As film festivals start to move from an exclusively virtual space, I was looking forward to moseying over to Austin for South By Southwest after showing a film I had directed, at the True/False Film Festival, and celebrating the premiere of Your Friend, Memphis, on which I served as an associate producer. However, after I saw that a film entitled Spaz had made it into its lineup, I knew I couldn't go. As a disabled person who has experienced spasticity and the isolation and shame that comes with it, I decided to forego the trip. Spaz is a documentary about Stephen "Spaz" Williams, an animator
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True/False Film Fest, nestled in the college town of Columbia, Missouri, isn’t just a film festival. It’s a warmblooded celebration of creativity of all kinds—a sprawling community event that includes musical performances, visual art exhibitions and a parade. People take vacation time to make this an annual destination, coming from the West Coast, Maine and right in town. They come to the films to learn and discuss them at length with their neighbors in line and in the coffee shops and bars. Three of the four festival curators are new, and they have carried into the new era a spirit of inquiry
It is an exciting year at SXSW, and not just because they return in person. There are so many IDA-supported documentaries at this year's festival, ranging from transformative stories of mothers supporting their LGBTQ children to a family's journey fleeing violence in the Congo. From IDA grantees to DocuClub participants, this Docs to Watch contains nine IDA-supported films that are sure to be highlights of this year's festival. A Woman on the Outside (Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville) Part observational documentary, part family album, A Woman on the Outside centers on Kristal, a woman who
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Today is International Working Women’s Day and while many companies will have us believe that it’s a day about spa coupons, roses and cute bracelets, it’s actually a day that demands that we look at women’s—all women’s—labor: how we acknowledge it, how we appreciate it, and—most importantly—how we compensate it. Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s 9to5: The Story of a Movement, available for viewing on PBS’ Independent Lens, is a documentation of the efforts of a group of
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! Fork Films’ Abigail Disney pens a full-throated and sincere apology, in the wake of the criticism received by Jihad Rehab, a film on which Disney served as an executive producer. The responses have been painful, significant, bewildering, and deeply stressful for each of us in different ways. Adding to the weight of two years of pandemic trauma, a nation that seems to
FLEE wins Best Feature, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson wins Best Director for Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), and A Broken House wins Best Short.
Dear Readers, As IDA commemorates 40 years in the documentary space, we’ve witnessed a tsunami of change around us, from the art to the business, to the transformation of the community to a front-and-center manifestation of what democracy truly looks like. And we’ve done our best to morph accordingly—and hopefully by riding the tsunami, rather than by chasing it. This is my third go-round in creating a commemorative issue, and I'm never one to replicate the territory I’ve trodded before. In fact, after saluting our 20th and 25th birthdays, I skipped the 30th and 35th toasts. But 40 sounds like
It has been deeply troubling to watch our peers in the Ukrainian film community have their lives and work unraveled by the horrors of war. The International Documentary Association (IDA) has joined over 500 film professionals and institutions from around the world in signing a letter in support of Ukrainian filmmakers’ effort to fight the toxic disinformation war waged by Russia and keep our hearts open to all Russians and Belarusians who resist Putin’s war. Please join IDA and support our colleagues in Ukraine by: Signing the letter, if you are a filmmaker, industry leader or on behalf of a
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. As the tragedy and the resistance both unfold in Ukraine this week, we offer a selection of documentaries, in solidarity with the struggle and the beauty of the Ukrainian people. The International Coalition For Filmmakers at Risk is putting together an emergency fund. Please consider making a donation here. Iryna Tsilyk’s The Earth Is Blue as an Orange, for which Viacheslav Tsvietkov won a 2020 IDA Documentary Award for Best Cinematography, follows single mother Hanna and her
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! In celebration of Black History Month, Farout Magazine’s Calum Russell writes about Marlon Riggs’ revolutionary documentary Tongues Untied. Whilst experimental, personal filmic essays are often reserved for the artistic expression of private exhibition, there are some that become simply too pertinent that they break free from their own secrecy. Such was the case for