The 14th edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival was bracketed, first, by Mark Gill’s Cassandra-like keynote address about the dire state of independent film, then by an evening with Sheila Nevins, in which the HBO doc doyenne reaffirmed the primacy of television as the go-to venue for nonfiction (I was not able to attend either event). And in between, THINKFilm was teetering on the brink of solvency, if not respectability; YouTube opened its Screening Room for more artful fare; and Nevins was finally invited, after 15 years, to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. And LAFF
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When Ingrid Betancourt was among 15 hostages rescued last week after six years in captivity at the jungles of Colombia at the hands of FARC guerillas, the documentary community must have been thinking about The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt, the 2003 film by Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes. The filmmakers had originally planned to document Betancourt’s campaign for president of Colombia, following her eight years in Congress during which she spoke out against Columbian politicians who had been linked to drug cartels. Then, on February 23, 2002, she was kidnapped and held hostage, and the
Through footage, clips, stills, on-camera testimonials and staged readings of Dalton Trumbo's writings, Peter Askin's 'Trumbo' tells a story with contemporary poltical resonance.
Katrina Brown's 'Traces of the Trade,' which opens POV's 21st season on PBS, follows the filmmaker and her family to Ghana and Cuba as they trace the route of the slave trade, dominated by their ancestor, James DeWolf.
Writer/director/producer Joe Carnahan takes a walk on the documentary side.
Julie Checkoway talks about her film about an art school graduate who spends eight years on a single drawing, with t5he hope of showing it to renowned artist David Hockney.
Andrew Lauren talks about the making of a documentary about an octogenarian dubbed the "World's Oldest Bank Robber."
This book on famed documentarian Robert Gardner's work is often mired in the arcana of academia.
Werner Herzog's latest film finds astonishing beauty in the vistas and people of Antarctica.
A look at the documentary community in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on the Czech Republic.