A recent flood of impressive, handsomely produced, mostly cinéma vérité Chinese documentaries hint at the versatility and maturity of documentary production inside China, as well as to the strength of international infrastructure to help them find viewers. In the US and Europe, there have been occasional glimpses of this creative flourishing over the last decade. Wang Bing's West of the Tracks (2003), a three-part, nine-hour, cinéma vérité look at life in a Chinese rust bowl city, showed at Western festivals and on European and US television. Chen Weijun's Please Vote for Me, about a Chinese
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This year's San Francisco International Film Festival was all about transformation. The festival left its longtime home base at the Sundance Kabuki multiplex in the centrally located Fillmore District and moved to the uber-hip Mission District. The hub of the festival was a newly restored and multiplexed 1920s movie palace, transformed into the latest Alamo Drafthouse, a Texas chain that features beer, cocktails and gourmet snacks served by a wait staff. Three other nearby theaters, the Roxie, the Victoria (also refurbished) and the Castro, rounded out the festival venues. The hope was to
By Marc Glassman and Patrick Mullen Toronto's Hot Docs festival wrapped its 23rd edition on Sunday, May 8, with its usual record-breaking set of stats. This year, the 11-day event presented 462 public screenings of 232 films on 15 screens to a new audience high of 211,000 attendees. Over 300 filmmakers and subjects attended Hot Docs, offering audiences and the media a chance to interact with a significant number of important figures, including filmmakers Steve James and Joe Berlinger, BBC Storyville commissioning editor Nick Fraser, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, former Noma head chef
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 BBC Magazine, William Kremer reports on the story behind Diving into the Unknown, a documentary about four men who risked their lives to retrieve the bodies of two divers. In Diving into the Unknown, we do not see any of the divers collapsing into tears, or talking emotionally about lost friends. Instead, the
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 University of Chicago Magazine, Jason Kelly provides an in-depth overview of 50 years of Kartemquin Films. Fifty years and more than 50 films generate a lot of history. In the offices, that history adorns walls, overflows shelves, and infuses conversations even as a new generation of filmmakers, staff, and
The IDA mourns the passing of beloved former board member Nicolas Noxon, one of our original founding members, as well as an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker who wrote, directed and produced more than 40 National Geographic specials. Noxon won the IDA's Strand Program Award in both 1998 and 1999, for his work on America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Goodbye and The Dragons of Galapagos. In 2009, Noxon received the IDA's Pioneer Award, presented to an individual who has made an indelible impression on the evolving art and craft of nonfiction filmmaking. When writer Bob
If you're a tabloid-reading New Yorker, you may already be familiar with the strange and sad tale of Darius McCollum, a guy from Queens whose transportation obsession has led to 32 convictions for impersonating MTA employees and taking over their bus and subway routes (and providing first-rate service, by all accounts). The transit fanatic also suffers from Asperger's syndrome and has spent over two decades in maximum security prisons as a result of his victimless—as he's never hurt anyone, nor so much as even damaged any equipment—crime sprees. And now Darius is getting the big-screen
Dear Sirs: On behalf of the International Documentary Association, I am writing to urge Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors to lift the ban on the documentary Among the Believers. The documentary follows Maulana Aziz, chief cleric of the Red Mosque, as he wages a war against the Pakistani government with the aim of imposing Shariah law throughout the country. It also chronicles the lives of two teenage students who are pawns in his ideological war, and showcases the brave Pakistani activists fighting to stop the spread of extremism. We at IDA have watched the film and we feel that it is a
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 Guardian, documentary-maker Molly Dineen gets candid about her reasons for shooting a corporate promo film. The film clearly does an excellent job of showcasing the handful of Serco employees who appear as humane and thoughtful people; it made the audience laugh and was unexpectedly moving. Less clear is
The May 2nd deadline for Primetime Emmy submissions is coming up fast, so if you have a project that will have been presented within the primetime hours (6:00 p.m.- 2:00 a.m.) and within the eligibility period window (June 1 2015 to May 31, 2016), the clock is ticking. For any who may have left things to the last minute, ITVS and the Television Academy recently presented a webinar to help guide you in what may sometimes feel like an overwhelming process. For those who may have questions about where to submit their project, representatives from the Board of Governors for Documentary Programming