Over the last quarter-century, Kirsten Johnson has lensed some of the most challenging and impactful documentaries of our time, ranging from Laura Poitras' The Oath and Citizenfour to Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated and The Invisible War. She contributed additional camera work to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and early in her career she shot many interviews with Holocaust survivors for the Shoah Foundation. Her other credits include Darfur Now, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, 1971 and Two Towns of Jasper. In 2009, Johnson decided to make her own documentary, focusing on two young
Latest Posts
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! At Filmmaker, director Penny Lane asks whether documentary films should have footnotes. In "Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work," an excellent report put out by the Center for Social Media, a sample of 45 filmmakers expressed daily frustration at the lack of standards and
There are moments of subtlety and nuances of character development to be discovered in the visual narrative of the documentary, The Eagle Huntress, but they are easy to miss. It is a classic example of the spectacle of the big picture—golden eagles soaring through blue and white marbled skies—overshadowing the quieter, more intimate moments. If this was a Western it would be a case of the director, Otto Bell, facing off against the cinematographer, Simon Niblett. Although Niblett did envision the heroic tableau of a western while composing the shots for this documentary, both men are on the
" Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth … The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies."- Pablo Picasso This past spring, archivist/professor/filmmaker Rick Prelinger wrote a post on Facebook that drew my attention: "I find it amazing that documentary filmmakers are accorded such great authority by audiences, reviewers and scholars when they are not obliged to cite their sources (especially egregious when archival materials are used.)" He added that if he were to write an academic paper or peer-reviewed article without citing sources, he
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! At No Film School, Liz Nord covers Errol Morris's IDFA talk on the similarities between documentary and virtual reality. Referencing a David Hume theory, Morris explained, "We tend to see causality in the world...and this need to see a 'before' and 'after' in how we explain the world around us is part of who we
I once considered documentary to be a fallback for filmmakers of color who were shut out of the fiction universe. I was wrong. As it turns out, we may be more under-represented in nonfiction filmmaking. Sundance estimates the proportion of documentary directors of color screening at the festival to be around 15 percent. The Directors Guild of America estimates 82 percent of its narrative members are white males; it doesn't even bother to calculate documentarians. True, the DGA and Sundance occupy the stratosphere of documentary filmmaking. And like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
'Mama, Look, A Negro! I'm scared!'— Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Seven years ago I wrote a piece for Documentary entitled "Obama Nation: One Filmmaker's Journey Since the Historic Election." It was the beginning of the Obama presidency, the inauguration of which I watched in a condo at the Sundance Film Festival as I pitched a documentary entitled Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People. I was hopeful at that time about the future of the country and the opportunity promised in Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Little did I know that the
Jalal Nuriddin: The Grandfather of Rap. Photo: Carl Hyde" src="http://www.documentary.org/sites/default/files/images/magazine/Sum16_IntPers_2014_JalalSingsCU-byCarlHyde.jpg"> As a Manchester, UK-based documentary filmmaker for over a decade, I, along with the small, diverse team with whom I work, have sought fair and meritorious access to opportunity. In my view, we simply have not been able to achieve it in our own country. Beyond what this means for us, far more important is what it means for others. As a genuine Manchester production company rooted in the culture of Northern England, we are
It was the spring of 1988. I was living in Boston, working as a first-time producer on the epic documentary series Eyes on the Prize. I heard about a screening at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge of a documentary about the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. It was directed by the photographer Bruce Weber. I did not know what to expect; films about jazz musicians were usually not that great. The mid-1980s yielded a plethora of jazz-themed films: Robert Mugge's documentary Saxophone Colossus, about Sonny Rollins; Bird, Clint Eastwood's feature film on Charlie Parker, which was less about him and more
Dear IDA Community, Like most people, I have been gripped by politics this year. Having recently been naturalized as an American citizen, I get to vote this year for the first time and, like many thousands of others, my decision to go from Green Card holder to citizen was precipitated by the impending elections. It’s hard to think of a time when the choices have been more polarizing, or the stakes higher. Beyond the individual personalities involved, and how favorably or unfavorably you may think of them, at the core of the matter are the underlying issues that are suffocating Americans. I