Editor's Note: Kartemquin Films has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the celebration culminates June 24 in Chicago, with the 50th Anniversary Gala. We asked founder/artistic director Gordon Quinn to share his thoughts on the ethical challenges he has faced over his rich and illustrious career. The following appears in the forthcoming Summer 2016 issue of Documentary magazine. Over our 50 years at Kartemquin, we struggled with many ethical challenges while making films, but we did not start speaking publicly and qualifying these struggles as “ethical” until our documentary
Latest Posts
We are proud to introduce three amazing women who are helping us serve the documentary community through their IDA internships: Katie Huang (Web and Information Technology Intern), Sara Cárdenas (Events Intern) and Dilara “Bristy” Sultana (Events Intern). Katie’s and Sara’s internships have been generously sponsored by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. Katie has recently finished her senior year at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and is currently studying Computer Science with a minor in Ethnic Studies. She has just
Twenty years seems to be the appropriate time frame for historical events to transform into history, and for historians, pundits, journalists and we the people to look back on how we’ve grown and changed, and how we haven’t; what we’ve learned, and what we haven’t learned. In the mid-1990s, just on the cusp of the digital revolution, America was gripped by the so-called Trail of the Century. OJ Simpson, who nurtured and cultivated his iconic status well beyond his football days, was tried for and acquitted of the double murder of his ex-wife and her friend. This was the culmination of nearly
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! Amy Ziering, producer of The Hunting Ground, which addresses sexual assaults on college campuses, and Kamilah Willingham, one of the film’s subjects, appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the recent Stanford University rape case and verdict. “And what’s so interesting is that the reception to The Hunting Ground
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! The New York Times reports on new efforts from female cinematographers attempting to correct gender inequity in the industry. Women make up about 12 percent of Local 600’s camera department roster, Ms. Rhine said. (The union also represents entertainment industry publicists.) The group is just beginning to compile
For the last eight years, the IDA has been a leader in efforts to obtain exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) that preserve documentary filmmakers’ abilities to make fair use in the digital age. Now the Copyright Office is looking at ways to reform the exemption process, and it looks as if things may get just a bit more bearable. The DMCA is the 1998 law that makes it illegal—in some cases a crime, even—to rip from DVDs or other encrypted media, even for filmmakers like us who need to access high-quality media in order to make criticism, commentary, or other forms of
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 The New York Times, James Glanz reports from the West Bank on the world behind the documentary The Settlers. Mr. Dotan’s film chronicles the germination of the early settler movement after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, including the ideas and religious zeal that fueled it, and explores its
The Cannes Film Festival isn't particularly known for its devotion to the documentary form. Only twice in the festival's history has the Palme d'Or gone to a nonfiction film: in 1956 for The Silent World, directed by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle, and in 2004 for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. This year, not a single documentary appeared among the 21 films selected for "main competition"—i.e. those with a shot at winning the Palme d'Or. However, that doesn't mean there isn't space for documentaries in Cannes, although they tend to remain on the periphery, sheltered from the glare of the
In many ways, Ido Haar's Presenting Princess Shaw is a story of connection, an inspirational refute to those who accuse our digital culture of fostering alienation and social remove. The film, which had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, tells the story of two dissimilar musicians brought together in a unique form of Internet Age collaboration. On one side of the world lives Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman, an Israeli composer and media artist renowned for his symphonic mashups of YouTube videos uploaded by amateur musicians. Thousands of miles away, an
The criminal justice system is in the DNA of Bay Area filmmakers Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway. Both grew up with "civil rights fathers" and have been making documentaries on the criminal justice system for many years. Their films include the 2011 documentary Better This World, which follows two childhood friends from Texas who got arrested on terrorism charges at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Better This World earned the IDA Creative Recognition Award for Editing, the Gotham Award for Best Documentary and the Writers Guild Award for Best Documentary Screenplay. Their