In July 2021, Mexican "fixer" Miguel Angel Vega was approached by a European television channel. It was the same type of request he was used to receiving: "We heard this town is really dangerous right now. Can you take us there?" Behind most big television segments on Mexico’s cartels, there is normally someone like Vega. For a decade, he’s been fielding requests from broadcasters, newspapers and magazines looking to tell definitive stories about Mexico’s war on drugs and organized crime. He takes foreign journalists to where the action is, arranges safe transportation and accommodation, finds
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By KRISTAL SOTOMAYOR and HANSEN BURSIC Strong, meaningful allyship is one of the most powerful tools we have to change our industry for the better. Over the last few months, an important discussion has been brought back into the mainstream about what industry leaders and filmmakers can do to support Trans folks. Additionally, several of the Disclosure Trans Industry Toolkits have been made available at discounted rates. IDA has partnered on the toolkits to provide feedback. Following last week's Sundance Collab, GLAAD, and IDA panel on the tool kits and being that it's Trans Awareness Week, we
By KRISTAL SOTOMAYOR and HANSEN BURSIC Strong, meaningful allyship is one of the most powerful tools we have to change our industry for the better. Over the last few months, an important discussion has been brought back into the mainstream about what industry leaders and filmmakers can do to support Trans folks. Additionally, several of the Disclosure Trans Industry Toolkits have been made available at discounted rates. IDA has partnered on the toolkits to provide feedback. Following last week's Sundance Collab, GLAAD, and IDA panel on the tool kits and being that it's Trans Awareness Week, we
Watching Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing has been nothing less than transformative. Not because it compels one to think beyond the realms of everyday but because in the everyday mundane lies the “life-altering.” The film is based on love letters written almost like a soliloquy by a young woman, identified as “L,” to her estranged partner, “K,” whose elusive presence is felt throughout the 97-minute film and yet feels like sand slipping away. At first, one grapples with the improbability of L’s deep longing. One ponders if this urgent longing, loss, and vaguely postmortem sutures of
Katsitsionni Fox is an artist, filmmaker and educator. She is Bear Clan from the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. Her debut film was the award-winning Ohero:kon—Under the Husk, a 26-minute documentary that follows the journey of two Mohawk girls as they take part in traditional passage rites to becoming Mohawk women. This film received funding from Vision Maker Media and has been broadcast on many PBS stations since 2017. Her most recent film is the award-winning Without a Whisper—Konnón:kwe, the untold story of how Indigenous women influenced the early suffragists in their fight for freedom and
IDA has announced the 37th Annual IDA Documentary Awards nominees for all categories as well as the winners for two sponsored awards. The winners for all other categories will be announced at the awards ceremony on Saturday, February 5, 2022 at Paramount Studios, Los Angeles.
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! Filmmaker Rintu Thomas’ recent film Writing With Fire (co-directed and co-produced with Sushmit Ghosh) is our Logan Elevate grantee. She and Ghosh will also be receiving our Courage Under Fire Award this year. For the Chicken & Egg Pictures blog, Thomas writes about her journey making this film and the connections it helped her build. For the "world premiere," we sat
I was originally drawn to a career in film because of the power of storytelling to influence and inspire. But storytelling, I have since realized, is not limited to any particular medium. From the stories we form about ourselves in childhood to the stories we absorb from our environment, personal narrative is the foundation of our mental health. It impacts the way we view the world and how we imagine its possibilities. I have spent the majority of my career in film distribution, helping artists tell their stories. I began my career in the studio world but ultimately left to work in social
Last June my debut feature film Pray Away premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is a career milestone I am grateful for, and one I’ll never forget for many reasons. This includes having experienced the majority of said premiere overwhelmed and half-topless in a production trailer behind the big screen. Why, you ask? I was pumping milk for my then two-and-a-half month baby. In these first few months of new parenthood, I've learned that behind the countless “moms in film” panels and hashtags, there is not enough tangible support in our industry or culture for parents. I felt this having to
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. It’s Noirvember! Kick off your celebrations with the " Film Noir" episode of PBS’ American Cinema series, which is now available on YouTube. Directed by Jeffrey Schon and hosted by John Lithgow, the documentary walks the audiences through the history of film noir and includes interviews with several filmmakers from across cinematic ages. We’ve known Wuhan for a variety of reasons over the last few years. Back in 2007, filmmaker Weijun Chen made Please Vote For Me, which is