I ended my last Notes , back in August of last year, by writing that these are treacherous times for documentary film and all truth-seeking art. It is
documentary magazine
Year after year, TIFF Docs tends to be populated by glossy, formally conventional, commercial fare—occasionally punctuated by works from prolific documentarians and festival award winners. Nonfiction works marked by innovation and ambition are pushed to the periphery, a consistent gesture that betrays what the festival regards as “best” in the arena of nonfiction cinema. Here and elsewhere, I couldn’t help but feel the subtle repositioning of the festival in anticipation of the impending launch of TIFF’s official market in 2026. Invitations to seek hidden, artistically driven gems, to interrogate the collapsing of boundaries between fiction and nonfiction remained open across other programs such as Wavelengths and Centrepiece.
The New York Film Festival (NYFF), now in its 62nd edition, is one of the biggest film festivals in the United States and, along with TIFF, the most important second-run festival in North America. This year’s edition found itself in the intersection of a number of conflicts surrounding the ongoing Israeli bombing of Gaza. These events serve as a reminder, despite the protestation of some donors, that no one can truly shut politics out of the festival. As it happens, protest was itself the subject of many of films in the festival.
This piece was first published in Documentary ’s Winter 2024/2025 issue, with the following subheading: What does the makeup of films awarded at IDA’s
This piece was first published in Documentary ’s Winter 2024/2025 issue, with the following subheading: From film festivals to the Oscars, one writer
Dear Readers, No Other Land is both narratively explosive and achingly personal. In terms of craft, it’s one of the most impressive examples of verité
Dear IDA Community, At the time of writing, there has been a recent spate of momentous elections in the U.S., Taiwan, India, Mexico, France, Georgia
In the Winter 2024/2025 cover essay of Documentary magazine, No Other Land’s collective of Palestinian and Israeli co-directors imagine a reciprocal, shared future in front of and behind the camera.
Few filmmakers have as recognizable a style as Bill Morrison. Those with even a passing familiarity with his work will think of degraded film stock
In these first couple of months as IDA’s executive director, a few lines by the cultural thinker Paul Gilroy have been on my mind. They indicate, for me, something of the purpose of documentary filmmaking.