January 27, 2017 | POV’s daily list of essential reading for the documentary and independent filmmaking community.
Trump Muslim Ban Puts Miami Film Fest, Iraqi Director in the Crosshairs (Exclusive)
The film world is about to take its first hit due to a looming presidential executive order that would restrict visits and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. The Miami Film Festival has been working for the past month with director Hussein Hassan to present his acclaimed film The Dark Wind for its North American premiere. But those plans have been thrown into disarray given that Hassan hails from Iraq, which is one of the seven countries listed in the draft order titled “Protecting the Nation From Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals.” The other countries included are Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Read more | Hollywood Reporter »
Alex Gibney Confirms Documentary About Former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes
Oscar-winning documentary-maker Alex Gibney is to target fallen former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes in his next film. Gibney, who specialises in films about controversial subjects such as the Church of Scientology (Going Clear), WikiLeaks (We Steal Secrets) and clerical sex abuse (Mea Maxima Culpa), told the Hollywood Reporter he is working on a film about Ailes, but would not provide any details, saying: “As a matter of course, I don’t talk about what I’m working on.
Read more | Guardian »
Sudden Impact: How Sundance Documentaries Have Gained (or Lost) Relevance in the Trump Age
Conceived and created before the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Sundance’s documentaries straddle one of the most profound cultural and political shifts in the United States’ recent history. As the country is forced to grapple with a new range of issues in the post-Obama age, documentarians are also now straining to catch up. You could see it on the screen at Sundance, where last-act codas and recent news snippets suggested how the triumph of Trump had impacted, and in some cases, undermined the stories being told.
Read more | IndieWire »
“Chronic Illness Doesn’t Lead to Tidy Endings”: Editor Kim Roberts on Unrest
Jennifer Brea had a challenge: to make a film from bed. Brea was a PhD student at Harvard when a sudden illness left her bedridden. She sought to create a documentary portrait of her experience and found support from labs at Sundance, IFP and elsewhere. She premiered Unrest, her debut film, in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Kim Roberts, an editor and writer on the film, spoke with Filmmaker about what drew her to the project and finding the right tone for a story this personal.
Read more | Filmmaker Magazine »
‘Strong Island’ Review: Yance Ford’s Powerful and Personal Look at Race in America — Sundance Review
There is no shortage of documentaries on the preponderance of racially motivated shootings that have become a fixture of modern American society, but none carry the striking intimacy of Yance Ford’s Strong Island. The transgender filmmaker’s remarkable essay film, which explores the lingering pain surrounding the murder of his brother, William Ford, Jr. in 1992, manages to explore the incident while personalizing its reverberations across two decades. Equal parts journalistic investigation and family portrait, Ford’s delicate project transforms the source of his frustrations into an absorbing cinematic elegy.
Read more | IndieWire »
Upcoming Festivals and Deadlines
This Week
- Sundance Film Festival Jan 19 – 29
- Premiers Plans – Angers Film Festival Jan 20 – 29
- Deadline: 2017 BAVC National MediaMaker Fellowship Applications Jan 27
Next Week
- Deadline: Submissions for DocumentaMadrid Jan 31
- Deadline: AFI DOCS Film Festival Submissions Feb 3
- Deadline: 2017 Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant Feb 3
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