Imagine this: You’ve got a great subject who’s now in her 80s. You want to tell her life story—how she left her stifling marriage at age 40 and defiantly set out on a career. Not just any career: Newspaper photographer, a man’s job. In Palermo, Italy, no less, at a time when women stayed home, Mafia mayhem went unchecked, and a photojournalist’s job was to document the corpses piling up in the streets. You’ve got her images to work with, as powerful as anything by Weegee. But you have a problem: There’s virtually no photographic record of her. A few snapshots. Maybe 90 minutes of home movies
Latest Posts
The team behind Getting Real ’18 made a bold statement on commitment to inclusion and representation by programming three #DecolonizeDocs panels—addressing The Industry, The Filmmaker and The Audience. Speaking to Documentary just after the conference, Claire Aguilar, IDA’s director of programming and policy, explained, “I invited the cohort of media organizations that partner with IDA— A-Doc, Brown Girls Doc Mafia and Firelight Media—to collaborate on curating a series of panels about the audience, industry and filmmakers of color.” The intention was to hold a public discussion to share
Unflinching investigative documentary filmmaking that tells uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing truths about powerful people, corporations and organizations is vital to a healthy democracy. It is also risky for the filmmakers that tell those stories. Documentarians that seek to speak truth about power can find themselves the targets of aggressive and often well-funded efforts to stifle their work. One too-frequently-used tool to intimidate, harass and silence journalists, including documentary filmmakers, are so-called “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” or SLAPPs—meritless
In a Dream is one of few films I’ve returned to watch again and again. The story centers around Philadelphia-based artist Isaiah Zagar and his relationship with his family over the years. When Isaiah’s son Jeremiah comes home to document his father at the request of Jeremiah’s mother, Julia, we are introduced to Isaiah through his stunning and reflective sketches, paintings and mosaics, which are plastered on the sides of Philly buildings, spanning whole blocks. Even more elaborate and breathtaking is the artwork inside their household; it covers every inch of wall and ceiling. We soon realize
On a crisp Saturday morning last winter, IDA held a Master Class with George Lavender, vice president of content at Wondery, the podcast company based in West Hollywood. “How are you going to tell this story?” Lavender asked a roomful of docmakers. “Are there spaces you can create in audio that are impossible to create in other mediums?” It is a good question and one that is worthy of attention, as podcasts and audio storytelling have taken the mainstream by storm—so much so that in 2018 IDA introduced the award for best audio documentary in recognition of the “continued expansion” of the
Documentary film historically has provided a more welcoming and accessible environment for women filmmakers compared to theatrical feature filmmaking. Today, when asked to name great female documentarians, most of us think immediately of Barbara Kopple, Laura Poitras, Dawn Porter and Kim Longinotto, among many others. While women working in documentary are becoming more visible worldwide, they continue to be underrepresented (30 percent of documentary directors are female, based on the last Annenberg study) and their early contributions to the genre struggle to assume their rightful place in
Dear Readers, This issue was to have been a Tech Issue, anchored by our Tech Survey, which we sent out to the documentary community late last spring. And while the survey yielded valuable qualitative information, we felt we needed to take a deeper dive into the brands and models that you all use in the field, as well as the range of shooting scenarios that you deploy. And so, as we were going to press with this issue, we launched Part II of our survey, with the goal in mind to create a comprehensive portrait of gear that you use and to help you choose the best possible equipment for your
Why is the insurance concept of “voluntary parting” a problem for equipment owners in peer-to-peer rentals? “Voluntary parting” refers to an exclusion from insurance coverage that can deprive camera and equipment owners of recovery if items are stolen by a larcenous renter. Independent documentary filmmakers routinely turn to camera rental houses to access state-of-the-art film gear and technical information at affordable prices. Over the years, these vendors have played a critical role in the business of independent film production. Because high-end cameras are costly and expensive to replace
Dear IDA Community, Over the past 20 plus years working in this field, I have been very fortunate to travel around the world to various film festivals. Sometimes exhausting, but most often invigorating, being able to go to far-flung places of the world has given me the opportunity to meet filmmakers and see work that too often doesn’t make it to the United States. I have always been interested in seeing those films, experiencing cultures and stories with which I am less familiar, and watching work that doesn’t adhere to Western storytelling modes. But most of all, the chance to meet filmmakers
When one thinks of a festival’s screening venues, a prison is not an immediate choice. But since 2013, the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film ( DOK Leipzig) has run an initiative, dubbed DOK im Knast (DOK in Prison), which annually turns the Regis-Breitingen juvenile detention center into one of its screening venues. And the center, which sits on the Pleisse river some 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) south of Leipzig, is not just the festival's most unusual venue. DOK im Knast is one of the festival’s many projects that aims at engaging youth through documentary film