Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! Filmmaker Laura Poitras is stepping down from her role as executive producer of Field of Vision, which she co-founded with Charlotte Cooke and A.J. Schnack in 2015. She shares with IndieWire's Erik Kohn her reflections on how far the streaming platform has come and where the documentary field and form is today.
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The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has completed its transitional year quite well, with the expected kudos abounding from international critics and professionals. The co-head duo of Artistic Director Cameron Bailey and Executive Director Joanna Vicente is functioning well. A main goal of the festival was to increase representation by women directors, and this was achieved spectacularly. Fifty percent of the gala screenings were directed by women, and 114 films were directed or co-directed by female filmmakers. TIFF Docs, curated in the main by Thom Powers, came in for its fair
Celebrated around the world on October 10, World Mental Health Day is an important occasion to not only encourage conversations around mental health, but also promote education, awareness and advocacy reducing the social stigma surrounding it. The documentary landscape at large, in particular, is no stranger to the intersection of one's career with physical, emotional and financial struggles. On this day, it is critical to seek stories that openly discuss mental health in an open and honest way. IDA recommends these five documentaries as just a few places to spark conversation, as well as
Here I am, three weeks out from the immersive experience of the Camden International Film Festival and Points North Forum, and the rhythms of everyday life are tugging on me hard once again. Still, my mind's eye keeps finding its way back to the vivid imagery of the weekend—young children laughing and playing in the most ordinary way while in a refugee camp in Bulgaria ( Midnight Traveler); a female truck driver combing her hair in a roadside truck stop ( Driver, the Points North Pitch winner); buckets of silvery baby eels writhing and shimmering after being harvested late at night on the
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering October 7 on POV is América, a portrait of a family--three brothers, their declining grandmother and their father, who is imprisoned for elderly neglect of his mother. Round-the-clock elderly care is the catalyst that reunites Diego, Rodriquez and Bruno in their boyhood home in Colima, Mexico, but it also instigates fraternal tension amoid the challenge of putting their lives and livelihoods on hold. Directed by Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside. Premiering October
Los Angeles, C.A. (October 11, 2019) – The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced today its latest cohort of 12 films receiving its Enterprise Documentary Fund production grants at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival in Washington, D.C. With major support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund supports feature-length documentary films telling urgent, revelatory stories underpinned by rigorous journalistic approaches and exemplary artistic achievement. The films selected are to receive a total of $850,000 in funds
Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! Anticipating the cascade of end-of-the-decade reflections by a couple of months, filmmaker Robert Greene, writing for Hyperallergic, takes a dive into the zeitgeist that fueled the last ten years of energetic expansion of the documentary form. "The cultural consciousness and literacy around images have changed a
Los Angeles, CA (October 7, 2019) - The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 35th Annual IDA Documentary Awards honorees. The 2019 Awards will be presented during a ceremony at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 7. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, October 10 and press registration is open now. This year, the IDA will honor: Academy Award® and Primetime Emmy® winning filmmaker (and five time Academy Award® nominee) Freida Lee Mock ( Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, Anita) with the Career Achievement Award Emmy® nominated filmmaker Rachel Lears (
Los Angeles, C.A. (October 10, 2019) – The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 35th Annual IDA Documentary Awards shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories. The 2019 Awards will be presented during a ceremony at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 7. Tickets are on sale now and press registration is open now. The full features and shorts shortlists, announced today, are below. Up to ten nominees in each of the Feature and Short Documentary categories will be selected from the shortlist. Following the nominees announcement, IDA
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering September 30 on POV, The Silence of Others, the IDA Documentary Award-winning film from Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo, reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, as they organize a groundbreaking international lawsuit and fight a "pact of forgetting" around the crimes they suffered. A cautionary tale about fascism and the dangers of forgetting the past. The Unafraid, from Anayansi Prado and Heather Courtney