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This year’s Flaherty NYC Series, MAKA: Many Eyed Vessel , will mark the 25th edition of the Flaherty Seminar’s annual fall program in New York City. Featuring films and multi-media works from artists that include Miko Revereza, João Vieira Torres, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, the creative nonfiction “offerings” examine recalling memories and histories, enduring colonized societies, and developing identities. MAKA: Many Eyed Vessel is curated by filmmakers Ha’aheo Auwae-Dekker and Raven Two Feathers and programmers Emily Abi-Kheirs and Isabel Rojas. For the series, the

Documentary director and producer Nicole Newnham still remembers finding, as a young teenager, a copy in her mother’s bedside table of taboo-breaking The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976). Authored by feminist sex researcher Shere Hite, the book was based on thousands of anonymous survey responses from American women about their experiences of sex and pleasure that radically challenged conventional stereotypes. “It was the singular portal for me into the world of female sexuality,” Newnham recalls, “that I carried with me throughout my whole life.” But it wasn’t until several decades

In the north of mainland Japan, Yamagata City sits in a low valley flanked by mountain ranges and farmland. Since 1989, it has been home to the oldest documentary festival in Asia, welcoming filmmakers from around the world to this naturally isolated basin. Held every two years in October, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival has not only accelerated the careers of auteurs like KAWASE Naomi and HAMAGUCHI Ryusuke, but has also become an important hub for the circulation of world cinema in Japan. The festival is known to prioritize creative and experimental films, a curatorial “bias”

Kokomo City opens with a bang. Liyah is lying on her bed, a giant stuffed teddy bear in the background, as she recounts a past meeting with a man. Just as things were getting sensual, she noticed a gun next to him. “This was one of the most scariest moments of my life doing sex work…it’s either his life, or mine,” she says. As she narrates her shock and the ensuing tussle, playful, bombastic music intersperses with her speech. This scenario ended amicably, but Liyah reminds the audience that’s not always the case. “In this game, either you get out of it, or you end up dead, you end up popped

Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Li Lu’s documentary series A Town Called Victoria , which will debut on Independent Lens as a co-presentation with Reel South on November 13 and 14, with streaming on PBS’s Youtube channel to follow. This observational documentary series follows the fallout from an act of arson against a mosque in small-town Texas, the community leaders’ work to rebuild the community, and the trial that follows. On the clip, Lu writes, “this clip is from the beginning of Episode 3, ‘The Trial.’ The federal trial for suspected mosque arsonist Marq Vincent

Sonali Gulati is an independent filmmaker, a feminist, a queer rights activist, and an educator. She teaches film at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. Gulati grew up in New Delhi and has made several films that have been screened at over five hundred film festivals worldwide.

We spend our lives making documentaries or supporting filmmakers to uncover truths. Yet, in our field, there is a startling lack of honesty regarding the very programs that purport to support filmmakers, especially women. The glitzy world of fiction filmmaking has been roiled by public #metoo investigations of high-powered producers, film festival programmers , and influential consultants. As a frequent consultant for different documentary organizations, I have heard many harrowing stories of filmmakers abused, harassed, and taken advantage of by the very people supposed to be supporting them

International Documentary Association (IDA) announced this year’s recipients of the Logan Elevate Grant, which provides funds to emerging women and non-binary filmmakers of color, supported by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. 2023 recipients of the grant are filmmakers Janay Boulos (Lebanon/UK), Arya Rothe (India), and Pallavi Somusetty (USA).

Brit Fryer is an award-winning queer and trans filmmaker based in Brooklyn with a creative approach that blurs the lines between fact and fiction. His most recent film, The Script, is co-directed with frequent collaborator Noah Schamus and part of Queer Futures, a Multitude Films series consisting of four short films that celebrate joy and connection while envisioning future possibilities for queer life.

A heartfelt departure from the prison life documentaries that have become so ubiquitous in recent years, Tana Gilbert’s Malqueridas takes a novel approach to this thorny topic through a most unusual lens. Comprised solely of clandestinely shot cellphone footage—in its original vertical format—from inside a Santiago women’s prison by incarcerated mothers, the film is narrated by “Karina,” a mom who spent six years behind bars. In the film, she voices the experience of and for the collective whole, specifically the 20 or so women who participated in “extensive conversations” during the film’s research phase.