A chance conversation with a friend in London about how we missed attending documentary film festivals resulted—some weeks and intensive planning
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We who live in the Washington DC area have access to the world’s largest rights-free collections of film and photos, and they are usually available to
Mia Stewart’s upcoming 15-plus-years-in-the-making documentary, Searching for Onoda, deflates the heroic myth of Japanese holdout soldier Hiroo Onoda and tells the other side of the story. Both Arthur Harari’s 2021 Cannes-premiering narrative feature, 'Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle,' and Werner Herzog's debut 2022 novel, 'The Twilight World,' perpetuate the old myth.
The new documentary by Italian directors Valentina Cicogna and Mattia Colombo, Pure Unknown, has its North American premiere at Hot Docs this week after bowing at Visions du Réel in Nyon. The co-directors follow Dr. Cristina Cattaneo, a forensic pathologist and anthropologist, founder, and director of LABANOF, the Laboratory of Anthropology and Forensic Odontology at the University of Milan.
The new Danish-German production Theatre of Violence, co-directed by Denmark’s Emil Langballe and Poland’s Lukasz Konopa, recently had its world
First Look, the Museum of the Moving Image’s (MoMI) film festival, annually introduces New York audiences to new cinematic talent and audacious
A caption in Alison O’Daniel’s film The Tuba Thieves (2023) refers to “quiet air”—a description of sound but also of sensation and (shared) substance
During the height of the pandemic, I participated in SXSW virtually, which meant watching films online from my living room couch, which didn’t invite the same emotions I felt at festivals in person. Thankfully, I was able to go to Austin for the first time this March, and I hit the ground running. It was an experience full of remarkable films, brilliant filmmakers, delicious barbeque, and confident networking.
Responding to the “permacrisis”—a 2022 “word of the year” meaning “an extended period of instability and insecurity” and the title for one of the talks at this year’s CPH:DOX film festival and conference in Copenhagen—was a prevailing theme at this season’s March event.
Over the past week, IDA collected tributes to Judith "Judy" Heumann from those who knew her and were influenced, advised, or galvanized by her