Given the dominance of USC School of Cinema-Television, University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University Graduate Program in Documentary Film and Video in the respective awards competitions sponsored by the television and motion picture academies, International Documentary contacted via e-mail representatives from those schools about their programs. Mark Harris is a three-time Academy Award-winning documentary maker who has taught at USC for 21 years; Jon Else, a former MacArthur Fellow and an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, is the director of the
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New partnerships forged for the IDA Documentary Screening Series.
My new book METALLICA: This Monster Lives: The Inside Story of ‘Some Kind of Monster' tells the story of the happy accident that led to our film METALLICA: Some Kind of Monster . The book, like the movie, is a meditation on documentary filmmaking, fame, therapy and the creative process. The book also details my own personal emotional journey, which mirrored the band's: I was just coming off the disaster of Blair Witch 2 when I found myself sitting in a room with a bunch of guys going through the same existential and creative crisis that I was experiencing. Initially , Bruce Sinofsky and I were
Shola Lynch, director of Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed , has had an ongoing discussion about the nature of remembrance with her father, a retired history professor at Columbia University. Why does history so quickly forget so many fascinating people? she asks him. She knows the father-daughter, back-and-forth by heart: "I go, 'He was left out of American history!' And he says, 'A lot of people get left out.' I say, 'But that's unjust.' And he says, 'Relax.'" But she hasn't relaxed and accepted it—and she's not alone, either. Lynch is among a growing group of documentary filmmakers making
The Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) launched its 19th edition in a month jam-packed with festivals and showcases around the world. In California alone there was RealScreen West, Frameline and SF Docfest, and further north up the West Coast was the Seattle International Film Festival. Looking eastward, we had AFI Docs, BAMCinemaFest and The Flaherty Seminar. Crossing the pond to the UK, there was Sheffield Doc/Fest, Edinburgh International Film Festival and Open City Docs Festival in London. Throw in a few thousand graduations and weddings, and Father's Day, and you have one insane month of
The 19th installment of the Los Angeles Film Festival was packed with a diverse offering, including an impressive 26 documentaries on topics vastly ranging in tone, subject and style. Several common threads could be traced among the programming selections: an impressive number of films focused on life and art in Los Angeles, while another handful offered close-up studies of race in America. A timely inclusion on the part of LAFF programmers, Yoruba Richen's The New Black follows the evolution of same-sex marriage bill Question 6 in Maryland as supporters and opponents clash in the months
This year the 12th annual San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, or SF DocFest, moved to a summer slot from its usual festival-packed November home, and was able to stake its umbrella on an uncluttered beach. Of its 38 features and 25 shorts, I saw 18, mostly on DVD screener and not at DocFest's flagship venue Roxie Theatre or shorter-term satellites scattered across the Bay Area, as far south as Santa Cruz. Here are a dozen standouts. The vast majority of DocFest's films are American, but the international films stood out in ways both good and awful. Irish filmmaker Nick Ryan's debut
What's in a name? Well, if you are the festival formerly known as SILVER DOCS, it was not only a name but an identifying location: Silver Spring, Maryland. But with the recent departure of Discovery Networks as one of the event's main sponsors for the past decade, the documentary festival had to re-invent itself. So in 2013 AFI DOCS Film Festival was born. The festival took on a new look and main sponsor (Audi), added a new campus of landmark venues in Washington, DC, close to Capitol Hill, and premiered some groundbreaking filmmaker programs. There were also five premieres, including three
A review of the book 'Into the Fray: How NBC's Washington Documentary Unit Reinvented the News'
'Blackfish' opens in theaters July 19 through Magnolia Pictures.