There are few places where a first-time filmmaker can receive the same warm welcome as, say, Richard Leacock, a pioneer of cinema vérité. There are also few places where an emerging documentary filmmaker can screen a work-in-progress alongside that of an award-winning established director. In its 13th year, the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, held in October in Arkansas, offered both of these opportunities and a whole lot more: 93 docs, 54 filmmakers, six workshops, a new works-in-progress screening program and a timely celebration of some of the most influential filmmakers in the
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Grant to IDA one of 817 NEA Art Works grants totaling $26.3 million in funding nationwide.
Dear IDA Community, Our lead times for Documentary magazine are long. As I write this, the nation is still trying to come to grips with the unspeakable massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It's hard to watch, all this suffering. Harder still is the sharp reminder that we've lived through all this senseless violence before. Yet it feels important that we continue watching—and perhaps this time begin to comprehend how it came to pass. I am reminded, too, of the responsibility and obligation of documentary filmmakers to bear witness to some of the most painful aspects of humanity. When most
When Ondi Timoner premiered her 2009 film We Live in Public at the Sundance Film Festival, she hadn't quite mastered the social media tools that would create the mass community to see the film beyond the festival circuit. But she learned fast, and the eventual Grand Jury Prize winner became the juggernaut onto which Timoner and her team hitched their Tweets, posts, blogs and blasts. We Live in Public profiles the rise and fall of Internet pioneer/conceptual artist Josh Harris, who in the 1990s saw the possibilities of an open culture (or counter-culture), connected online; he foresaw the
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival , held in Durham, North Carolina, just concluded its 16th edition this past Sunday, April 7. With Deirdre Haj in her fourth year as executive director, the festival's organization has never been better. The partnership with Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies remains solid and mutually beneficial. The festival's recent designation as an Academy Award-qualifying festival for short-form documentary was a feather in Full Frame's cap. And its year-round educational programs—"Teach the Teachers," "School of Doc," "Full Frame Fellows" and the
'Manhunt' airs May 1 on HBO.
From Richard E. Robbins’ Girl Rising, which premieres in theaters through CNN Films In 2012, CNN became another player in the documentary field—a very desirable new broadcast player-when the cable channel launched CNN Films. Headed by Amy Entelis, senior vice president of talent and content development for CNN Worldwide, and Vinnie Malhotra, senior vice president of development and acquisitions for CNN Worldwide, CNN Films will acquire and/or fully fund at least four documentaries per year. Following a potential theatrical run, the selected docs will make their broadcast premiere on CNN and in
The IDA is happy to announce the launch of the IDA Documentary Screening Series, invitation-only screenings of fifteen documentary features to take place annually between September and January. The new series will replace our DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase, a program designed to help filmmakers qualify their works for Oscar® consideration. We are making these changes in response to both the evolving needs of documentary filmmakers and recent changes in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' (AMPAS) qualifying rules for documentary features and shorts. Over the last year
As the San Francisco-based organization Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) enters its 33rd year, it has transformed its flagship event, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Sporting the clipped moniker CAAMFest, the 31-year-old film festival, the largest and one of the oldest of its kind, has staged music and food presentations into greater prominence next to its film fare. While applauding the festival's attempts to broaden its brand and influence by incorporating more Asian-American culture, this film purist focuses on the documentaries, many of which were funded