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 quarter of 2015. GRANT DEADLINES TRIBECA FILM INSTITUTE (TFI) LATIN AMERICA MEDIA ARTS FUND Supports innovative film and video artists living and working in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America whose works reflect their diverse cultures in the documentary or mixed media form. Grants up to $10,000 for projects that are in production or post-production. The Latin America Workshops are within the fund. Opens
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The 18th edition of the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival ran October 23-28, and no sooner had I disembarked from my crisscrossing the international date line twice in five days to cover the Taiwan International Documentary Festival when I was on a plane again, on an epic journey to the other side of the world. Jihlava, an industrial town in the Czech Republic, two hours east of Prague, plays host to the annual five-day event in a fall season packed with doc fests. Running concurrently with the Jihlava fest was Dok Leipzig, and just around the corner would be CPH: DOX. The Czech
As the documentary world now knows, Michael Lumpkin will be stepping down as IDA’s executive director after six transformative and impactful years to take up the director position at AFI Docs. In that short tenure, he, in concert with the Board and staff, managed to move the IDA into a position of unprecedented prominence in the documentary community. New, expanded offices...departments in communications, development, education and filmmaker services...an organization-wide rebranding...and the GETTING REAL conference: These are the major milestones that have helped solidify IDA’s service to
On Monday, eleven federal judges took the bench in Pasadena, CA to hear a copyright case that could have deep and lasting implications for documentary filmmakers everywhere. At issue is whether anyone who appears in a film production and makes even the slightest creative contribution could have a separate copyright interest in their appearance in the film. Until recently, that question was fairly well-settled: the one who controls the film’s production is the author and owns the copyright in the entire film. But earlier this year, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit court of appeals held
Autumn in Montreal invites cool, crisp evenings and a stunning rainbow of leaves on view in daylight. The season also offers two documentary-rich film festivals: the Festival du Nouveau Cinema (FNC) and the Montreal International Documentary Festival (Recontres Internationales du Documentarie de Montréal). The Festival du Nouveau Cinema, held this year between October 8 and 19, offered over 150 films, including over 40 documentaries. It also featured retrospectives of several documentarians this year, including the late Montreal-based Peter Wintonick ( Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and
Five feature-length documentary films have been selected to receive a total of $95,000 from the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund this year. The Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund was created with support from The New York Community Trust to honor the legacy of legendary American documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz. Grants are made to documentary projects that shed light on critical issues in the United States and focus on Pare Lorentz’s central concerns: the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all and the illumination of pressing social problems. This year the Fund received over 460
I had the fortune of attending the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF), which ran from October 9-19. The festival launched in 1998 as a biennial event whose host cities varied from year to year. This year’s edition marked a major shift, with Taipei henceforth serving as the permanent host city, and the recently launched Taiwan Film Institute designated as the permanent office for the festival. In addition, the festival will be held annually. These changes presented an opportunity for the TIDF team to truly catalyze its identity, vision and mission. Most of the programming and
Twenty minutes into Kim Longinotto's latest film, Dreamcatcher, which will have its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, a chilling scene takes place. The setting is an after-school club at a Chicago high school, where at-risk teenage girls are being counseled on how to say “No” to boys. As the teenagers munch through copious amounts of junk food, a girl confesses that she was raped at the age of 11 at a friend's house. Another girl interrupts to tell a story of long-term abuse by a family friend, then another story of abuse follows, each more harrowing than the one before it. It
If you’ve lived in the US or UK in the last 20 years, you’ve undoubtedly watched a World of Wonder show—most likely more than one, as their shows, besides being highly addictive and incredibly entertaining, are typically a window into a previously undocumented world, one formerly dismissed as marginal and unsuitable for TV. So it seems fitting that the 2014 IDA Pioneer Award is going to the powerhouse duo of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, founders of the highly prolific World of Wonder production company. In the past two decades they have produced over 220 original series on 41 different
The DMCA’s ban on breaking encryption is hurting our ability to make fair use. But you are helping us renew our exemption! The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to rip from DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and many other encrypted technologies. The law is blocking our ability to make fair use and could seriously harm documentary filmmaking. Why? Because even though fair use allows us to use copyrighted footage, the DMCA restricts our access to such material. Luckily, the law lets the Librarian of Congress grant exemptions that allow folks to access the works they need. In November