsion at Stanford for any of the assaults, of all the numbers that you just said were happening. So, you know, there is this kind of real unwillingness we’re seeing still, which I’m hoping that this letter will now shift, and this will be a change, and everyone will say, you know, ‘We need to do better. We need to protect our students better.’”

From The Knowledge, Alina Kay looks at female representation in the UK documentary community.

But arguably more important than legislation and campaigns is change on a personal level that needs to come from people within the industry. [Filmmaker Tina] Gharavi says that everyone is prone to unconscious bias, and that is just part of human nature. But when it comes to decision making within the film industry, a certain awareness of this unconscious bias is needed in order to improve the situation by giving chances to filmmakers that are different from the ‘norm’.

Continuing Reverse Shot’s excellent series examining the intersections of documentary and fiction by juxtaposing a documentary and its approximate fictional counterpart, Matt Connolly addresses the interconnected issues in Alex Gibney’s Casino Jack and the United States of Money and Adam McKay’s The Big Short.

Does drawing from similar aesthetic options as mainstream fiction film dilute documentary’s mission for clarifying one’s experience of the world or offer alternate possibilities for viewer edification? If popular visual style can seep into documentaries, can fictional films successfully lift documentary-inflected techniques to address social and political questions normally presumed beyond the limits of big-budget entertainment? In short, how does one harness the energy, the accessibility, even the insights of popular culture without diluting investigative precision, complexity, and impact?

From the blog for his distribution/production company Rumur, Michael Galinsky discusses the challenges of DIY distribution.

Very rarely, a film moves through the world virally with almost no media support. What the Bleep Do We Know!? and Zeitgiest are two that come to mind, reaching vast audiences almost entirely through word of mouth. These are rare examples. While getting distribution from a high-profile distributor works well for some important films, the process increasingly leaves well-made, important work struggling to get attention and distribution. A handful of films do make it through the festival gauntlet, and in this way successfully get connected to the distribution networks. It is generally only at this point, typically when the film is launched into theaters, that the press will review it, and advertising dollars are spent.

From the archives, Summer 2012, “Military Malfeasance: Exposing ‘The Invisible War’”

“I do want to say that we did not take an anti-military position in this film. In fact, almost all the survivors said they did not want to participate in the film if it was anti-military. These women and men had incredible experiences while they were in the military. They were planning to make it a career, they were very idealistic; in almost all of these cases, they joined because they believed that it was important to serve their country. And even now, after these assaults, many of them still wish they had a career in the military. So we made the choice to honor their wishes, because the only way this is going to change is by speaking to the people in the military, not attacking the military. We do attack the problem, and I think we take a very aggressive attack on it, but what we say is, "This is something the military should change. It will make the military better, and in the long run, I think it will be better for society."

 

In the News:

US Government Says Gay Couple’s 1975 Marriage [The subject of Thomas Miller’s Limited Partnership] Is Valid
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Geena Davis Producing Documentary On Systemic Gender Inequality in Hollywood
read more