November 30, 2016 | POV’s daily list of essential reading for the documentary and independent filmmaking community.
Prince Documentary Featuring Bono, Mick Jagger Slated for 2017
A new documentary, Prince: R U Listening?, is slated to come out next year. The film will focus on the artist’s early years and ascendency via commentary from musicians who played with him alongside his friends and family, according to Screen Daily.
Read more | Rolling Stone »
Laura Poitras Films The Architecture Of Surveillance—And Projects Films On It, Too
The architecture of surveillance is everywhere and nowhere. And it includes one of the creepiest-looking buildings New Yorkers know: 33 Thomas Street, a 41-year-old windowless skyscraper in lower Manhattan that houses infrastructure for transmitting phone calls, faxes, and internet data—and equipment for tapping them, too. The mysterious monolith is the subject of a spooky new 10-minute film, Project X, by Laura Poitras and Henrik Moltke, which was projected on the building itself last night, along with National Security Agency documents such as diagrams from inside, original architectural drawings of the building, and NSA logos.
Read more | Fast Company »
A Legendary Documentary Studio Tackles the Illinois Budget Crisis
One of the most venerable names in Chicago media is making an attempt to communicate the ramifications—dramatic for some, more subtle for all—of the stalemate. The 50-year-old documentary film studio Kartemquin Films, in collaboration with the Chicago-based magazine In These Times, just released its first episode in the eight-part series Stranded By the State, which looks at its impact on Eastern Illinois University, its students, and the town of Charleston.
Read more | Chicago Magazine »
Quartz Launches Its Bot Studio With $240K From Knight, and Plans for Slack and Echo
Quartz is betting big on bots. The Atlantic Media-owned outlet is getting a $240,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to launch Quartz Bot Studio, a group focused on developing three bot-related projects in the coming year, for everything from messaging platforms like Slack to voice interfaces like the Amazon Echo (disclosure: Knight is a supporter of Nieman Lab). Quartz will contribute its own resources to the Studio as well, and intends for the projects to continue after its first year.
Read more | Nieman Lab »
Upcoming Festivals and Deadlines
This Week
- Porto/Post/Doc Nov 26 – Dec 4
- Festival Dei Popoli – International Documentary Film Festival Nov 25 – Dec 2
- Deadline: JustFilms Fellowship Dec 2
- Deadline: Tribeca – Experimental Work Dec 2
Next Week
- Deadline: Film Independent Documentary Lab Dec 5
- Deadline: Artist as Activist Fellowship Dec 7
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