In a time of uncertainty, there is one thing that COVID-19 made clear: hybrid film festivals are the wave of the future. On August 3, Sundance Festival Director Tabitha Jackson announced that Utah will no longer be the sole home to the Sundance Film Festival. Instead, the next incarnation of Sundance will take place from January 20–30, 2022—not only in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Mountain Resort, but also digitally via 10 satellite partners stationed across the United States. And while in-person screenings in Utah will happen next year, doors will only be open to those who have
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Letting Amazon buy MGM studios would be bad for independent filmmakers, and the people who love their films. It could make today’s bad situation worse. The proposed merger is before the Federal Trade Commission, now headed by Lina Khan, a fierce supporter of revitalizing antitrust enforcement. Now, the Strategic Organizing Center, a major labor coalition, has submitted a letter to the FTC explaining why it is a bad idea. The International Documentary Association contributed knowledge to the letter, as did I, as well as other scholars, distributors, filmmakers and producers. Here’s why every
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Maya Cade, who works as an Audience Strategist at The Criterion Collection, has painstakingly pulled together a collection of Black films made between 1915 and 1979, that are currently streaming. It's called the Black Film Archive and as it says on the website, “Every word on Black Film Archive is thoroughly researched and lovingly written by her.” It is a treasure trove and also a testament to how limited our viewing habits are. Thanks to Cade, changing that is easier than
It is no secret that the Fourth Estate has been under attack in recent years. Journalism, once perceived as a noble profession, has been dragged through the muck by right-wing pundits and politicians, its integrity and efficacy called into question by those with little or no integrity of their own. Enter the summer of 2018, when an unlikely and unexpected ally emerged: Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist bequeathed $20 million to the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Newmark was quoted as saying: “In this time, when trustworthy news is under attack
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! Variety’s Addie Morfoot interviews TIFF’s documentary programmer, Thom Powers, and other filmmakers with films in this year’s lineup. While many docs submitted for consideration this year were pandemic-related, Powers decided to keep the lineup COVID-free. “I felt like we had a great film about COVID last year in 76 Days” says Powers. “The challenge for films about
For over four weeks, a small team of colleagues from the D-Word online community has been frantically working to help our list of 75 Afghan nationals; some are documentary professionals, some are extremely high-risk young people, some are single women who have worked in TV journalism and women’s rights, and some are folks who collaborated closely with the US and are in deep danger. Over these four weeks, many of us have worked 18-hour days without a break to build pathways of aid. We have become deeply versed in the challenges, the evacuation options, the legal processes. We count as new
Each year, the Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ film festival hosts some of the best queer and transgender cinema in the world. It’s a chance to catch films that were misunderstood by straight programmers or rejected by festivals because they were “niche.” But more than any of that, festivals like Outfest provide a much-needed space for community, both for filmmakers and enthusiasts. This year, more than ever, we needed this space to celebrate the stories that don’t fit neatly in a box and reject straight sensibilities. Erased Histories and Reframing Narratives Each year a new powerful slate of
By Marissa Woods and Patricia Aufderheide The need for journalism about documentary filmmaking has never been greater. But this work is underfunded, undervalued, too little and too white, says a new report from American University’s Center for Media & Social Impact. A big part of the problem is that documentary filmmakers have never established any shared standards for journalists to hold them to. Raising the Alarm In an interview about his most recent film Roadrunner (2021), director Morgan Neville cheerfully revealed that he used artificial intelligence to recreate the voice of Anthony
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The New York Times critic James Poniewozik recently wrote in this piece, “Is 9/11 a Day, or Is It an Era?”: “For 20 years, the refrain has been: Remember, remember, remember. Memory is so ingrained in the language of Sept. 11 — “Never forget” — as to imply that it is obligatory, and sufficient, for future generations merely to remember by revisiting the narrative and imagery of one terrible day, rather than to connect it to the years of history that followed.” As important as
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! Variety’s Manori Ravindran reports on the unfortunate turn of events at the Sheffield Doc Fest. We stand in solidarity with the programming team. “The exchange established between artists and curators over the last two years to develop an artistic approach to various aspects of the festival is now in vain,” reads the statement. “What is the future of the artistic