Nina Davenport's 'First Comes Love' opens July 24 at the IFC Center in New York, and premieres July 29 on HBO.
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A review of the book 'This Much Is True: 14 Directors on Documentary Filmmaking.'
From the World of Wonder production Life with LaToya, which airs on OWN. Courtesy of World of Wonder When first-time director Marta Cunningham got the news that her documentary Valentine Road had made it into the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, she probably didn't stop to Tweet a thanks to Kim Kardashian. But strange as it might seem, the indie filmmaker owes a debt of gratitude to the media vixen because, after years of struggling as an indie project, Cunningham's Valentine Road ended up in the loving hands of the company behind the Kardashian family: Bunim/Murray Productions. It might seem odd
From Seamus Murphy's A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan, which received an Emmy Award nomination in the New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming: Documentaries category. Courtesy of Media Storm Over the last seven years, we have witnessed a cavalcade of revolutionary developments in content creation and delivery: Facebook opened its membership to the world beyond colleges in September 2006; Netflix introduced VOD in February 2007; Twitter debuted at South by Southwest Film Festival a month later and, one year after, the very first Tweet was transmitted; and Apple released its first
Aftermath of hurricane Sandy in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, October 2012. Courtesy of NBCUniversal Archives In the aftermath of the recent Boston Marathon bombings, authorities were able to sift through hundreds of hours of video footage shot by attendees with their smartphones, multiple security cameras and professional news camera crews. But a decade or so ago, whether it was a cultural, political or any major event, the primary footage available was shot by local, national and/or international news organizations. For many years, documentary filmmakers seeking access to historical or even
Politics and activism were in the air this year at the 29th Toronto International Film Festival. Filmgoers walked around with Kerry-Edwards pins of all shapes and sizes. Volunteers trolled movie theatre lobbies trying to register to vote those with dual Canadian/US citizenship. And the issues covered in the documentary line-up read like a congressional meeting agenda: the war in Iraq, gay marriage, Kerry's participation in Vietnam, the Rwandan genocide and the effects of globalization. At a time when many are frustrated with the glossed-over treatment that serious issues receive on cable and
A review of the book 'Hollywood in Wide Angle: How Directors View Filmmaking.'
'Citizen Koch' opens June 27 in Los Angeles through Variance Films.
Ten feature-length documentaries released theatrically since 1991 have grossed over $15 million globally, Daily Variety reported on June 25, 2004. This does not include television/cable, home video/DVD sales of these films, music/performance works or IMAX films. With an unusually shrewd marketing campaign, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which grossed over $21 million in its first weekend, might be the first non-IMAX doc to gross over $100 million. Docs are the new feature film. For over a decade, festivals such as Sundance, Toronto, Berlin and the IFP Market have screened far more
While it's been refreshing over the past year to see a relative proliferation of documentaries in commercial theaters, the operative word is still "relative." And it's still rare to see short documentaries (50 minutes or less) in theatrical venues, probably due to the multitude of film festivals. Just how do makers of documentaries—particularly short documentaries—get their work shown beyond festivals or television? Taking a kind of telephone and Internet tour around the US in search of alternative venues revealed some important possibilities. My "trip" began with the Northwest Film Forum in