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Fellows Perspectives: Felicia Barr on Momentum
Throughout the year, we’ll be featuring each of our Fellows as guest bloggers where they will share their thoughts on their films, filmmaking, or anything they think would be of interest to the documentary community. This month we hear from Felicia Barr who reflects on how to maintain momentum on a long-term documentary project.
Read moreI Never Used to Call Myself an Artist
by Jason Osder
In January, I had the opportunity to attend my first Sundance Film Festival as a fellow of The Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program. Along with William Youmans, a colleague at The George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs and co-director with me of a new documentary, we were invited to workshop and pitch our film in development. GW and Docs In Progress asked me to reflect on this experience. I’m glad that they asked, because I’ve been thinking a lot about the role that arts institutions and education institution play in the lives of artists.
Read moreTestimony on public television and independent documentaries
During the holidays, WNET (PBS largest affiliate, based in New York City) announced it would take the independent film series POV and Independent Lens off the national PBS carriage schedule. While they stepped back from this initial decision after a huge outcry from filmmakers and viewers, they will be reassessing this decision later this year and are engaged in a "listening tour" to hear more about why people feel so strongly about the series not being moved.
Read moreRoundtable Round-Up: Navigating Public Television
by Matthew Radcliff, Co-Organizer, WIFV/Docs In Progress Documentary Roundtable
Every other month, the WIFV/Docs In Progress Documentary Roundtable welcomes filmmakers and industry experts to discuss topics of interest to the documentary filmmaking community. On February 9, 2015, we welcomed three speakers to talk about how documentary filmmakers can navigate the world of public television. The speakers were Kathryn Washington (CPB), Robyn DeShields (DeShields Associates), and Ramona Diaz (independent filmmaker). The following are notes I made from the presentation.
K
Read moreWhat should have made the Oscar Shortlist?
Nominations for the 2015 Academy Awards will be announced on January 15. But the race for Best Feature Documentary has been on for a while since the Academy announced the 15 films which had been shortlisted from 134 which had been submitted. While many expect the final race to come down to a competition between Life Itself and Citizenfour, we asked some members of the Docs In Progress community what they wish had made the shortlist. Feel free to weigh in in the comments below.
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Narrating the Nation: Past and Present
by Guest Contributor Josh Glick, Yale University
The 10-part Showtime documentary series, The Untold History of the United States (2012), and the theatrically released documentary feature, Citizenfour (2014), are interesting for the ways they give shape to recent and more distant events and for how they push conventional boundaries of collaboration.
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Who's Idea Was This? Second Thoughts from a New Filmmaker
by John Filson
Are you a new filmmaker, or aspiring to be? Do you feel a tug on your heart to make positive change in the world, and want to use the power of film? This note is for you.
It can take a long time to call yourself a “filmmaker” in front of other people. I’m still in the denial stage, and quite comfortable there. My interest in making documentaries stems from the way well-made films have always gripped me like a vice and lit a fire in my belly that made me feel unstoppable. That collection of emotional imprints over the years is surely a big reason I aspired to make social change my profession.
Read moreGlick's Picks: Roger Ebert and LIFE ITSELF
By Guest Contributor Josh Glick, Assistant Professor of English and Film at Hendrix College, Mellon Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University in the Integrated Humanities
Watching Life Itself (2014) in Washington D.C.’s E Street Cinema, I felt director Steve James’s recent portrait of the late Roger Ebert strike a personal chord. As a wide-eyed teenager attending a summer program at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 2001, I was fortunate to be exposed to the writing of Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and Manny Farber as part of a broader menu of cultural criticism. Reading film reviews helped me to cultivate an appetite for all kinds of movies. Now, as it’s my job to teach others a critical awareness of how moving images shape and are shaped by the world around us, I have come to appreciate how it is often the written word that coaxes even the most reluctant spectators to become eager viewers.
Read moreFellows Perspectives: Amy Oden
Throughout the year, we’ll be featuring each of our Fellows as guest bloggers where they will share their thoughts on their films, filmmaking, or anything they think would be of interest to the documentary community. This month we hear from Amy Oden about her latest documentary project which offers a different take on commercial sex work within the context of globalization.
“Don’t start thinking that you’re better than someone else, just because you have a different job than they do,” I said to one of the interns at my day job last week. You could file the comment under “unsolicited life advice,” but it very much resonates with and originates from my experiences filming workers in the commercial sex industry in the Pacific Rim.
Read moreAFI DOCS 2.0
by Erica Ginsberg
AFI DOCS is back for its second year under its new moniker (I give it one more year before we stop saying "The festival formerly known as Silverdocs.") While the namechange isn't the only thing which changed, this year's festival (taking place from June 18-22) looks like it is bringing back some of what we loved about the Washington DC area's one and only documentary film festival. Call it AFI DOCS 2.0.
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