"For somebody who went on television 50 years ago, and who's been dead for 15 years, I feel like it's the most contemporary subject I've ever worked on, which is very surprising," says producer/director Morgan Neville about American children's television celebrity Fred Rogers, the subject of his new documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?. The legend of how Fred Rogers became Mister Rogers began in 1951, when the young man just graduated with a college degree in music composition, and who was considering entering the seminary, caught sight of a pie fight on this new-fangled technology called
Latest Posts
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering June 5 on Amazon, iTunes and Google Play is Jeffrey Schwartz's The Fabulous Allan Carr, a project of IDA's Fiscal Sponsorship Program. The film tells the story of dynamo Hollywood impresario Allan Carr—producer, marketing genius, and host of the wildest, most Babylonian parties LA has ever seen. Premiering June 11 on World Channel's Local, USA series is Dan Habib's IDA Award-nominated short, Mr. Connolly Has ALS. As a life-long educator, high school principal Gene
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! From Deadline, filmmaker Jennifer Fox writes about her first dramatic film, The Tale, which is based on her struggle as a survivor of sexual abuse. People often ask me if I ever considered telling the story of The Tale as a documentary since that was what I was known for, but the truth is I never did. There was no
By Daniel and Marc Glassman We'd like to open our report on Hot Docs with a discussion of the festival’s acclaimed Forum, a must-attend event for the gatekeepers of the global documentary industry. But we can't. You see, every winner at the two-day Forum has been press-embargoed. But we can divulge the titles and the prize money—just not the stories behind the projects. Here they are: The first look program's First Prize winner of $75,000 CDN was Case 993 (dir.: Shareef Nasir; prods: Dana Nachman, Leah Mahan, Josh Braun, Dan Braun, Danny Glover; KTF Films, USA). The second prize of $30,000 CDN
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Streaming on HBO On Demand, HBO Now and HBO Go is John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls, from Emmy-winning director Peter Kunhardt. The film profiles the six-tern Arizona senator, an influential force in modern American politics, as he reflects on his life and career and reckons with his battle with brain cancer. Airing May 29 on PBS' American Experience, and streaming on PBS.org, The Chinese Exclusion Act, directed by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu and co-produced by the Center for
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! Sundance.org presents a case study on distribution strategies for Jennifer Brea's Unrest. Like many issue-driven documentaries, the aim of Unrest's release isn't financially motivated; they are driven by the desire to generate awareness and shift public perception. Filmmakers often keep traditional sales and
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Airing on Independent Lens tonight, Jamie Meltzer's True Conviction, an IDA DocuClub alum, tells the story of three exonerated men, with decades of prison time among them, who launched a detective agency to help free wrongly convicted inmates and try to fix the criminal justice system. Streaming on The Orchard/Vimeo on Demand, Dominic Gill's Coming to my Senses documents former Motocross athlete Aaron Baker's struggle to regain movement after breaking his neck in a Motocross
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! From Cineaste, Thomas Doherty examines three recent docs that make innovative uses of found footage. A cluster of three like-minded documentaries, all spellbound before the big-screen spectacle of 35mm and 16mm formats, bids to rescue the cast-off canisters from the dumpsters of cinematic history: Bill Morrison's
Filmmaker Greg Barker began working as a freelance journalist in news and international conflict for CNN, covering Yugoslavia and issues in the Middle East. His first documentary was as an associate producer for PBS' The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Power and Money (1992), the eight-part series about the history of the oil industry. It was there that he fell in love with the process of nonfiction filmmaking. Since then, he's directed half a dozen Frontline episodes, as well as the features Sergio (2009), Legion of Brothers (2017) and Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden (2013)
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering this week on Starz and Starz On Demand, Paige Goldberg Tolmach's What Haunts Us investigates the story of the 1979 class of Porter Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina. Within the last 35 years, six of the graduating class of 49 boys have died by suicide. Tolmach herself, a graduate of Porter Guad School, takes a deep dive into her past in order to uncover the surprising truth and finally release the ghosts that haunt her hometown to this day. In Random Acts