This past December, the Cinema Vérité Iran International Documentary Film Festival staged its 12th edition. For the last three years, the festival has taken place in a large multiplex, Charsoo, in the busy business district of Tehran, surrounded by appliance and mobile phone shops. It is a newly renovated building that houses upscale Samsung and other tech stores on its ground floor. The festival was on the 6th floor, above the food court and away from shoppers. For six days the festival drew thousands of mostly young people, including students, filmmakers and artists. Charsoo comprises six
Latest Posts
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The Case Against Adnan Syed, a four-part series directed by Amy Berg, reinvestigates the case behind the hit 2014 podcast Serial, which examined the 1999 murder of 18-year-old Baltimore County high school student Hae Min Lee, and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. The HBO series, which premieres March 10, evolves from the genesis of their high school relationship to the original police investigation and trial, and moves into the current day as Syed
Dear Documentary Community: On the eve of the East Coast premiere of Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra's Sundance Film Festival Award-winning The Infiltrators at the Miami International Film Festival, one of the protagonists from that film, Claudio Rojas, was detained by ICE and is now in the Krome Detention Center in South Miami-Dade. What began as a routine check-in with ICE has quickly devolved into the very real possibility of Rojas being deported immediately. A native of Argentina, he has lived in the US for 19 years and is a father and grandfather to US citizens. For more on this story
Amidst an exceptionally (though necessary) rainy winter season in Los Angeles, IDA staff were thrilled to host another Volunteer Appreciation Night at the Iron Triangle Brewery in the Downtown Arts District for a night of food, drinks, games, and camaraderie with longtime and new volunteers. Volunteers are the lifeblood of any organization and that is especially true with the IDA. Events like Getting Real, the IDA Screening Series and the IDA Documentary Awards rely heavily on our 150+ active volunteers to make sure our events run efficiently and smoothly. Our IDA volunteers are often the
IDA announced sixteen grants totaling $245,000 to films through its Enterprise Documentary Fund and Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering February 25 on PBS World, ‘63 Boycott documents a boycott of the Chicago Public schools, spearheaded by 250,000 students. Combining 16mm footage of the march, shot by Kartemquin Films founder Gordon Quinn, with participants’ contemporary reflections, ‘63 Boycott, directed by Quinn, Rachel Dickson and Tracye E. Matthews, connects the forgotten story of one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in the north to today’s issues around race, education, school
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! New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes about Leaving Neverland, Dan Reed’s upcoming HBO doc about Michael Jackson’s alleged history of sexual abuse of children, as recounted through the on-camera recollections of two of his victims. Reed is a Brit who made several documentaries about terrorism. He says he
Editor’s Note: Jonas Mekas, dubbed by many as “the godfather of avant-garde cinema,” was this and many more: As an archivist and exhibitor, he co-founded Anthology Film Archives (and he earned the IDA Preservation and Scholarship Award in 1997); as a film critic, he launched Film Culture magazine; and as a filmmaker, he was a true pioneer—not just in avant-garde cinema, but in mining the beauty of home movies and arguably laying the foundation for the personal documentary genre. He was also a teacher and a poet, and an immigrant, who came to New York City from Lithuania, having endured labor
As the third round of applications opens later this month on Thursday, February 28, we invited Assia Boundaoui to share her story behind the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund funded project and what it means to be a documentary journalist.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. From executive producer John Legend and first-time directors Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown, United Skates travels to cities around the country to capture the dynamic world of roller skating and underscore how it’s such an intrinsic and indelible part of African-American culture. United Skates premieres February 18 on HBO and will stream on HBO Go and HBO Now through February Minding the Gap, the Oscar-nominated and IDA Award-winning film from Bing Liu , premieres February 18