On September 7, 2020, Michael Rose, a dear friend of IDA, died of complications from a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. His wife and creative partner, Carol King, was by his side until the end. Michael served on IDA’s Board of Directors for four years, but he didn’t just serve—he worked. Michael really enjoyed IDA. We were his people. He made friends easily with other Board members and loved working with creators, editors, writers and emerging filmmakers. He knew how to tell stories, both the glossy variety and the hard-hitting issue-oriented docs. His love for nonfiction filmmaking came
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The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced their annual curated screening series lineup, which begins Thursday, October 8 with a screening of Amazon Studios’ Time, directed by Garrett Bradley.
Dujuan Hoosan is a precocious 10-year-old from Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Australia, considered a healer by his Arrernte tribe and a delinquent by his colonialist-minded school. For more than two years, Australian documentarian Maya Newell followed Dujuan, capturing both quotidian moments and broader patterns of racism, with special focus on the educational and juvenile detention systems.
One of the more unlikely Instagram stars of our “Trump Show” era (with 2.3 million followers and counting), Pete Souza is likewise a surprising choice to star in a documentary. (Which of course is one reason Documentary has chosen Souza as our September Doc Star of the Month.) Having arguably spent more time around the Oval Office than any US president, the Chief Official White House Photographer to President Barack Obama (from 2009-2017) and White House Photographer to President Ronald Reagan before that (from 1983-1989), Souza now allows the spotlight to be turned on himself in Dawn Porter’s
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now streaming through October 5, the Vision Maker Film Festival, presented by Vision Maker Media, is a free showcase for the best in American Indian, Alaska Native and worldwide Indigenous films. Accompanying the films, the festival is hosting a series of conversations and panels with the filmmakers in the festival. The 1991 shooting death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins at a South Central Los Angeles convenience store became a flashpoint for the 1992 civil uprising in LA
Since our founding in 2016, the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) has grown to include over 300 members from 53 cities, eight countries and counting. Originally founded to advocate for producers whose role was misunderstood and chronically underpaid, the DPA’s work allowed us to realize that the issues we were facing were not due to our professional failures but to systemic ones larger than ourselves. Our goal as an organization is to identify and advocate for best practices for a field that is largely unregulated.
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! Fast Company’s KC Ifeanyi catches up with filmmaker Jeff Orlowski about his latest doc, The Social Dilemma, about how the digital giants heavily influence human behavior and politics. “Everybody’s on their own island of thought now, and you see the algorithms are customizing a worldview for each and every one of us,” Orlowski continues. “And it becomes more and more
Lisa Cortés and Liz Garbus’ new documentary 'All In: The Fight for Democracy,' explores the long history of voter suppression in the USA, with Georgia's 2018 governor race as a focal point.
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang’s Our Time Machine opens September 11 in over 35 virtual cinemas nationwide through Walking Iris Media and POV. The film, winner of the Best Cinematography Award at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, is a personal and intimate look at Chinese artist Maleonn (Ma Liang) as he sets out to stage an ambitious performance piece about time and memory when his father, Ma Ke, the former artistic director of the Shanghai Chinese Opera Theater, is diagnosed with
One of filmmaker Judith Helfand’s earliest works, the Peabody Award-winning A Healthy Baby Girl, documents her diagnosis with cervical cancer—the result of a drug (diethylstilbestrol, or DES), that Helfand’s mother was prescribed to prevent miscarriage and ensure the health of her child. Decades later, Helfand underwent a radical hysterectomy, and while she was recovering at home, she started filming. A Healthy Baby Girl documents not only the love she and her mother shared, but also the filmmaker’s political awakening and commitment to community activism. Some 25 years, many films and two