Editor’s Note: What follows is a statement from the IDA regarding the Documentary Producers Alliance’s “ Best Practices in Documentary Crediting.” Over the last several years, the IDA has engaged in and convened numerous conversations across our field about critical sustainability issues facing documentary filmmakers. One issue that has consistently emerged is that filmmakers and their financial partners lack standards around crediting, pointing to the fact that there has been little agreement on what credits reflect in terms of actual work or financing. Given the extreme competition and
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Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering January 14 on Independent Lens is Rodents of Unusual Size, from Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer. An IDA Pare Lorentz Award grantee, the film takes you deep into the bayous of Louisiana, where a colorful cast of locals faces off against a growing menace: the monstrous, 20-pound swamp rats known as nutria. Also coming to Independent Lens, on January 21, is Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, from Catherine Bainbridge. The film tells the electric
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! Speaking to Folks magazine, filmmaker Jason DaSilva talks about the continued evolution of his AXS app for the disabled community, as well as his upcoming film, When We Walk. [The AXS app's] mission is to serve people with disabilities through media and technology. It's focused on the app as well as my film
IDA announced the appointment of Aaron Saidman and Vinnie Malhotra as new members of its Board of Directors. Saidman is the Co-Founder & President of The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC), as well as the President of Industrial Media. Malhotra is the SVP of Documentaries, Unscripted, and Sports Programming at Showtime Networks.
To my friends and compatriots in the documentary community - This is Talal Derki. Over the past few years, I have become very close to this extraordinary Syrian filmmaker. He has won not one but two Grand Jury Prizes for Best Documentary at Sundance -- the first was for the unforgettable RETURN TO HOMS and the most recent -- just last year -- for the astonishing OF FATHERS AND SONS. He also happens to be a person of extraordinary depth, sensitivity, and soul. We worked on OF FATHERS AND SONS together and I hope it is just the first of many films I will have the great pleasure of making with
Kentucky-born, LA-residing filmmaker Ashley York ( Tig) has devoted a good chunk of her career to tackling issues of gender inequality and advocating for feminist causes. So in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the choice of supporting a glass-ceiling breaker over a pussy-grabber came as a no-brainer. What she couldn’t quite wrap her head around was the equal MAGA enthusiasm shown by her strong-willed Granny Shelby back home in coal country. Hence the time was right for York and her co-director, Sally Rubin, to pick up the camera, leave the coastal echo chamber, and embark on a six
Autumn has passed into winter in the San Francisco Bay Area. We notice this when it starts raining, but also when loads of documentaries slow to a trickle despite Oscar consideration season. After the curtains have come down on the Mill Valley and United Nations Association Film Festivals (UNAFF) in October and SFFILM's Doc Stories in November—and the fall semester has ended at my schools—it's time to consider some of the more interesting offerings at the end of 2018. At Mill Valley, Matt Skerritt's Angst is helpful material for anybody who suffers from crippling anxiety, especially teens, and
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering January 7 on Independent Lens and streaming here , Rita Baghdadi and Jeremiah Hammerling’s My Country No More takes viewers to Trenton, North Dakota, a quiet, tight-knit farm town that underwent a radical transformation during the oil boom years between 2011 and 2016. With billions of dollars to be gained, small towns like Trenton became overwhelmed by an influx of workers from across the country and by the repurposing of countless acres of farmland for industrial
After her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, Emmy Award-winning chef, author and magazine publisher Sandra Lee chose to invite cameras to her medical appointments and consultations, into the operating room where she underwent a double mastectomy, and to witness her recovery process in the hospital and at home. The resulting documentary short, RX: Early Detection, A Cancer Journey with Sandra Lee, directed by Cathy Chermol Schrijver, is a raw, intimate look at her experience with cancer. Lee is now cancer-free and passionate about the importance of early detection for both women and men: “This is
Editor's Note: This article is now out-of-date, and was updated in December 2024. | This revised look at documentary budgeting update the 2006 Documentary article “Don’t Fudge on Your Budget: Toeing the Line Items.” At the center of the documentary "business" is the budget, which offers a map of the filmmaking process, expressing both the film you’re planning to make and how you plan to make it. Ideally, it is also a living document that can help get a film to completion.