Two luminary filmmakers whose short films were highlighted at this year’s Cinemalibero, Sarah Maldoror and Nicolás Guillén Landrián, both emerged in the 1960s and were products of the anticolonial revolutionary movements that swept the Global South in the postwar period. Although Landrián’s work has received little exposure outside of Cuba up to this point, Maldoror has been well-known in certain circles for years, especially following the restoration and re-release of her landmark feature Sambizanga (1972) in 2020.
Festivals
The global IDA membership includes professionals from diverse roles within the non-fiction field. We are documentary workers, professionals, thought leaders, and innovators from around the world, united by our passion for the non-fiction form. We celebrate the work of our members during the festival season and every day! With the upcoming BlackStar Film Festival, we are excited to celebrate our members who have films in the festival as directors, writers, producers, and in various other roles.
On a warm May evening, the opening ceremony of the 14th edition of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) was teeming with euphoria
Janay Boulos attended Sheffield DocFest to take meetings and network for the two feature documentaries she's producing. She shares tips for filmmakers looking to make the most of the festival landscape: “Pace yourself! It’s a marathon, not a race.”
In 2005, Wu Wenguang, a founding figure of China’s independent documentary movement, joined forces with choreographer Wen Hui to create the Beijing
Two days before the 10th edition of the Kolkata People’s Film Festival (KPFF) began, India roiled in a frenzy of celebration. All the agencies of command and control announced the January 22 consecration of the Ram Mandir—the enthronement of the Hindu deity Rama in his alleged birthplace, Ayodhya—as a day for pomp and self-congratulation. Many states declared it a public holiday. The building of the Ram Mandir in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on the devastated powder of a 16th-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, which was dismantled brick by brick by Hindutva mobs in 1992—a friend once called this destruction one of the most fissiparous acts in the history of independent India—marked the psychic normalization of a supposedly secular democracy into a so-called Hindu Rashtra, a nation for and of Hindus.
In the midst of what seems to be endless global turmoil, it’s not surprising that the film program for this year’s Visions du Réel’s was on the sober
Political statements are hardly foreign to a film festival’s red carpet, especially during such politically unsettled times. Yet there are statements that hold particularly immense power and urgency, in light of the inconceivable suffering and loss of civilian life in some parts of the world. Such were the ones calling for “Ceasefire Now [in Gaza],” stitched onto the back of the black dresses of Danish film producer Katrin Pors and American director Eliza Hittman, who trod the red carpet ahead of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival’s opening gala.
Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival takes place in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the most northerly town in England, resting near the border to Scotland and
The question of how to build a more open and equitable film festival is an old and still pressing concern. Ideally, there will be a plurality of answers and the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival may be one of them. Its 2024 edition, which ran 7–10 March, felt like a festival whose program was not only deeply engaged with larger political struggles, but also open and malleable in a way that many festivals claim but rarely enact in the relations underpinning the screenings.