Safe to say that Joy Buolamwini, civil rights star of both the tech world and of Shalini Kantayya’s Coded Bias, a globetrotting investigation into how the building blocks of AI (built, of course, almost exclusively by straight white men) have basically charted a course for systemically embedding universal inequality into our everyday lives, never set out to be either. The MIT Media Lab researcher just wanted to create a feel-good “aspire mirror” (which she eventually did) and was having trouble getting the facial-recognition software to see her face. This sent Buolamwini, a Rhodes Scholar and
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The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced that executive director, Simon Kilmurry, will step down in mid-2021.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering November 23 on Independent Lens, Erika Cohn’s Belly of the Beast tracks down a previously little-known story about enforced—and illegal—sterilization of female inmates in California's correctional facilities. For nearly 40 years after a 1979 law was passed in California banning enforced sterilization, this practice continued with impunity in prisons. Premiering November 17 on WORLD CHANNEL, Drew Nicholas’ Blood Memory follows Sandy White Hawk, who at age 18 months
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’ Holland Cotter reviews two concurrent shows featuring the work of Indigenous American filmmaker Sky Hopinka. The video suggests that Mr. Hopinka finds himself, despite his ethnicity, having doubts about his role here. Supporter? Recorder? Critic? His panoramic shots of sprawling camps and wide-open landscapes catch the epic tenor of the occasion
I attended my first conference in yoga pants and a t-shirt with snacks and a coffee mug on my desk, a cat and dog, and stretch breaks whenever I wanted.
The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards honorary awards recipients.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. November is Native American Heritage Month, and WORLD Channel and Vision Maker Media are commemorating with a rich showcase of work from the Indigenous community, entitled We Are Still Here. Among the films in the showcase include Warrior Women, by Getting Real 2020 Programmer Christina D. King and Elizabeth Castle, which, through the stories of Indigenous rights activists Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert, explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood 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! The New York Times Magazine’s David Marchese profiles teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg, in conjunction with Nathan Grossman’s forthcoming documentary, I Am Greta. I hope it can be a bridge for people to understand that we are in a crisis. I would maybe like it if the movie was less focused on me and more focused on the science. But I understand that it’s
The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced the appointment of five new members to its Board of Directors: Hallee Adelman, Grace Lee, Al Perry, Amir Shahkhalili, and Marcia Smith.
Director Zeshawn Ali and producer Aman Ali premiered their first feature-length documentary Two Gods at Hot Docs in June in the midst of a global pandemic and a swath of uprisings for racial justice. The film takes you to Newark, New Jersey, where Hanif, a Muslim casket-maker and ritual body-washer, finds purpose and spiritual grounding in his work. He transforms that purpose into mentoring younger men in the community, specifically his son, as well as two other charges, Naz and Furquan. Together they learn from each other about life and life’s lessons and what the future may hold. Two Gods