With a nation in lockdown, documentaries in every form have never been as important to the UK’s rich public-service broadcasting system. As I wrote in this magazine more than 20 years ago, British television has long focused on the documentary genre. With the ethos of public-service broadcast being to “inform, educate and entertain,” documentary programming has always been at the heart of television schedules. The public has been raised on a diet of factual programming, from the most earnest subject-driven fare to lighthearted lifestyle programming, and everything in between. The last few
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Since childhood I’ve known and appreciated Mexican artists like Kahlo, Rivera and Orozco. The music my family listened to, like Vicente Fernandez or Juan Gabriel, brings back memories of different moments in my life. Today I am drawn to actors and filmmakers like Gael Garcia Bernal and Guillermo Del Toro, who are authentic voices in the Latinx community. The language, food, music, colors, books—I feel a strong, clear connection that this is my culture and I’ve always been very proud of this part of me. However, I did not recognize that my life and work have been part of another culture for over half my life.
Read in Spanish Part 1: La Isla Before Maria “Puerto Rico is a small island in a political limbo,” describes Karen Rossi, documentary filmmaker and director of Ser Grande. Having worked in the documentary field for decades, Rossi has experienced the changes in the filmmaking landscape. “When we invite Latin American filmmakers to Puerto Rico, they say, ‘Of course Puerto Rico is part of Latin America.’ But, if they didn’t know us, they might have had the impression that we are part of the United States and that we’re covered by US funding. And then, the US looks at us like, ‘Your first language
With Getting Real '20 quickly approaching, we met with the supporting programming team to see what they have planned for this year’s digital conference. Read more about what changes they’ve made to adapt to this unique moment in time and what exciting events they have in store this year. Stephanie Owens (SO) is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has programmed with Palm Springs ShortFest, Sundance and LA Film Festival. She's also contributed to POV and festival and funding juries. Nat Ruiz Tofano (NRT) is a queer and multiracial documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, California. Nat has
Reclaiming and reshaping narrative around Black women by Black women is liberatory work, and is what Oge Egbuonu executes so carefully and lovingly in her debut documentary, (In)Visible Portraits. The film opens with shots held over polaroids of Black women. We see these images sliced out of their white frames and placed into water. The process is known as an emulsion lift transfer, in which a photo’s positive film layer is removed from its negative and submerged into water. With time, the plastic covering the film lifts and all that is left is the floating positive film layer, which is later
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Making its virtual premiere August 19—the 67th anniversary of the Anglo-American coup in Iran— Coup 53, directed by Taghi Amirani and edited by Walter Murch, tells the story of the four days in which the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown by the UK government, in partnership with the CIA. The Anglo-American partnership installed the corrupt, unpopular Shah—a decision that led to mass unrest and eventually to the bloody Iranian
During this unprecedented period of the coronavirus pandemic, people have had to lean more and more on the use of technology for daily interactions and responsibilities. In some places such as in China, the increasing use of personal devices and technology coincides with an increased surveillance of personal data. Civilians in certain Chinese cities such as Hangzhou are categorized by ''contagion risk'' determined by mobile data and surveillance techniques that track people’s locations and who they have been with. According to a recent New York Times article, this data is often shared
The joy of human-to-human dialogue about the creative process is the heart of Pamela Cohn’s book, Lucid Dreaming: Conversations with 29 Filmmakers. Cohn, whose lengthy list of nonfiction film accomplishments span writing, commentary, curation and filmmaking itself, used her own archive of filmmaker interviews, as well as new conversations, to assemble an eclectic collection of voices from across the global documentary landscape. While most of the independent artists featured may not be top-of-mind filmmakers in the industry (working largely, as Cohn notes, “in virtual obscurity”), all have
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 magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the premiere of Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, IndieWire's Eric Kohn rounded up the crew to share their reflections on making this 2000s classic. Werner was obsessed with Treadwell as a loon, Treadwell as this Klaus Kinski type. He didn’t want cuddly nature stuff; he wanted Treadwell going wacko. I had our loggers go through
The news of Daisy Coleman's death last week has left us heartbroken.