“Memories, that is all you travel with,” Ibrahim Mohammed, a young man from Harar, Ethiopia, tells a much younger Mohammed Arif in Jessica Beshir’s debut feature documentary, Faya Dayi. Beshir, like the men in her film, grew up in Harar. “It was the Cold War and Harar was a military strategic point. My father is a surgeon, and I grew up in the hospital watching droves of soldiers coming in from the front,” Beshir tells Documentary, shortly before the theatrical release of her film, following a festival run at Sundance, Hot Docs, Full Frame and others. She moved to Mexico during Ethiopia’s
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Since last summer, I’ve been reflecting on what the poet/essayist Cathy Park Hong describes as “minor feelings.” She identifies these as a range of negative emotions, built from racial experiences of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed. It reminded me of the countless times I’ve been asked, “Where are you from?” as a way for white strangers to signify my foreignness even after I disclose I’m a second-generation Korean-American. Whenever these microaggressions occur, I find myself contemplating whether or not I should feel upset or brush it off as unintentional
Richard Ray (“Rick”) Pérez took the helm as executive director of IDA this past May, following a six-year period of expansion, growth, impact and innovation under the leadership of Simon Kilmurry. Pérez brings to the table a 20-year career in documentary, and a tangential association with IDA throughout those two decades. As a filmmaker, he made Unprecedented: The 2020 Presidential Election with then-IDA Board Member Joan Sekler; his second feature, Cesar’s Last Fast, was a project in IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program; he has moderated various panels and convenings at IDA’s biennial Getting
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. If you feel like starting the week on a sweet note, watch DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ 2009 documentary Kings of Pastry on Criterion Channel. Join in as the adrenaline runs high in the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France—the Olympics-like intense three-day competition where the best French pastry chefs bake it out. From France to rural southern India. In Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Timbaktu, streaming on YouTube, a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh takes over acres of barren
The 10th Annual BlackStar Film Festival, which took place in Philadelphia and online from August 3-8, could not have been timelier. After nearly 18 months of increased coverage surrounding the state-sanctioned murders of unarmed Black people and the disparities revealed in COVID-19’s impact on global communities of color, the long-held resilience of these communities has been taxed. I am no stranger to this weariness as I have personally been overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness against the racist and white supremacist systems that continue to perpetrate and perpetuate injustice. But one
On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadors and their allies, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes returned to the locations of his hybrid work, 499 . Reyes screened his film throughout Mexico, with the protagonists in attendance; he also hosted a series of dialogues around the current crisis of violence in Mexico and its relationship to a history of five centuries of oppression. Here, Reyes shares some impressions from the journal entries he wrote during the tour which concluded earlier this month. Returning Eduardo arrived from Madrid
Dear IDA Community: We are excited to share that IDA will begin programming in-person public events in Los Angeles this fall. These events will complement our ongoing virtual events to ensure we serve our community wherever you are. As we re-introduce the in-person component of our public programming we will prioritize the health and safety of our members, audiences and IDA staff. With this in mind I would like to update you on the safety measures IDA is putting in place for our upcoming events. We now require that all IDA staff, volunteers and attendees be fully vaccinated against COVID-19
Youth movements have changed the world and revolutionized the way we organize against systems of oppression. From Freedom Summer to the March For Our Lives, young people have been at the forefront of some of the most radical and important activism of nearly every generation. In honor of students returning back to school and all youth who endured one of the most challenging years, this Docs to Watch features nine documentaries that celebrate young activists who look adults in the eye and say “no more.” Changing The Game (Michael Barnett, 2019) This year saw one of the most vicious attacks
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. In this 2019 documentary from Germany-based DW Documentary, Afghanistan—Land of Endless War, the narrators are all women. They talk about their hopes, their fears, and the many ways in which war has shaped their identities. The film is a revelation in the way it makes us reexamine our biases against Muslim women of Afghanistan. In BBC’s Afghanistan in the 1950s: Back to the Future, Afghan journalist Saeeda Mahmood, introduces us to the Afghanistan that existed before it
IDA is excited to launch our new MyIDA portal today for all IDA members! This improved platform will make accessing your member benefits and engagement with the IDA easier than it's ever been before.