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If CPH:DOX is any indication (and it usually is), 2021 seems set to see a transformation in sociopolitical nonfiction cinema. Rather than, say, merely probe the psychological motives behind intriguing bad apples, a slew of films are now choosing to use their characters as conduits—as a means to explore the systems enabling said individuals, and to instead hold our collective actions and inactions accountable. As Ed Snowden notes in Sonia Kennebeck’s United States vs Reality Winner (which screened in the "Justice" section), "There are going to be people, in every time and every place, who see

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. When filmmaker Sean Wang wasn’t sure of the whole adulting thing, he decided to call his middle-school friends. The result is an extremely well-edited collage of voices, animation, yearbook photos, and a lot of laughter. The New York Times Op-Docs' H.A.G.S. (Have a Good Summer) will make you laugh, cry, and feel nostalgic about what we thought were the best years of our lives. Or not. If you haven’t had a chance to watch Frederic Wiseman’s City Hall yet, head over to MUBI

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! Hyperallergic’s Forrest Cardamenis speaks to Theo Anthony about the filmmaker’s research on the historical roots of camera and surveillance technologies, which has led to the making of the recently released All Light, Everywhere. The important thing to understand about a lot of these technology companies is that they’re always waging this PR war of their own. They’re

Lewis Erskine, ACE, was one of the finest documentary editors around but, per the tributes that we’ve gathered from friends and colleagues, that was just one of the many things he was. In fact, he didn’t even want to be an editor at first. In a speech he delivered at the 2017 Sundance Institute and Karen Schmeer Fellowship Art of Editing Lunch, he admitted, “I didn’t set out to edit; I quit college to mix sound. I was going to work in the recording studio, I was going to make records.” While he could’ve opted to stay in the studio, we are fortunate that he chose to grace our world in a myriad

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Frederick Bernas and Ana González’s The New Yorker documentary Flamenco Queer introduces us to Manuel Liñán, a flamenco dancer and choreographer who disrupts the gendered binaries that codify the dance form. As we witness Liñán break convention, we realize the immense debt we owe to queer artists for making our worlds both beautiful and equitable. A perfect homage for Pride month. In PBS’ Ballerina Boys (Directed and Produced by Chana Gazit and Martie Barylick), the all-male

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! Over at Screen Daily, London International Smartphone Film Festival’s co-director Adam Gee writes a manifesto of sorts for smartphone filmmaking and makes a case for the efficiency and diversity the medium offers. Smartphones chime in perfectly with the issues of diversity that have come to the fore in the industry globally in the last year. They offer an immediate

The documentary community is filled with tough pros, but surely all of us can spare a thought for a festival that had to deal with the first outburst of COVID-19 last spring and was forced to work around the pandemic again this year. In Toronto, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival became renowned over 20 years ago not only for showcasing the best new documentaries but also for its uncanny luck in always having their event during the first genuinely warm week of spring. While the chilly weather continued unabated during this year’s virtual festival (April 29-May 9), the

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The Tulsa Massacre is one the most horrific episodes of racial violence in American history, and it continues to be overlooked by most textbooks and history syllabi in the country. This year marks a century since 35 blocks of thriving Black businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District were burned to the ground by white supremacists, resulting in a massive loss of lives and Black-owned businesses. To commemorate the tragedy, and to honor the longstanding history of Black

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! The New York Times’ Osayi Endolyn writes about the new Netflix limited series High on the Hog (Dir.: Roger Ross Williams), which she calls a “long overdue nuanced celebration of African Americans and their food.” Black joy has always been politicized in the United States, because Blackness was codified to justify social oppression and extreme, race-based wealth. Our

By Coley Gray and Patricia Aufderheide The 2021 True/False Film Festival split into two, one in-person and another virtual. Both featured the high-touch approach that this unique festival offers and neither was much like what True/Falsers remember from earlier fests. True/False has evolved into a festival that doesn’t just feature documentaries, but puts the question of what makes a documentary center-stage. It’s not just a film festival, but a performative celebration of creativity. The college town of Columbia, Missouri sprouts pop-up art galleries everywhere, buskers open the film