Skip to main content

Blog

Covering the latest quick bites from IDA and the world of documentary.

Latest Posts

Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei standing in an Afghanistan desert with a camera, in 2019. Gulistan is carrying their daughter, Maryam. Elizabeth is wearing a headscarf, Gulistan is wearing a black t shirt and glasses, Maryam is wearing a striped shirt and floral pants. Image courtesy of the authors.
The Afghanistan We Know and Fight For: Filmmakers Share Shards of Memories
By Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei We are writing this with sleepless eyes, shaking hands, and knots in our stomachs that grow tighter with each bit of news coming out of Afghanistan, as if an...
Read More
A young Afghani girl in a checkered headscarf helps her friend on a skateboarding ramp. Her friend is wearing skateboarding gear. They’re inside a training room with other young skateboarders. Image from Carol Dysinger’s ‘Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl).’ Courtesy of the filmmaking team.
Screen Time: Week of August 16, 2021
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The onslaught of images our news cycles throw at us often ends up benumbing us...
Read More
A man with brown skin in a white checkered shirt and white hat standing in front of a crowd. Still from 'An Insignificant Man' by Khushboo Ranka & Vinay Shukla. Courtesy of IFFLA.
Ten Documentaries To Watch for Indian Independence Day
This Sunday, August 15th, 2021 India celebrates 74 years of its independence from British imperial rule. It has been an incredibly challenging year for South Asian communities, both within the...
Read More
A group of people on the street holding up signs that read 'Free Britney.' It’s daytime and they are wearing masks. Image from 'Framing Britney Spears.' Courtesy of New York Times Op Docs.
Essential Doc Reads: Week of August 9, 2021
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary...
Read More
Silhouettes of six men against a setting sun. Image from Vittorio de Seta's 'Solfatara.' Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
Screen Time: Week of August 9, 2021
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. When filmmaker Ayo Akingbade finished making Tower XYZ (2016), she wrote a...
Read More
Side profile of Amanda Knox, a white woman with short brown hair. She is wearing a leather jacket. Image from from Ron Blackhurst and Brian McGinn's 2016 film ‘Amanda Knox.’ Courtesy of Netflix.
Essential Doc Reads: Week of August 2, 2021
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary...
Read More
Abebe Bikila is a Black Ethiopian marathoner seen here at the 1964 Summer Olympics at Tokyo. He has black hair, a moustache, and is wearing a black vest. Image from Kon Ichikawa’s ‘Tokyo Olympiad.’ Courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Screen Time: Week of August 2, 2021
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Even if you aren’t a sports enthusiast, chances are that you have been reading...
Read More
A woman in a burqa, her face covered, standing with a child on her lap. There are people walking behind her. Image from Hogir Hirori’s 'Sabaya.' Courtesy of Susan Norget Film Promotion.
Essential Doc Reads: Week of July 28, 2021
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary...
Read More
An image of Betty Carter, a Black female jazz singer. She is smiling, wearing a golden yellow blouse and a headband. From Michelle Parkerson’s “. . . But Then, She’s Betty Carter”. Courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Screen Time: Week of July 26, 2021
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. We start off with a slightly different entry this week. In the light of the...
Read More
Hundreds of undistributed plastic bottles of water lying on the ground in Puerto Rico. Image from “Landfall,” directed by Cecilia Aldarondo. Photo by Pablo Alvarez-Mesa. Courtesy of POV
Essential Doc Reads: Week of July 19, 2021
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary...
Read More