Editor’s Note: Orwa Nyrabia is the artistic director of International Documentary Filmmaker Amsterdam (IDFA). He was born in Syria, where, in 2002, with his partner, Diana el Jeiroudi, he launched the first independent documentary production company in the country. They later founded DOX BOX, the leading documentary festival in the Arab region. As a producer, his films have earned numerous honors, including a Sundance Grand Jury Prize and a Grierson Award. What follows is the edited version the keynote address that he delivered at Getting Real ’18, via Skype. Where I come from, there is no

Editor’s Note: Chi-hui Yang is program officer at Ford Foundation’s JustFilms initiative. What follows is an edited version of his keynote address at the 2018 Getting Real conference. What I’d like to talk about today are in many ways some age-old questions that get to the heart of the documentary as a social and political form—and what it means to me to be a funder of social justice documentary filmmaking at Ford Foundation. These are some thoughts about the stakes of documentary today and what I’ve been calling “Documentary Power”—not the “power of documentary,” which is a very different

Editor’s Note: Molly Thompson is Senior Vice President of Feature Films at A&E Networks. In 2005 she launched the network’s feature documentary arm, A&E IndieFilms. What follows is an edited version of Thompson’s keynote address at the 2018 Getting Real conference. I wanted to begin this morning by posing what seems like a simple question: What is a documentary filmmaker? It’s one of those questions, it should be a piece of cake. But then I cleared my head and thought about it for a while—and to be honest I am still thinking about it. When I let the definition float to the surface in my mind

Transcription of Michele Stephenson's Keynote address from Getting Real '18.

Mixed reality, artificial intelligence and other innovations are rapidly shifting the landscape of media and society. As storytellers, we have a central role to play in envisioning and catalyzing what the future holds. The Getting Real conference addressed emerging media technologies and creative praxis at a number of different sessions. These presentations showcased exciting applications of new media in documentary and other creative domains, but also shared an emphasis on the sweeping social impact—both positive and negative—of new technologies. What are the creative potentials and the

As a documentary filmmaker with one project in distribution, one in post and one in development, it felt like a perfect moment to attend IDA’s Getting Real 2018. Having more than one project to lean on, I was able to seek out industry wisdom from a variety of angles thanks to a professional development grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council in Portland, OR, where I’ve lived since 2010. I’ve been to film festivals before and admit that I enjoy looking at massive schedules, circling too many films, and trying to get to them all. What I always forget is that ideally one does this while

Reenactments have been a part of documentary since the very beginning of the form: Robert Flaherty's seminal 1922 film Nanook of the North, arguably the first feature documentary, was largely staged. Since then, directors including Errol Morris, Shirley Clarke, Werner Herzog, Sarah Polley and Joshua Oppenheimer have utilized documentary reenactments to great effect. While traditional, literal-minded reenactments are often dismissed as uninspired, inauthentic and generally in poor taste—"the bane and the curse of the modern documentary film," in the words of New Yorker critic Richard Brody—more

Alain Resnais said about Night and Fog, "I want to address the viewer in a critical state…to create a space for contemplation." In the Getting Real session entitled "Creative Courage in Nonfiction Storytelling," filmmakers Yance Ford, Jenni Olson and Jennie Livingston showed us how to do just that. Taken together, their personal essay films—Ford's Strong Island, Olson's The Royal Road and Livingston's work-in-progress, Earth Camp One—reflect many of the formal choices that distinguish Renais' film. He insisted on concentration camp inmate and poet Jean Cayrol as the author of the narration

Getting Real 2018 used complementary sessions to examine documentaries as tools for public knowledge and action as well as the policies, best practices and standards that enable documentary-making and distribution. In her "mini-keynote" that she delivered the day before "The Role of Documentary in the Public Sphere," ITVS CEO Sally Jo Fifer called on the field to project the standards and values of independent documentary in an increasingly commercialized, dynamic and blended marketplace by holding true to the long-held commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. "Our purpose stays clear

The #MeToo movement has seen investigations, arrests and convictions across media as the public conversation shifts. For women, things are getting better. We're slouching towards parity—or are we? The Getting Real 2018 conference offered a space to examine recent events, identify problems, share resources and brainstorm solutions in a session called “After #MeToo.” The conversation featured six incredible film industry professionals and spanned a range of topics, from everyday sexism to sexual misconduct. Panel moderator Nicole Page is an entertainment and employment attorney with Reavis Page