In this expansive interview, Robb Moss discusses longitudinal personal filmmaking, his influence as a teacher, and The Bend in the River
Interview
In this interview, Kamal Aljafari discusses how three tapes filmed in 2001 revealed themselves as a new film, With Hasan in Gaza
In this interview, Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory discusses how she abstracts and rewrites post-revolutionary Iranian cinema to reveal the queer
In this interview, Viktor Kossakovsky discusses leaving no stone unturned in Architecton
Revolutionary! Magical! Game-changing! These are some of the words being used to describe the results of AI-generated upscaling tools for archival and low-resolution footage. Some documentarians have turned to Video AI from Topaz Labs, a software featuring a suite of 30-plus AI models for video enhancement. To learn more about Video AI and the future of AI-assisted video upscaling, Documentary interviewed the Topaz CEO and Co-founder Eric Yang.
In Tatyana Tenenbaum's Everything You Have Is Yours, we see dancer Hadar Ahuvia as she develops her performance by the same name, the culmination of years spent celebrating her own Jewish identity while also challenging Israeli tradition. After its theatrical run in NY, Documentary spoke to Tenenbaum about adapting her work in dance documentation to documentary, dance film tropes, and political activism in a nonverbal art form.
For her immersive artwork Burn From Absence, artist Emeline Courcier creates an archive where there was none. Using artificial intelligence, she recreates a family album, visualizing and verifying a history that has been hidden, documenting it from her perspective. In the four-channel installation, digitally created images illustrate an audio track layering her family members’ memories of life in Laos, the ‘Vietnam’ war, and new beginnings in France. After its premiere at IDFA last November, where it won the DocLab Special Mention for Digital Storytelling, Documentary spoke to Courcier about truth, archives, and working with deeply personal material.
Since its founding in 1971 in the small town of Giffoni Valle Piana in southern Italy, the Giffoni Film Festival has grown into a global reference point for cinema made for—and with—young people. In this interview for Documentary, Minervini shares insights about his journey as a programmer of GEX:DOX, the distinctive qualities of Giffoni, the challenges and opportunities of curating documentary films for young audiences, and the spirit that animates this dynamic festival section. This interview has been edited.
Red Light to Limelight strikes a fine balance between the tragic stories of individual sex workers in Kolkata’s Kalighat red light neighborhood and the joyous community activity of filmmaking. Bipuljit Basu’s documentary follows CAM ON, a film production collective set up by these women and their children, as they conceptualize and shoot the (fictional) short film Nupur, blurring the lines between their reality and the artifice they’re engaging in. Basu told Documentary about the importance of community co-creation, gaining his subjects’ trust, and arriving at the film’s look. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Alaa Minawi’s The Liminal gives an alternative definition of “immersive” from the typical technological, digital one. In his practice, the Palestinian-Lebanese-Dutch interdisciplinary artist explores the possibilities of merging installation and performance art. The Liminal—the first part of his speculative series about Arabfuturism—is a 3.5-meter wall with 24 speakers placed inside, programmed to take the audience on a listening journey.