CLIVE DAVIS: THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES. Photo Credit: Tribeca Film Festival/David LaChapelle.

 

February 3, 2017 | POV’s daily list of essential reading for the documentary and independent filmmaking community.

Clive Davis Documentary to Open the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival
From Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera to Alicia Keys and Kelly Clarkson, Clive Davis crafted some of the most iconic careers in pop music history, and now a documentary about his life, Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives, will take center stage as the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival’s opening night film.
Read more | EW »

100 Must-See Documentaries Streaming on Netflix This February
Paris is Burning is back on Netflix! That’s so excited I just had to lead with it. We love the movie and were happily recommending it to people before it disappeared from the streaming service last summer. Also added to Netflix and therefore our Netflix 100 list this month are the Oscar-winning financial crisis doc Inside Job, the fun Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, and Steve James’s personal, under-seen Stevie.
Read more | Nonfics »

Review: ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ Will Make You Rethink Race
To call I Am Not Your Negro a movie about James Baldwin would be to understate Mr. Peck’s achievement. It’s more of a posthumous collaboration, an uncanny and thrilling communion between the filmmaker — whose previous work includes both a documentary and a narrative feature about the Congolese anti-colonialist leader Patrice Lumumba — and his subject. The voice-over narration (read by Samuel L. Jackson) is entirely drawn from Baldwin’s work. Much of it comes from notes and letters written in the mid-1970s, when Baldwin was somewhat reluctantly sketching out a book, never to be completed, about the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Read more | New York Times »

Toronto Filmmaker Rob Stewart Goes Missing off Florida Keys
The search by the U.S. Coast Guard for Toronto filmmaker and conservationist Rob Stewart continued in the Atlantic Ocean off the Upper Florida Keys on Wednesday. Mr. Stewart, best known for his 2006 documentary Sharkwater, was scuba diving near Alligator Reef, approximately eight kilometres off the ocean side of Lower Matecumbe Key.
Read more | The Globe and Mail »

Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban: How Filmmakers Around the World Are Impacted and Speaking Out
It didn’t take long for Middle Eastern filmmakers to respond to President Donald Trump’s executive order last week restricting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Within days of the order, both Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director of the Oscar-nominated The Salesman, and the film’s lead actress, Taraneh Alidoosti, had announced that they would not be attending the 2017 Academy Awards 2017 in protest of the recently signed executive order. But while this was the highest profile response, it was hardly the only one.
Read more | IndieWire »

Upcoming Festivals and Deadlines

This Week

  • Deadline: AFI DOCS Film Festival Submissions Feb 3
  • Deadline: 2017 Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant Feb 3

Next Week

  • Deadline: Sheffield Doc/Fest Submissions Feb 7
  • Berlinale Feb 9 – 19
  • Deadline: ITVS Open Call Feb 10
  • Deadline: Sundance Institute Documentary Creative Producing Lab Feb 10
  • Deadline: Telluride Mountainfilm Festival submissions Feb 10

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POV Staff
POV (a cinema term for "point of view") is television's longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest and most innovative programs every year on PBS. Since 1988, POV has presented over 400 films to public television audiences across the country. POV films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues.