Justine Armen is a documentary film producer based in Oakland, California. She is currently the Executive Coordinator at ITVS and has been working in the documentary field since 2012. Justine is passionate about social equity, criminal legal system reform, prison abolishment, and supporting womxn of color in the arts. IDA: Tell us about yourself: what is your profession (or passion), and what are some of the notable projects you’ve worked on? JUSTINE ARMEN: I’m originally from San Diego, I’m a beach baby. I grew up dreaming of being a writer/editor and I studied English Lit in school. I’m
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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! Following last week’s Oscar nominations, The Wrap’s Steve Pond, spoke to Collective director Alexander Nanau about his ambivalence over his film earning the first-ever nominations for his native Romania. “I don’t really have these patriotic feelings,” he told TheWrap on Monday. “We live in an international community, and I think stories have to travel. The pride is
Director/producer Maria Finitzo finished editing The Dilemma of Desire in winter 2019—just before COVID-19 entered our vocabularies. The film uncovers the myths and lies that women are being told about their own bodies. The documentary sheds light on not only what the female clitoris is, but also why women’s sexual desires are often pushed to the wayside. With the #MeToo movement still in full swing, there couldn’t be a more appropriate time to launch a documentary about gender politics and women’s libidos into the world. But the pandemic delayed that launch. The film was scheduled to have its
Dear IDA Community, We are taking this opportunity to introduce ourselves to you as the new Executive Committee of the IDA Board of Directors. In the spirit of greater transparency, we want to use this space to keep in regular contact about IDA and its future.
Editor’s Note: Judy Irola, producer, director, cinematographer and educator, died February 22 due to complications from COVID-19. Irola was a pioneer—only the third female member of the American Society of Cinematographers, she launched her career in the late ‘60s, in San Francisco at KQED-TV’s documentary film unit. Over the next few decades, as one of the few women working behind the camera in indie filmmaking, she shot over 50 features and documentaries. Her first feature, Northern Lights , won the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979. In 1993 An Ambush of Ghosts garnered
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering March 16 on WORLD Channel as part of America ReFramed, Olga Lvoff’s Busy Inside explores the intricacies and complexities of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)—formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, a condition that fascinates and puzzles modern psychiatry. The film introduces viewers to those who live with DID, bringing viewers into their inner world. Premiering March 18 on discovery+, Groomed, from Gwen van de Pas, tells the powerful story of the
While the documentary field has only become more and more inclusive over the last few years, the more formative role of women in the documentary artform has been largely ignored, both in academia and mainstream film history. As Cynthia Close writes, in her book review in Documentary magazine of Shilyh Warren’s Subject to Reality: Women and Documentary Film, “[Female filmmakers] continue to be underrepresented and their early contributions to the genre struggle to assume their rightful place in the canon.” Moreover, the films of numerous female pioneers in early cinema, including Japan’s Tazuko
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! Writing for No Film School, Mythily Ramachandran talks to filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh about their Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary Writing with Fire, which tells the story of a group of Dalit women in the Uttar Pradesh state of India who start up a newspaper, then a digital platform that calls the power structure into account. “As a
An omnibus project from the DCTV Youth Media Program, COVID Diaries NYC, which began airing March 9 on HBO, is exactly what its title implies—a cinematic journaling of sorts from five young New Yorkers (the team includes Marcial Pilataxi, Aracelie Colón, Camille Dianand, Shane Fleming and Arlet Guallpa, with original animation provided by Rosemary Colón-Martinez) forced to navigate the many landmines of budding adulthood during a once-in-a-century pandemic. Ranging in age from 17 to 21, and of varying backgrounds and ethnicities, the quintet all bravely place themselves and their equally
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now streaming on Starz, RUTH—Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words, from 2019 IDA Career Achievement Award honoree Freida Lee Mock, takes an intimate look at the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her inspiring rise to the highest court in the land. Along the way, the film explores through archival footage of Ginsburg herself, how she broke down barriers in her personal and professional life, and she became an iconic advocate for gender equality and women’s rights