You may have noticed that the postings have been a bit sparse over the last two weeks. The editorial staff has been busy prepping the Fall issue of documentary magazine, which will take an in-depth look at politics and non-fiction filmmaking. In case you’ve been just as frantic as we have, here’s a quickie round up of recent news and events to get you back up to speed as you start off your week.

Red Envelope Entertainment, the acquisitions and financing division of Netflix, has shut down. The company helped fund and/or release a number of indie titles, often in collaboration with smaller studios, which might otherwise not have been made or received theatrical releases. Documentaries from the Red Envelope slate include Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-nominated No End in Sight, Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand’s global warming film Everything’s Cool and Jessica Yu’s Protagonist.

For more: Hollywood Reporter story by Gregg Goldstein

Ryan Harrington will be leading the charge at the newly launched IndiePix Studios. Formerly an exec at A&E Indie Films, Harrington most recently oversaw the Tribeca Film Institute’s Gucci Fund. I'm verrry excited that someone with Harrington’s experience and good taste will be focusing on production and filmmaker relations at IndiePix.

For more:
indieWIRE story with all the juicy details
IndiePix blog

If you’ve been wondering whether or not documentaries are convergence-worthy, have no fear. Hulu.com is currently streaming Steve James' Hoop Dreams. A number of people have left positive comments on the site about the inclusion of a documentary amongst the offerings, as usually Hulu.com focuses on mainstream television and film. Hopefully, the strong feedback will encourage more non-fiction programming.

Watch it here.

 
If you couldn’t make it to Oxford for the BritDoc Festival, at least you can grab a bag of chips and read about it. For those unfamiliar, BritDocs is a three-day conference founded and organized by the Channel 4 Documentary Foundation.

BritDoc accounts:
Matt Dentler on Larry Charles and The Yes Men Fix The World
AJ Schnack on why BritDoc is not for you and the Jury experience
Nick Bradshaw (The Guardian) on comedy, online distribution strategies and ukulele retraining
Paul Hoggard (TimesOnline) on the music docs

In related news, a selection of films from CINELAN played before each of the 16 feature films that screened at BritDoc. CINELAN syndicates and distributes three-minute, non-fiction films across a variety of platforms. They've also announced a partnership with telegraph.co.uk, the online arm of the Telegraph Media Group, to syndicate CINELAN films online. The shorts will be shown both as stand-alone features and embedded within stories as companion video.

For more: CINELAN press release

And last but certainly not least, the Toronto International Film Festival has announced this year’s documentary lineup and launched the 2008 Doc Blog, curated/written by Thom Powers. Last year’s Doc Blog was a great place to hear directly from the TIFF filmmakers, so I'm hoping this year's version will again include first-person accounts of TIFF experiences.

For more: TIFF Documentary Program Press Release (includes capsule descriptions of all the films)