NBCUniversal and Telemundo, ABC and Univision, Fox and Colombia’s RCN—all of these major networks recognize the opportunities in providing content to the growing U.S. Latino and Hispanic population and the importance of including second-generation viewers who want content in English and Spanish. The demand for content is as diverse as the viewership and includes the full spectrum of non-fiction programming, from news to lifestyle programming to documentary series.

As a documentary filmmaker, how can you leverage the opportunities available with this new demand for content? What stories are programmers seeking, and how does your doc fit into the picture? How can you incorporate these new outlets into your distribution plan?

On Monday, October 15, join Moises Velez, IDA Board Member and Peabody award-winning Director of Development & Current Programming for NBC Universal-owned cable network mun2, and a panel of content creators, programmers, and industry influencers for a discussion of the new programming outlets and how you can participate in the opportunities to be found. Panelists include Luis Ortiz, Managing Director at Latino Public Broadcasting and filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor (New Muslim Cool, Home Front).

Co-presenters with IDA of this event are the Latino Film Fund and NALIP.

Register for this Doc U today! IDA Members and Students receive special rates—see the previous link for more details.

The International Documentary Association invites you to cast your vote for the best documentary films of the year!

For the third year in a row, IDA members will decide the winners in the Best Feature category and in the Best Short category of the IDA Documentary Awards. Current IDA members who meet our judging requirements will be able to view the nominated films and cast their votes online from anywhere in the world!

Nominees will be announced October 24. You must register by November 1 to be eligible for consideration as a judge.

IDA members who agree to the official rules can register now to be an official judge. Not a member? Learn more about the perks of membership today!

TheWrap.com, NPR, and several other news outlets have announced that Syrian documentary filmmaker and festival director Orwa Nyrabia has been released from custody after it was announced he was missing from Damascus International Airport on August 23.

Below is the full report from NPR:

A Syrian documentary film producer whose disappearance two weeks ago prompted concerns for his safety and a letter of support from the Toronto International Film Festival is now free, according to reports.

The European Documentary Network website announced today that, "Finally the good news came, that Orwa Nyrabia, Syrian film producer and director of the Syrian film festival DOX BOX, who was arrested August 23 at Damascus International Airport, has been set free."

The site had no more details about Nyrabia or where he spent the more than two weeks since he disappeared at the airport. But it is widely believed that he was in the custody of Syria's intelligence services (emphasis from IDA). Nyrabia had been bound for Cairo; alarm over his disappearance spread after his wife, Diana El-Jeiroudi, was told that he never boarded his flight.

Last week, the Toronto International Film Festival expressed what it called "grave concern" for Nyrabia. A statement from the festival noted that "Nyrabia belongs to the emerging generation of Syrian filmmakers passionate about world cinema and passionate about freedom."

Celebrities such as Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, and Danny Boyle have called for Nyrabia's release, using both letters and a video. And today, actor Khalid Abdalla tweeted that he had been in touch with Nyrabia since his release: "Orwa is out. Confirmed. Spoke to him. He sounds beautiful, as always."

News of his release was welcomed by attendees at the Toronto festival. And it came days after the death of Syrian filmmaker Tamer al-Awam, who died in Aleppo, "where he was filming the bombardment of civilian neighborhoods," as The New York Times reported.

Nyrabia runs the DOX BOX festival, which brings international documentaries to Syria. The festival was essentially cancelled this spring, as organizers decided to send the films to other festivals around the world, in light of the violence that by then had taken hold in Syria.

Have you ever considered making the leap from film to radio docs? The Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org, is opening the door wide to new voices and styles of non-U.S. storytelling with the Global Story Project. It's a competitive open call for audio storytelling proposals from anyone: fresh reporting, reworking of archival or classic works, new approaches to production and, most importantly, a chance for new voices to be heard. "Time is short and [they] have about $50,000 to work with," so you better hurry! The deadline is fast approaching on Mon., Oct. 15th. 

https://prx.submittable.com/submit

Filmmaker Arnold Shapiro and the Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program and Fund will both be honored at the upcoming 28th Annual IDA Documentary Awards on Friday, December 7, 2012 in Los Angeles. Now in its 28th year, the IDA Documentary Awards is the foremost event dedicated to the art of documentary film. While the winners for Best Feature, Short, Limited and Continuing Series, and others will not be announced until the event, we wanted to announce our honorees for both the Career Achievement and Pioneer Award a little ahead of time.

The IDA will award its prestigious 2012 Career Achievement Award to producer Arnold Shapiro. Arnold is the Oscar and Emmy Award-winning producer, director, writer of the documentary Scared Straight! Among his other 150 awards are 16 Emmys including the Governors’ Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, three Humanitas Prizes, The People's Choice Award, and the George Foster Peabody Award. Arnold has produced 33 series including CBS's Rescue 911 and Big Brother, and the current A&E hit series, Beyond Scared Straight; four CBS-TV movies, two prime time CBS drama specials, and more than 90 documentaries and specials. Arnold has produced documentary programs for CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, UPN, PBS and 14 cable networks from A&E to HBO.

The IDA Career Achievement Award is given to a filmmaker who has made a major impact on the documentary genre through a long and distinguished body of work. In previous years, IDA has bestowed its Career Achievement Award on documentary luminaries such as Barbara Kopple, Errol Morris, Michael Moore and Les Blank.

Today, the IDA also announced that the organization's Pioneer Award will be presented to Sundance Institute's groundbreaking Documentary Film Program and Fund (DFP). Established in 2002 with a gift from the Open Society Institute with leadership support from Ford Foundation's Just Films initiative (among others), the DFP is a leading creative and financial resource for contemporary-issue nonfiction filmmakers worldwide. Each year the DFP grants and awards $1-2 million to independent documentary films and conducts a portfolio of Creative Labs and Fellows programs at Sundance Resort, Sundance Film Festival and elsewhere. Under the direction of Cara Mertes, the DFP also convenes events and forges partnerships globally to draw new resources to the non-fiction field, and to amplify the use of film as a tool for impact and motivate change towards more open and equitable societies. In its ten years, the DFP has supported over 425 films including Kirby Dick's The Invisible War, Patricio Guzmàn's Nostalgia For The Light, Leonard Retel Helmrich's Position Among The Stars, Josh Fox's Gasland, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Trouble The Water, and Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski's Born Into Brothels.

The Pioneer Award is presented by IDA to acknowledge extraordinary contributions to advancing the non- fiction form and providing exceptional vision and leadership to the documentary community. Past recipients of IDA’s Pioneer Award include Alan and Susan Raymond, Rob Epstein, Mel Stuart and Paula Apsell.

For more on the 28th Annual IDA Documentary Awards, please visit the Awards homepage.

Read the full press release here.

In honor of a few highly motivating stories of individuals who have moved mountains to affect change, we gathered three filmmakers from our DocuWeeks Theatrical Showcase and asked them to answer one major question: What does it mean to document change? We asked a seasoned filmmaker Amanda Pope, who lectures on documentary production at USC, to moderate a panel of filmmakers to attempt to answer just this question. Joined by Nicole Karsin (director, We Women Warriors), Patrick Shen (director, La Source), and Sandra Itkoff (producer, Love Free or Die), Amanda set out to get right to the heart of the challenges, joys, and rewarding moments of filming tumultuous and evolving issues.

Amanda opened by asking each of the panelists to give the "elevator pitch" for the films they had entered in DocuWeeks. In case you didn’t have the time to see any of these films in their runs at both IFC Center in New York or Laemmle Noho 7 in Los Angeles, here’s a little bit on each of them:

Love Free or Die is about a man whose two defining passions are in direct conflict: his love for God and his partner Mark. Gene Robinson is the first openly gay person to become a bishop in the historical traditions of Christendom. The film follows Robinson around the world as he calls for all to stand for equality.

La Source tells the uplifting story of Josue Lajuenesse, a Haitian Princeton janitor who returns to his country after the devastating 2010 earthquake to revive his lifelong dream to bring what is most fundamental to his village’s survival: clean water.

We Women Warriors follows three native women caught in the crossfire of Colombia’s warfare who use nonviolent resistance to defend their people’s survival. Colombia has 102 aboriginal groups, one-third of which face extinction because of the conflict. Trapped in a protracted predicament financed by the drug trade, indigenous women are resourcefully leading and creating transformation imbued with hope.

Some major themes of the panel were defining the importance of change in conceiving the initial project, the concept of objectivity or "fairness" in telling a story, and advice on ways to properly prepare for all stages of production.

Each filmmaker took a moment to address the process they went through to conceive and convey the change that would unfold in their stories. Nicole Karsin said that she wanted to show these brave women who were in desperate situations because of armed conflict, and how they overcame their circumstances through bravery and resistance. Along with change obviously comes advocacy, which Nicole agreed was a major reason behind making her film. Sandra jumped in, saying that to every story there is always another side that can be told compassionately. In her film Love Free or Die, they worked hard to show the other side in a good light. Sandra, and everyone on the panel for that matter, understood the importance of respecting the opponent.

Patrick knew how prevalent social issue documentaries are nowadays, and even before he started shooting he decided to take a narrative approach. "We consciously wanted to tell a story about a person," Patrick emphasized.

The conversation then moved on to focus on issues of objectivity. Nicole mentioned early on that she didn't believe in objectivity—everything about the filmmaking process involves a conscious decision, right down to where the camera's lens is pointing. Amanda emphasized how important it is to get permission before one starts filming so that a filmmaker is covered legally by a contract. This doesn't, however, entirely remove ethical responsibility. Your subjects, Amanda said, "will sometimes open up in ways that could be damaging to them socially, morally or politically." This is why it is so important for a filmmaker to consider whether any of the material one has collected could be potentially harmful to one's subjects. "It's important," Amanda stated, to know your subject better than anyone else."

Sandra had just such an experience when she was making her film, Love Free or Die. In the very beginning stages of production, the filmmakers interviewed the bishop of Massachusetts, a man who was gay but never officially came out. He lived a completely closeted life, sitting in in the shadows while Bishop Robinson received death threats and had to publicly defend his sexual orientation at every turn. When he sat down in front of the camera to do an interview for the film, against everyone's expectations, he came out. But Sandra and her team were very careful, sending the bishop a very carefully-worded email telling him that they were keeping that interview in the final cut of the film. Even though they had full intention of keeping that priceless, important moment, they still made the point of informing their subject about their decision before he faced possible public defamation.

Another major theme, preparation, kept appearing throughout the panel. Amanda mentioned that there are always a challenges in documenting a story as it is happening, with problems usually arising due to lack of preparation. "To the extent that you can be prepared," Amanda said, "you can get ready for what is going to happen next." None of the filmmakers on the panel expected their films to take as much time as they did, but in the end Nicole's took six years, Sandra's five, and Patrick's two.

Amanda also suggested that one should think ahead about who the audience will be for one's film. This factors into almost every aspect of the making of one's film, from the marketing to the tone to the music right down to the ultimate goal of distribution. Most subjects and topics have a built-in audience, and digital platforms today make it easier and easier to tap into those groups.

If you would like to watch clips from this and other Doc U panels, please visit our YouTube channel in the coming days. Stay tuned on our Facebook page for even more photos from this and other IDA events!

Part of TheLip.tv, Bring Your Own Doc (BYOD) is an online series dedicated to entertaining, informing, and elevating documentaries in general by bringing attention to films and filmmakers that deserve exposure. And with BYOD signed on a media sponsor of this year's DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase, participating feature filmmakers had the distinct opportunity of sitting down with co-host and veteran documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner to discuss any and all aspects of their film.

Two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner (We Live in Public, Dig!) Timoner sat down with four filmmakers from the 16th annual doc showcase this August. In just over one hour, Timoner takes us inside a Brazilian circus with Kelly J Richardson (Without A Net), delves into an artist expose with Jane Weiner (RICKY on LEACOCK), explores one man's quest for clean water with Patrick Shen (La Source), and talks about the man with the most number of Guinness World Records with Brian McGinn (The Record Breaker). In each interview, she discusses what brought these filmmakers to the stories that informed their films, screen clips from each of their projects, the technical aspects of their filmmaking, and other questions that only a fellow documentary filmmaker would know to ask.

To make it easy for you, we've put together a playlist on our YouTube channel so you can watch them all back to back!

Syrian filmmaker and festival director Orwa Nyrabia has been missing since Thursday, August 23 after attempting travel from the Damascus International Airport. Nyrabia works as a film producer and is one of the founders of the DOX BOX International Documentary Film Festival held in Syria. Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera, IDFA, Screen International, RealScreen and many other film organizations have covered the news of Orwa’s disappearance over the last few days.

We, the undersigned, represent tens of thousands of leading filmmakers working around the world. As such, we believe that the artistry and power of film is vital to societies and cultures globally. We strongly defend the right of filmmakers everywhere to practice their art and bring humanity closer together through the telling of our shared stories.

Orwa Nyrabia is not only a celebrated filmmaker, but also an artist who has devoted his life to bringing people and cultures together through film. Although Orwa is now being held in darkness somewhere, the filmmaking world is paying attention will continue to shine a light on him until he is safely reunited with his family. We call for his immediate return.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
BRITDOC Foundation
The D-Word
Directors Guild of America
DOC NYC
Docs in Progress
The Documentary Center, George Washington University
European Documentary Network
Film Independent
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
IFP
Independent Lens
International Documentary Association
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
ITVS
Kartemquin Films
POV
Producers Guild of America
San Francisco Film Society
The Scottish Documentary Institute
Stranger Than Fiction
Sundance Institute
Tribeca Film Festival
Tribeca Film Institute
True/False Film Fest
Women Make Movies
Writers Guild of America, West

Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from August 3 through August 30 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films—the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here is Jennifer Jessum, director of HOLY MAN: THE USA vs. DOUGLAS WHITE.

Synopsis: HOLY MAN: THE USA vs. DOUGLAS WHITE, narrated by Martin Sheen, is the story of Douglas White, an 89-year-old Lakota Sioux medicine man from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, who spent 17 years in federal prison for a crime he did not commit. During the making of this film, filmmakers uncovered new evidence of White's "actual innocence" and brought the case back to federal court. HOLY MAN offers a rare glimpse into the mysterious world of Lakota religion, their intimate connection to the land, and a provocative expose of the systemic injustice Native Americans face in the criminal justice system.

IDA: What made you get started as a documentary filmmaker?

Jennifer Jessum: My husband and filmmaking partner Simon J. Joseph, Ph.D., and I both have a long history as fine artists and a strong commitment to social justice, so documentary filmmaking was a natural step for us. The documentary genre allows us to combine our skills as artists with our ability to tell well-researched, academically-sound stories. [It also] offers quite a lot of creative freedom in story-telling styles. Film is a powerful medium and the documentary form is particularly well-suited to raising social awareness. Prior to working on this film, I was working on narrative, commercials, music videos, and dance films. It wasn’t until I took a documentary film class at USC that I really fell in love with the documentary form.

IDA: What inspired you to tell this story?

JJ: We first met the subject of our film, Douglas White, 21 years ago on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. We had the great privilege of traveling around with him for a summer and witnessing firsthand his tireless dedication and service to his people. Several months later we learned that he had been incarcerated. Shortly after learning of his conviction we ended up moving to Denver, where he was incarcerated, so we would visit him every week and listen to his amazing stories. We knew they were true because we had witnessed them first hand. This was our relationship to him for a very long time.

We always wished that we could do more to help him, but this was all pre-Internet and we didn’t know what we could do. So when I took my first documentary film class at USC many years later, I knew right away that I wanted to tell Douglas' story. At first we were very focused on recording him for his people. [He was] a living library of ancient wisdom and we wanted to help preserve his knowledge and life story for future generations. Douglas was part of an ancient oral tradition and we knew that he had to be recorded on film in order to accurately preserve his body language, physical gestures, mannerisms, humor, speech, and spiritual presence. The problems began when the Federal Bureau of Prisons refused to allow us to bring in a camera or audio equipment to record Douglas. The warden claimed that this would be a "security risk"—we couldn’t understand how an 82 year old man could have been a "security risk." This moved us to really re-examine his court case and we started seeing a lot of problems in it. After that, there was no turning back. We had to do whatever we could to tell his story.

IDA: Did your vision of the way this film would come together change over the course of production? How did that evolution occur?

JJ: The film definitely evolved over time. I think that is the beauty of the documentary form—you have to have vision and persistence to pursue a story, but you also have to let the film become what it wants to become. You have to allow the story to unfold the way it wants to unfold. After the first few months of production, we went back to Pine Ridge for our second filming trip and were finally able to track down the mother of the two young boys in the case. It took a long series of wild goose chases to track her down as many people on the reservation don’t have phones and the villages are often very far apart. When we finally found her, and she agreed to be interviewed, she admitted that she didn’t really know if the crime had happened or not. She even told us that one of her two sons had told her it wasn’t true. We knew then that we had a film!

The real breakthrough, though, came when the older grandson, Roy Helper, Jr., whom the government built their case around, confessed on film. We had interviewed Roy a couple of times before but Roy called us one day and told us he needed to talk to us right away. His wife had just given birth that morning to their son, Jacob, and he wanted to let go of this burden that he had been carrying around for years. We met at a hotel room in Rapid City and he confessed—on film—that Douglas had never committed the crime he was accused of. He told us that he and his younger brother (who were both very young at the time and suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome) had been forced to lie about Douglas. He said they were afraid that they would be arrested if they ever spoke up. After Roy confessed, we were able to re-open Douglas’ case. Terry Pechota, the former U. S. Attorney of South Dakota, agreed to take on the case pro bono. This was not just a momentous event for the film; it also created the possibility for Douglas’ case to be re-opened. [It] was also a major cathartic moment for Roy, as it helped inspire him in turning his life around.

IDA: What were some of the challenges you faced while you were making this film? How did you overcome those obstacles?

JJ: Many of the challenges involved in making the film came, of course, from our limited financial resources. Most of the shooting was just the two of us driving thousands of miles back and forth from LA to South Dakota in our little Honda. Sometimes we’d have to drive hundreds of miles a day on the reservation just tracking people down, so there was a lot of physical detective work that needed a lot of persistence. Our greatest obstacles, however, came in dealing with governmental agencies. Not only did the Federal Bureau of Prisons refuse to allow us to film Douglas, but Douglas’ defense attorney, along with the BIA investigator, the FBI, the federal prosecutor, the U.S. Attorney, and the federal judge all refused to be interviewed as well. When we finally got Douglas’ case back in the court system, the U.S. Attorney’s office fabricated a legal technicality to prevent Douglas from getting a new trial and the judge went along with it. These were pretty formidable obstacles and the only way we could really deal with them was to be persistent and committed to the truth. Our biggest obstacle now is our ongoing fundraising efforts to try to promote the film and get Douglas’ story out to the world.

IDA: As you’ve screened HOLY MAN: THE USA vs. DOUGLAS WHITE, how have audiences (or, if they’ve seen it, your subjects) reacted to the film?

JJ: People have been really moved by the film and the responses vary from intense sadness to outrage. What is so interesting is how different people connect to different parts of the story. Some connect with Douglas’ life as a servant and healer. Others connect with the history. Others are interested in the legal case. We are really happy that the film touches people on many more levels than we expected. I think our most rewarding experience, however, was premiering the film on the Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Cheyenne River reservations. There are so few films made about the first peoples of this country and even fewer are told through the eyes and voices of the first peoples themselves. Seeing how meaningful it was to the Lakota people made it all worthwhile! It was, and is, a very beautiful and humbling experience to be trusted with such an important story and to have the support and appreciation of the participants and the people is a true honor.

IDA: So now that this film has made it into DocuWeeks, have you had a chance to look beyond that at what’s coming next?

JJ: We are very happy to be a part of DocuWeeks and to be able to get the film out to a larger audience. Our goal is to educate, as we believe that awareness is the first step to change. We are still fundraising to help promote the film but we’re now moving into the next phase: setting up semi-theatrical screenings around the country and making the film available for educational sales. We really want to make the film available in schools and take the attention we get from the film and channel it into supporting positive change on the reservations. We’ve launched a non-profit foundation called The Mitakupi Foundation—"Mitakupi" is Lakota for "my people"—which is designed to combat the teen suicide epidemic by creating and supporting programs for the youth.

We just finished production on a short film which followed Lakota youth on a 500-mile run around the Black Hills. The film includes interviews with many of the participants as well as prominent community leaders who are using the Lakota traditions and spirituality to address the many serious challenges Lakota youth continue to face. We will teach film to reservation youth as part of the summer arts program we will be launching next year and we just shot a series of music videos for a young and incredibly talented Lakota rapper/singer as part of our mentoring program. More information on the foundation can be found at www.mitakupi.com.

HOLY MAN: THE USA vs. DOUGLAS WHITE will be screening August 10 through 16 at IFC Center in New York, and August 17 through 23 at Laemmle NoHo 7 in Los Angeles.

Complete DocuWeeks™ 2012 program

Purchase tickets for HOLY MAN in New York

Purchase tickets for HOLY MAN in Los Angeles

Over the next month, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work is represented in the DocuWeeks™ Theatrical Documentary Showcase, which runs from August 3 through August 30 in New York City and Los Angeles. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films—the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.

So, to continue this series of conversations, here are Doug Blush and Lisa Klein, directors and writerse of Of Two Minds.

Synopsis: Take your best day...and your darkest moment...and multiply by a million. Of Two Minds, from the creative team behind Wordplay, I.O.U.S.A., Superheroes, and These Amazing Shadows, explores the extraordinary lives, struggles, and successes of a few of the over five million Americans living with bipolar disorder. Of Two Minds puts a human face on bipolar, providing an intimate, painful, and painfully funny look at those who live in its shadows...our parents and children, our friends and lovers...and ourselves.

IDA: What made you get started as documentary filmmakers?

Doug Blush and Lisa Klein: We had both worked in a variety of narrative film and television jobs ranging from writing to animation to cable TV producing, but we both felt drawn all along to the human drama and impact of documentaries. We formed our company, MadPix Inc, in 2002 to help create projects together, and we’ve directed a few previous short and special TV documentary projects. Doug has worked as an editor and producer with teams including Patrick Creadon and Christine O’ Malley, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, Morgan Neville and Eddie Schmidt, and Eugene Jarecki, and Lisa has also been writing non-fiction for a long time. Working together has really enhanced our ability to explore stories from our very different viewpoints...and this is in the midst of being married to each other!

IDA: What inspired you to put a face on bipolar disorder?

DB & LK: The true soul and motivator of the film is Lisa’s older sister Tina, who dealt with bipolar and its attendent stigma and misunderstanding throughout her life. Her incredible spirit and humor was a huge inspiration to Lisa growing up, and after Tina passed away in 1994 in her mid-40’s, Lisa had always wanted to understand the intense mood swings and issues Tina struggled with, often alone and behind closed doors. The film was a form of therapy in some ways, and came with this desire to hear people in their own words describe what the experience is like.

IDA: Did your vision of the way this film would come together change over the course of production? How did that evolution occur?

DB & LK: We started by immersing ourselves into the huge community that surrounds bipolar and other mental illnesses...attending gatherings and community events, reading biographies by those openly dealing with bipolar, and researching the current psychiatric, medical and alternative views of bipolar. We found three amazing people in process of all this who were dealing with bipolar in very different ways, but were all eager to share their journeys with us. Their candor and life twists truly shaped the film, pulling us more and more toward these intimate, grand arcs of personal stories. After almost four years of shaping the film, it all comes back to these incredible people at the center, surprising us with their humor and their openess about very tough issues.

IDA: What were some of the challenges you faced while you were making this film?

DB & LK: Along with the shared classic documentary laments of almost no funding, slim resources and having to shoot and edit in every spare moment around other work, it was a piece of cake! Actually, due to the universality of bipolar, we had to do a great deal of traveling across the country, from LA to New York to Philadelphia, Toronto, Detroit, San Francisco and more. It was an epic road adventure in the end...we met many incredible people along the way.

IDA: As you’ve screened Of Two Minds, how have audiences (or, if they’ve seen it, your subjects) reacted to the film?

DB & LK: We’ve been so moved by audience reactions, who’ve tuned right into the very personal approach we discovered as we shaped the film. People have come up to us after Q&As and admit to us that we were the first non-doctors they felt they could open up to about their bipolar. That sense of busting open closet doors is just so encouraging...that’s really the goal of the film. Our main subjects have all been great, doing really engaging Q&As with us around the country, and helping us tweak important elements of the film to its final form.

IDA: So now that this film has made it into DocuWeeks, have you had a chance to look beyond that at what’s coming next?

DB & LK: We know that the film has a vast audience...by some estimates, over five million Americans are dealing with some form of bipolar disorder. When you add in the families, partners, friends and co-workers that make up all our circles, there really are zero degrees of separation to this issue for everyone. We’re receiving interesting offers for all sorts of distribution options for the film, especially since the DocuWeeks announcement, and our greatest goal is to get as many people to be able to see the film as possible. Theaters, television, DVD, on-demand...we just want to get a new discussion going about what it really means to be “normal”...is there even such a thing? We think the film lets people see how wide that label needs to stretch.

Of Two Minds will be screening August 17 through 23 at IFC Center in New York, and August 24 through 30 at Laemmle NoHo 7 in Los Angeles.

Complete DocuWeeks™ 2012 program

Purchase tickets for Of Two Minds in New York

Purchase tickets for Of Two Minds in Los Angeles