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Wed, 02/21/2024 - 13:29
Softening the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, the films of French-Canadian director Antoine Bourges are marked by their hybrid nature and his collaborative approach with participants. Whether in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side or Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park, Bourges captures everyday details of the surroundings he finds himself immersed in, introducing individuals and communities in the margins to the big screen with care and curiosity. Growing up in the neighborhood adjacent to the one depicted in Bourges’ latest, Concrete Valley (2022), I was amazed by his portrayal of a vibrant
Fri, 02/16/2024 - 10:01
A publicist for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) remarked to me near the end of this year’s festival that after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the festival online and last year’s tepid restart, this was the “real” first festival under the artistic directorship of Vanja Kaludjercic. When Kaludjercic came aboard in February 2020 from MUBI, where she was director of acquisitions, there was talk that Kaludjercic might pare down the festival’s enormous lineup, which featured 575 films in Bero Beyer’s last edition. Now that we are as removed from the COVID pandemic as we
Wed, 02/07/2024 - 16:49
Celebrating Black History should not be limited to just one month! We must celebrate, honor, cherish, and uplift the voices and works of Black non-fiction makers, thinkers, scholars, and workers in our industry every day.
Wed, 02/07/2024 - 10:38
Since Beyond Utopia debuted at last year’s Sundance, where it won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary, the film has screened at film festivals around the world and garnered acclaim for its portrayal of two families defecting from North Korea. It was shortlisted for an Oscar and most recently won a duPont-Columbia Award. But when we learned that the film would air nationally on PBS on Independent Lens on January 9, 2024, we were concerned. While the film’s verité sequences of the Roh and Lee families’ plight are compelling, the film simply points to the North Korean government as the
Tue, 02/06/2024 - 16:35
"It's about time there was an organization just for us. An organization whose sole purpose is ‘to encourage and to honor the documentary arts and sciences; to promote nonfiction film and video; to support the efforts of nonfiction film and video makers all over the world." Excerpt from the invitation letter sent out by Linda Buzell to the documentary community in 1982. 42 years ago, on February 6, 1982, in Los Angeles, 75 members of the documentary field convened for the first meeting of what would become the International Documentary Association. The meeting stemmed from a grassroots appeal
Tue, 02/06/2024 - 13:50
Nehal Vyas is a film and video artist from India, currently based in Los Angeles. Her work explores the idea of national identity through memory, personal history, and inheritance. She is a graduate of California Institute of the Arts, where she received her MFA in Film/Video. Her works have been shown at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival, Indie Memphis Film Festival, True/False Film Festival, REDCAT (Los Angeles), 2220 Arts + Archive (Los Angeles), Automata (Los Angeles), Analogica (Italy) and Mumbai International Film Festival (India). She is the co-founder
Mon, 02/05/2024 - 12:59
Today, International Documentary Association (IDA) announced the 2023 Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund recipients for the 2023-24 grant cycle. May the Soil Be Everywhere by director Yehui Zhao, Powwow People by director Sky Hopinka, and Uncharted by co-directors Ainlsee Alem Robson and Kidus Hailesilassie were selected out of 56 nominees to receive $75,000 in production and post-production grants. Made possible by the New York Community Trust, the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund has supported 72 documentary projects with $1,285,000 since 2011. The fund supports feature-length documentary films that
Mon, 02/05/2024 - 05:27
Documentarians Stephen Maing (2018’s Crime + Punishment) and Brett Story (2019’s The Hottest August) have wielded different observational filmmaking approaches to explore social and political issues in the United States, from the possibility of police reform to the psychogeography of the carceral state.
Fri, 02/02/2024 - 11:43
Seeking Mavis Beacon follows two fabulously charming e-girl detectives: director Jazmin Renée Jones and associate producer Olivia McKayla Ross, as they pick up the trail of a digital ghost—Mavis Beacon. The eponymous teacher from the 80s and 90s era software, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Mavis taught millions how to type as one of the most visible Black women avatars on computer screens around the world, enriching the white men who created the software using her image. Even while being an inspiration and technological guide to so many—especially young Black girls, the true identity of the
Thu, 02/01/2024 - 15:20
A dizzying, fast-paced, 150-minute montage about American jazz, Western imperialism, European colonization, and the assassination of Congolese president Patrice Lumumba, Belgian director Johan Grimonprez’s epic essay-film Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is not your typical Sundance documentary. Like the cinematic love child of Adam Curtis and Raoul Peck, the documentary landed in Park City like a secret weapon, exploding the minds of unsuspecting viewers. As one “Conner B.” wrote on Letterboxd , Coup d’État was “by far the most exciting and electric thing from Sundance 2024.” Although Conner’s