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 Los Angeles Times' Steven Zeitchik reports from True/False on four venturesome trends in the documentary form. These new anti-documentaries are in a sense more fundamental shifts, since they're crafted as feature films, sometimes with scripts to match. But their issues are also more complicated, since they're
Latest Posts
Another year means another chance to get funds for your documentary! Below is your essential guide to grants, awards, open calls, and opportunities to be had in the first half of 2016. GRANT DEADLINES ITVS - INDEPENDENT LENS Independent Lens is currently seeking submissions of films in advanced rough cut or fine cut stage or completed films to broadcast during the October 2016 - June 2017 season. Independent Lens films are often character driven stories, and are known for compelling storytelling, innovation, and diversity. Independent Lens welcomes individual expression and is committed to
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 the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area docmakers Dawn Porter and Pete Nicks, among others, weigh in on #OscarsSoWhite and the need for diversity: It's a lesson that Nicks, 47, and other African American filmmakers from the Bay Area say is often left out of the heated conversations about Oscar inclusion: that
"Quality over quantity." If you were a documentary filmmaker attending the 18th annual Realscreen Summit in Washington, DC earlier this month, that was the overwhelming message. Both Discovery and the National Geographic Channels hammered away about the concept of "big ideas" and "big events." And "volume" and "tonnage"? They are now dirty words. Other key presentations revolved around virtual reality, platform power players and diversity behind and in front of the camera. Moving into its new digs at the Marriott Marquis, the Summit had plenty to offer for the more than 2,000 attendees—which
History is often fragmented, patched with fictions and intricate inconsistencies. This year's International Forum of New Cinema—in short, the Forum—founded in the 1960s as a more politically and socially conscious counterweight to the Berlinale's Main Competition, traversed the cinematic landscapes of (geo-) political and personal histories of place. One focus of this year's Forum was the Middle East, a region in flux that is no stranger to civil wars. The Arab film scene has been burgeoning despite war seizing the Middle East, nation states disintegrating and funding sources coming to a
In all the years I've covered the Sundance Film Festival, I've never focused my coverage on the short form. Well, mea culpa; it's about time. Over the past decade or so, in concert with the dramatic growth and expansion of the Internet, we have witnessed an explosion of online content—particularly documentary shorts—from longstanding publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, to Internet giants like YouTube and Vice and Vimeo, to omnibus projects like Cinelan's WE THE ECONOMY, to groundbreaking new ventures like Field of Vision. There's even a channel, Shorts HD
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 Indiewire, Kartemquin filmmakers Gordon Quinn and Rachel Dickson discuss how they discovered footage of Bernie Sanders getting arrested: Quinn: I was in the same graduating class as Bernie Sanders at the University of Chicago. A few months ago when a photo taken by Danny Lyon of our sit-in at the university
Editor's note: Over the next few days, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see Last Day of Freedom on Saturday, February 27 at 6:25 p.m. at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of DocuDay LA. Making a film about PTSD opens up many creative possibilities to render mental trauma in a cinematic fashion. For filmmakers Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, animation served as the best medium to capture Bill Babbit telling the story of
OVERVIEW For a documentary filmmaker, being recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary Feature category is often the pinnacle moment in a career. Beyond the celebratory achievement, the acknowledgment can open up doors for funding and opportunities for next films and career opportunities. The formal recognition happens in three phases: It begins in December with the Academy's announcement of a shortlist—15 films that advance to a formal nomination for the Academy's Best Documentary Feature Award. Then, in mid-January, the final
Editor's note: Over the past few weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the films that have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Oscar® nomination in the documentary category. You can see Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah on Saturday, February 27 at 11 a.m. at the Writers Guild of America Theater as part of DocuDay LA. Although Adam Benzine makes his filmmaking debut with Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, he is no stranger to documentary. He was associate editor of RealScreen magazine for four years, and, prior to that, senior