Latest Posts

Digital distribution is everywhere, but what's really happening and who are the voices you should be paying attention to? The definitive panel on digital distribution that will deliver answers in crystal clear high definition: 1) Peter Broderick, President of Paradigm Consulting, knows the ins-and-outs of distribution strategies and techniques like nobody's business... and as our moderator, will ensure that all the bases are covered. 2) Chris Horton, Director of Sundance #ArtistServices, is leading the charge within Sundance on digital distribution. He consults with Sundance filmmakers

In Hart Perry's Valley of Tears, a Raymondville, Texas, school superintendent grabs the camera lens and wrenches it toward the ground. "Get that goddamn camera off me, Hart," he says, and really, could a documentary filmmaker ask for a better on-camera testimonial? Of the 22 feature documentaries shown at the Mill Valley (California) Film Festival in October, Perry's film demonstrated the most persistent commitment, rivaled only by Carles Bosch and Josep Maria Domènech's seven-year odyssey through the lives of Cuban refugees, Balseros. Perry, who was memorably menaced by a gun-wielding thug

The Yamagata (Japan) International Documentary Film Festival, held every other year since 1989, has earned a reputation in Europe as a must-go-to festival. This year's festival (October 10-16) offered a dense program of more than 200 entries. Since its beginning, the Yamagata festival has made efforts to screen documentaries made by Asian filmmakers, and the New Asian Currents section has become a wide-open window into documentary filmmaking from this part of the world. One of the highlights from this section was the five-minute long A Short Journey by Thai director Keng Dern Tang. The film

Innovation and excellence demand more than talent, which in itself is an uncommon attribute. They require that extraordinary intellectual or creative power called genius. Unfortunately, our consumer culture, heavily addicted to hyperbole, readily applies the epithet to individuals who may well be exceptional—but how many are truly extraordinary? Among the worthy minority, we have this year's recipient of IDA's Career Achievement Award: the renowned writer, producer and presenter of television's finest natural history programs—Sir David Attenborough. Like many artists before him, Attenborough

Neither a production company nor a distributor, Working Films, the North Carolina-based nonprofit, brings media activists, educators, community groups and other social organizations together to increase the social, political and cultural impact of specific issue documentaries. For Working Films, a great film is "working" only if audience members leave the screening to write their state representatives for hate crime legislation, boycott toxic products, or examine personal feelings about race, religion, abortion or human sexuality. Media educator Robert West and award-winning documentarian

'The System with Joe Berlinger' premieres May 18 on Al Jazeera America

In 1988, Amnesty International organized a concert tour to mark the 40th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One of the musicians, Peter Gabriel, happened to have brought a new technological marvel with him on tour. He was using a personal video camera to record his experiences. "It was on that tour that he met isolated human rights defenders and began thinking of how they could use video to bridge that gap and bring their causes to a wider audience," recalls Gillian Caldwell, executive director of Witness. A few years later, America was riveted by a few

The distribution landscape is changing — fast. Here's ten digestible bits of advice to keep in mind as you take your film out into the world.

Like legions of filmmakers before you, you've spent months, perhaps years, getting the money to make your film. Unless you're one of the lucky few, much of your financing came out of your own pocket and those of family and friends. Along the way, you learned that film financing, like telling a story on film, requires special skill. That was the first step. The second step was the months, maybe years, it took to make your film; researching and getting the story on film, ensuring that your images revealed your passion for your subject. Writing and re-writing, finding the right narrator, music

"Since we started, a lot of our ideas seemed strange at first," observes Fenton Bailey, co-founder, with Randy Barbato, of the Hollywood and London-based production company, World of Wonder (WOW). "But then the way the agenda has shifted is that things on the edge have tended to become more factual, and I don't think anyone would have projected the way television has changed in the last ten years. It's been good for us because our sort of wacky, outer edge vision has suddenly seemed not so wacky or outer limits." The curious realities of life that World of Wonder has brought to the screen—