In 1979, filmmaker Werner Herzog flies to the jungles of the Amazon to shoot a film about a turn-of-the-century rubber baron, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, who strives to bring Caruso’s operas to the Peruvian city of Iquitos. As Herzog is adamant the film—Fitzcarraldo (finally released in 1982)—should not rely on special effects, the baron and the filmmaker have the same titanic task ahead of them: to transport a 320-tonne steamship over a hill and gain access to a neighboring river system. Another filmmaker, the American Les Blank, has been recruited to capture the tribulations surrounding and informing this technical feat. Blank’s 1982 documentary Burden of Dreams, newly restored and re-released by Janus Films, does much more than merely observe the resurrection of Sisyphus in the modern day. It also charts, and subsequently punctures, a man’s attempts to swaddle himself in the ill-fitting garments of that myth, to ennoble his self-inflicted suffering to the history books and pave over crime with punishment.
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Before A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network) formed its roots at IDA’s 2016 Getting Real conference, there was a decades-long history of Asian American filmmakers speaking truth to power through their work. About a decade ago, the inequality that permeates the documentary industry became obvious in the era of #DecolonizeDocs and #OscarsSoWhite. In response, A-Doc co-founders S. Leo Chiang and Grace Lee—along with a core group of Asian American film leaders—began organizing. Today, A-Doc is a national network of more than 1,700 members—and growing—that works to increase the visibility and
Asako Fujioka is an independent consultant and producer with a focus on strengthening the creative documentary genre in Asia. She has worked with the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival since 1993 as Coordinator, Director of the Tokyo Office, and now Vice-chair on the Board of Directors. She advised and served on the selection committees of the Asian Network of Documentary (AND) at the Busan International Film Festival, DMZ Docs Industry program, and Tokyo Docs, and has been on international juries of Berlin (Forum), Sundance, Hong Kong, and many other festivals. As head of
Cullen Hoback has developed something of a specialty in chasing elusive cultural figures. In his 2021 HBO miniseries Q: Into the Storm, he examined the QAnon conspiracy theory, structuring the six episodes around an investigation into the identity of “Q,” who stirred up the phenomenon by posting cryptic “leaks” supposedly from within the Trump administration. Hoback does something similar with his new film Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery . A look at the history of the namesake cryptocurrency, it’s also a hunt for “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the original creator of Bitcoin who has managed to remain
Working as a volunteer nearly two decades ago, Australian filmmaker Gabrielle Brady lived in and traveled all around Mongolia for 18 months. She returned to the country eight years later to visit some of the herder families that she had stayed with on her travels in the countryside, only to find out that many had moved to the ger districts on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, having lost most, if not all, of their livestock and livelihoods to devastating climate disasters. Hearing their stories and seeing their new lives in the city planted a seed in Brady’s mind, one that eventually grew to
Today, the U.S. Department of State’s flagship American Film Showcase (AFS) announces its 2025 film slate of 43 documentaries. This “film diplomacy” program showcases new award-winning American documentaries in a year-round screening program organized by U.S. Embassies in dozens of countries. “AFS’s screening program is a global film festival offering international audiences a nuanced view of American life and creating space for cross-cultural dialogue,” said Rachel Gandin Mark, AFS Program Director, in a prepared statement. “We are incredibly proud of this year’s wide-ranging collection of
This year, Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) marked its 20th anniversary with—as described by its programmers—a lineup of highly political films. In their remarks on opening night, CIFF programmers Milton Guillén and Zaina Bseiso invited audiences to “enter into these films and figure out how we are compelled to build solidarity with other people as audiences.” CIFF stands out as one of the few festivals that both maintain a virtual component and take a clear political stance on the ongoing (mediatized) genocide in Palestine. Bseiso, who is Palestinian, prompted further reflection:
With films like The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 (2011) and Concerning Violence (2014), Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson has become known for his televisual explorations of historical and political phenomena—predominantly from a distinctly Swedish perspective, for better or worse. Deeply rooted in the audiovisual archives of Sveriges Television (SVT), his films are the result of long and meticulous research, framed as thorough within institutional and ideological constraints. Premiered in the 81st Venice Film Festival’s Out of Competition section, Olsson’s latest archive-based documentary
In recent decades, the Locarno Film Festival has established itself as a premiere market for some of the more unusual experiments to come through the festival circuit. In some of the films, the image is composed of a heterogeneous mix of various formats and media; in others, the textures of the visual surface, from digital artifacts to film grain, supersede the content within. In a conversation with video essayist and film scholar Kevin B. Lee in 2023, Lee identified this proliferating tendency as a possible side effect of social media, which consists of sounds and images that are “less
New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Wright remembers colleagues asking, “Why do you live in Texas?” when his location shouldn’t have been exceptional. Writers from all over the world contribute to the magazine. The difference, Wright says, is that Texas was perceived as “anti-New York.” Once a left-leaning state, Texas has swung far to the right. It’s one of the most polarized states in the nation. After Wright’s editor, David Remnick, encouraged him to explain Texas, he thought, “Maybe it’s time to look at my home again and see what it is that keeps me here.” Examining one of the most important