When shooting vérité, Jesse Moss is typically a one-man-band. But his latest film—codirected with his wife, Amanda McBaine—demanded a full orchestra. Boys State required 28 crew members, to be exact, including an octet of cinematographers.
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Japanese director Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad stands as a seminal achievement in documentary films about sports, right up there with Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia. However, when the Japanese Olympic Committee first viewed the 168-minute film that they had commissioned Ichikawa to make, they were not pleased. They insisted that he reshoot it to produce a more conventional film. Ichikawa’s wry humor was evident as he pointed out, “Circumstances prevented it, as the entire cast had left Japan.” Ultimately, a 93-minute version more to their liking was released. A similar version with insipid
The documentary community lost Jonathan Oppenheim last month, at 67, following a long bout with brain cancer. Jonathan was a giant among documentary editors. His prodigious canon dates back to Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark's Streetwise (1984), which received an Academy Award nomination. Its depiction of homeless teens and runaways in Seattle inspired Edet Ebelzberg to hire Jonathan to edit her first film, Children Underground (2001), which went on to win an IDA Documentary Award for Best Feature, as well as an Academy Award nomination. And in between those two films, there was Jennie
In celebration of International Youth Day on August 12, we’re highlighting five documentaries that showcase the (pre-COVID) lives of youth from the US and around the world. We Are the Radical Monarchs (Linda Goldstein Knowlton) Meet the Radical Monarchs, an Oakland-based alt-troop composed of young girls of color, with members earning badges for completing units on social justice, including being an LGBTQ ally, the environment and disability justice. An IDA-fiscally sponsored project, the film follows the first troop of Radical Monarchs for over three years until they graduate, and documents
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Streaming this month on POV, starting August 10, is About Love, from Archana Atul Phadke, who trains her camera on her Mumbai-based family, three generations of which live together in the same home. The personal becomes political as power structures within the family become visible, and eventually unravel. Cruel and comic in equal measure, the film shows the vagaries of affection across generations. Premiering August 12 on HBO, Muta’Ali Muhammad's Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over
If every documentary tells a story, then one of the most critical issues in our community today is who gets to tell that story, and to whom. IDA has engaged in debates surrounding self-representation and power dynamics in storytelling for a long time–from discussing the pressing need to decolonize docs to “ the inequity of unchallenged filmmaker bias and motives, of the chasm between the subject and audience (and) of film as a tool of racialized colonial power and empire.” August 9 is recognized as International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. While documentaries have attempted to
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! IndieWire's Steve Green talks to filmmaker Greg Whiteley about how he approached the final season of his IDA Documentary Award-winning series, Last Chance U. "I actually think we are a lot more nervous than the players are. I've entered every single season doing this show, even if we're at a school where we filmed the year previously, and all the players are pretty
Dear Readers, In this most convulsive of years, summer hasn’t felt like summer. In the months between when we published the Spring 2020 issue online, COVID-19 has continued to carve out its invisible path of devastation. Here in Southern California, the virus persists, with devastatingly high numbers of daily cases and fatalities, especially among communities of color toiling in the essential jobs to keep the world running. Over the course of the pandemic, we have monitored the dramatic pivots the documentary community have taken—particularly, festivals transitioning to online, virtual
Dear IDA Community, It has been a dizzying and discombobulating six months since the coronavirus upended our lives, forcing us to stay at home and completely re-evaluate how we approach our work. It has been a few short months since the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others, ignited a reckoning around systemic racism and injustice — also calling on us to re-evaluate how we approach our work. Despite the pain and suffering that these situations have caused, they are forcing innovation, reflections and, hopefully, change. We are an industry that values
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Opening August 7 in virtual cinemas via PBS Distribution, Frontline|PBS and Concordia Studio, Ramona S. Diaz's A Thousand Cuts takes viewers to the Philippines, where the worldwide erosion of democracy, fueled by social media disinformation campaigns, is starkly evident in the authoritarian regime of President Rodrigo Duterte. Journalist Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press—and her freedom—on the line in defense of truth and democracy. A Thousand Cuts is an IDA