Secure in its June slot, and without the gravitational balance of the Tribeca Film Institute’s artist support and funding programs, Tribeca Festival’s traditional coziness with corporate sponsors has proliferated in recent years (and surely must also be pandemic-related). The film selections mostly reflect this unfortunate industry-wide trend. But between the celebrity- and music-driven biodocs that stuff Tribeca’s lineup, the festival also boasts stateside premieres of hotly anticipated creative documentaries, exciting debuts from independent filmmakers, and one of the best-curated film festival immersive sections in the world. For this recommendations list, we pulled together a mix of nonfiction projects that we’re anticipating will become the festival’s discoveries.
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In 1993, Chuck Schultz received a call from an actress named Sharon Washington, who had been told by a friend that he could help her tell the story of
Dear Documentary Magazine Readers, I’m Abby, the Director of Artist Programs at IDA, and I’m writing to introduce myself as the interim editor of Documentary magazine. First up: in this newsletter, you will find links to pieces from Documentary magazine’s winter 2023 issue, which focuses on reverberations from Getting Real '22. They include new provocations building off of conversations started at our biennial conference, attendee reports, and the publication of all three inspiring keynote talks from documentary stalwarts Nanfu Wang, Anand Patwardhan, and Erika Dilday.
Wesleyan University is a liberal arts college located in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831, Wesleyan is a school “where critical thinking and
Australian filmmaker and academic Lisa French’s latest book, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film—An International Perspective, published by Palgrave Macmillan, shoulders the fairly exacting responsibility of deconstructing the female gaze in documentaries. French’s research finds that women find it easier to gather funding for documentaries as opposed to fiction, owing to smaller budgets and crews involved. This fact sets the premise for her inquiry.
In 2003 I was enrolled in a class taught by Vanalyne Green called “The Personal Essay Film.” I had recently fallen in love with Vanalyne—like you do when you’re an angry teenager having your entire worldview destabilized—after watching her essay film about how she got herpes from a hot cowboy that looked like the Marlboro Man. The day’s viewing was Sink or Swim by Su Friedrich. I didn’t have the words then to articulate the splendor, the darkness, the gentle wisdom of this film. But now I do.
A hallmark of documentary films is the use of preexisting material incorporated by filmmakers to tell their story. For instance, Michael Moore’s
Dear Readers, After 22 ½ years as Editor of Documentary magazine, I have decided to step down. On September 10, 2001, I was on a flight from Boston to
At first glance, the story of the landmark 1961 desegregation case Taylor vs. Board of Education, which originated in New Rochelle, New York, might not seem like obvious material for a white, Los Angeles-based theater director-writer-actor to tackle for her feature doc debut. But then, Arden Teresa Lewis happens to be a native of New Rochelle—once dubbed the "Little Rock of the North”—and her childhood was shaped by a diverse community whose grassroots demand for change had led all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s In Her Hands follow the unlikeliest of protagonists, with a backstory that practically begs for Hollywood to