February 8, 2017 | POV’s daily list of essential reading for the documentary and independent filmmaking community.
Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Unsung but Worth Your Time
Even in a generally strong year like this one, the shorts display a cosmopolitan breadth and a stylistic variety that the other categories often lack. The animated nominees include handmade as well as digital productions, and dark, adult themes as well as child-friendly charm and whimsy. The live action and documentary candidates tackle painful real-world material with compassion, courage and imagination (though sometimes also with conventional sentimentality).
Read more | New York Times / Where to see the shorts in theaters. »
Magnolia Buys Sundance Documentary ‘Whose Streets?’
Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Whose Streets?, a documentary about the political protests in Ferguson, Mo., that followed the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police.
Read more | Variety »
How ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ Resurrects James Baldwin: Raoul Peck On Bringing the Author to New Audiences — Consider This
Raoul Peck spent a decade securing the rights to James Baldwin’s published and unpublished writing for I Am Not Your Negro, his Oscar-nominated documentary about the writer. The movie opened on February 3 and became an immediate sensation, pulling in $709,5000 from 43 theaters across the country.
Read more | IndieWire »
The Story Behind PBS’s New John Lewis Documentary
Whether you live in Georgia’s 5th district or had never heard the name “John Lewis” until Trump began tweeting about him last month, now’s your chance to learn more about the civil rights hero. On Friday, February 10, PBS will air John Lewis—Get In the Way, a new documentary that chronicles Lewis’s life from his childhood in rural Alabama, where he was born to sharecroppers in 1940, to his leadership of last year’s Congressional sit-in for gun control.
Read more | Atlanta Magazine »
‘Tickled’ Documentary to Air on HBO With Bonus Follow-up Special
David Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s documentary Tickled is ostensibly about the “competitive endurance tickling” scene, but that doesn’t really capture just how surprising and weird the film truly is. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, HBO will be airing Tickled on February 27 (at which point it will also hit HBO Now and HBO Go), but even if you have seen it, HBO will be throwing in a special bonus to give you even more information about the ridiculous world of Tickled.
Read more | A.V. Club »
SXSW Film Festival Reveals Midnighters, Shorts, and Inaugural VR Program
Joining last week’s feature film announcement, these new additions deliver a fresh dose of weird, electric, inventive, and sometimes terrifying stories from both veteran directors and emerging filmmakers. Step right up as we roll out the red carpet with the remainder of 2017 SXSW Film Festival programming, including the Midnighters, Shorts, and VR lineup.
Read more | SXSW »
Upcoming Festivals and Deadlines
This Week
- 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
Next Week
- Berlinale Feb 9 – 19
- Doc Fortnight 2017: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media Feb 16 – 26
- Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Feb 17 – 26
- Deadline: 2017 Tribeca Snapchat Shorts Submissions Feb 17
- Deadline: Art of Brooklyn Film Festival Submission Feb 17
- Deadline: ITVS Digital Open Call Feb 17
- Deadline: Nantucket Film Festival Submissions Feb 17
Get more documentary film news and features: Subscribe to POV’s documentary blog, like POV on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @povdocs!
