POV's daily list of essential reading for the documentary and independent filmmaking community.

POV associate producer Andrew Catauro reports back from Italy, where he attended the 2009 Italian Doc Screenings event. Last week I attended an event for Italian documentary filmmakers called Italian Doc Screenings (IDS). IDS is a presentation of Doc/it (the Italian Documentary Filmmakers Association), and this year marks the first time POV has taken part. […]

POV Executive Director Simon Kilmurry has just returned from the Greenhouse Fund seminars in Izmir, Turkey. The third year of the Greenhouse Fund seminars concluded last week in Izmir, Turkey. Greenhouse is a professional initiative devoted to the development of documentaries from across the Mediterranean region. It is funded by the European Union, and features […]

Belarus, one of the nations formed in 1991 from the breakup of the Soviet Union, is a strange and little-known country in a region of growing strategic importance, a country that’s been called “Europe’s last dictatorship.” In filmmaker Andrezj Fidyk’s Belarusian Waltz, one man — post-modern performance artist Alexander Pushkin — is determined to challenge […]

Ido Haar is the director of 9 Star Hotel. After the film aired on POV, viewers wrote in with questions for Ido. Read on for his responses. Allen asks: Thanks for the film. I found similarities between the Palestinian men and Mexican migrant workers in America. Is this something you thought about as you were […]

On August 12th, POV will broadcast Belarusian Waltz by Andrzej Fidyk. The film features an idiosyncratic man named Alexander Pushkin, who shares a name with the great Russian Romantic poet, but turns out to be a different breed of artist altogether. Belarus has been called “Europe’s last dictatorship.” Since 1994, Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the […]

Irene Villaseñor is POV’s Youth Views manager. She was recently inspired by some presentations at a conference on youth media and education around the world. She writes in to share her thoughts. Last weekend I attended Media: Overseas Conversations 5, an International Conference on Media, Education and Youth. Media educators from the Middle East, Asia, […]

By all accounts, 2007 was a great year for American films. In addition to a slate of wildly acclaimed fictional films, a number of well regarded documentaries made their way into theaters. Unfortunately, most of those documentaries didn’t fare so well at the box office. However, some of them have made it onto “Best Of” […]

Each week, we’ll highlight links from the “Watching” and “Reading” sidebars on the right side of the page. WATCHING Michael Moore’s Sicko named Best Documentary at the 17th annual Gotham Awards on Tuesday night. The Webby Awards name 12 “most influential online videos of all time.” Watch daily reports from the International Documentary Film Festival […]

The nominations for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced on Monday morning by ceremony hosts Zach Braff and Lisa Kudrow in Los Angeles. The Spirit Awards celebrate independent (and low budget) filmmaking. Eligible films must be at least 70 minutes long, and the cost of the completed film, including post-production, must be under […]

Thanksgiving: a time for family, food, more food and for some, football. But for those of us who aren’t interested in football but still keen to sit on the couch and watch TV while digesting our turkey, there are a number of recent food-related documentaries that are both entertaining and provocative. from Our Daily Bread […]

I just came back from the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest. In addition to screenings around the clock, there were a host of great panels, presentations, pitch sessions and parties. Director Heather Croall and staff should be congratulated for putting on a fantastic event. According to the festival’s website, more than 1200 delegates from around the world […]