A Love Song for Latasha, the Academy Award-nominated short from Sophia Nahli Allison, opens with the rewind of a VCR tape image, a slow breath of ocean waves in front of a young black girl in a flowy dress. Narration follows from Latasha Harlins’ best friend Ty retelling how they met after Latasha saved her from bullies at the swimming pool. You may think that you already know Latasha Harlins’ story after seeing the widely circulated media footage of the last few minutes of her life in 1991, when she was gunned down by a convenience store owner in South Los Angeles, where Allison grew up. But
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Imagine a space where filmmakers can discuss the issues they are facing in their careers and find a community of support. The Undocumented Filmmakers Collective (UFC) is that safe, inclusive space. “We're like roommates that are virtually living together,” says Set Hernandez Rongkilyo, co-founder of UFC and director of the documentary COVER/AGE, which he made in conjunction with California Immigrant Policy Center. Communicating from around the US, the group relies on Zoom calls to discuss pressing topics. “For the most part, sometimes we would have seven-hour Zoom calls,” Hernadez Rongkilyo
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Although he did not capture the Best Actor Oscar for his final role, in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Chadwick Boseman made his mark in his short, incandescent life as one of the finest actors of his generation. Chadwick Boseman: Portrait of an Artist, streaming on Netflix through May 17, captures scenes from his meteoric career, as well as testimonials from some of the artists who worked with him: Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, George C. Wolfe, Branford Marsalis
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 Justine Smith argues for Oscar categories for documentary editing and cinematography. The days of nonfiction film as a niche are over. Encouraging greater understanding and appreciation for how documentaries are made could serve an essential role in increasing media literacy. This may be overly optimistic, since most of the public and Academy voting
Sue Kim is the daughter of Korean immigrants. She was raised in Detroit, Michigan, and she graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English Literature. Before moving into documentary filmmaking, she spent 20 years as a commercial producer, making award-winning content for brands like Nike and Adidas. Her directorial debut, The Speed Cubers, follows the lives of two Rubik’s Cube-solving champions, Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs and the friendship that ensues. The film premiered on Netflix in July 2020, and has been nominated for a Critics Choice Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award for
Newly appointed IDA Funds and Enterprise Program Director Poh Si Teng is no stranger to challenges in nonfiction storytelling. From her childhood as an ethnic and religious minority in Malaysia, where media is heavily regulated by the state, to her experiences working as a journalist in predominantly white newsrooms in the United States, Poh has a deep understanding of the interplay between media, politics and power. She brings an impressive array of global experience to IDA. She worked as independent filmmaker in India for years, and then as an award-winning staff reporter for The New York
Beth Bird—filmmaker, activist, educator, scholar, former IDA Board member, wife, mother—passed away on March 28; she had been struggling with cancer. She was 54. Beth, by all accounts, was both a passionate advocate and a compassionate listener. She pursued her life and her art with an open heart and an open mind. Her educational trajectory—from Brown University to CalArts to UC Irvine to UC Berkeley—laid the foundation for her filmmaking practice, one for which she earned multiple awards. Her 2004 film Everyone Their Grain of Sand documented the impact of globalization on land ownership in
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The 93rd Academy Award Nominations are out, and with it are the five incredible mini-narratives in the running for Best Documentary Short Subject. This year's nominees' topics range from the 2019-2020 Hong Kong Protests to the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising—the films are sharp, succinct and powerful explorations of these deeply political incidents and histories. Take a look at the contenders and find out where to stream them before the ceremony on April 25, 2021. Do Not Split
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 Yorker’s Richard Brody examines Raoul Peck’s new series Exterminate All the Brutes, a contemplation of the history of white supremacy. For Peck, the goal of his historical analysis isn’t only to elucidate current events, it’s to inspire activism and to achieve change: “What must be denounced here is not so much the reality of the Native American genocide, or
After living in relative captivity for more than a year, sharing our work lives through the flatness of Zoom meetings and events, and talking actively about racial justice, inclusivity and equality in a post-George Floyd world, I can’t help but wonder how our interactions will be different when we go back to the in-person space. The pandemic has opened the possibilities of how we can network, exchange ideas and collaborate remotely. While going through it, we have been shaken and forced to truly evaluate how non-inclusive the documentary industry has been at all levels, from leaders in our