Several months ago, Yance Ford recommended a series of short films about the Iraq War entitled War Torn for our online short film festival. After a little googling, I realized that the series is already available on the Web, at Channel Four’s excellent Dispatches website. So I put the DVD aside, and moved on to […]

WATCHING MediaStorm presents Rape of a Nation, Marcus Bleasdale’s photos from the D.R.C. Growing Up Online Is the Internet changing the experience of childhood? Frontline looks at the way kids are spending their time online.. READING Pirates of Sundance: Columbia Law prof Tim Wu recommends indie filmmakers look to BitTorrent for distribution. Via Slate.com Rabbi […]

This year, there are so many sites that feature political coverage that it can be almost as overwhelming to wade through the coverage as it is to figure out who really stands for what. Here are a few sites that do a nice job of rounding up audio and video — from news, interviews with […]

Inspired by the growing number of docs about food that have been coming out lately, POV staffer Jessica Lee recently took another look at an older film that inspired her. Recent documentaries such as The Price of Sugar, King Corn, and Black Gold address how food is inextricably linked to politics and social justice. For […]

Environmental issues are a hot topic this election year. David Nanasi caught up with POV alum Judith Helfand (A Healthy Baby Girl, POV 1997 and True Lives 2005, and The Uprising of ’34, POV 1995) and Daniel B. Gold to hear more about what they’ve been doing to support their latest film, Everything’s Cool. Both […]

Now that the big dance is over, I thought I'd take a moment to wrap things up. Once again, the biggest buzz at Sundance was generated by the documentary lineup.

Last year, POV partnered with the WBGH Lab in Boston to support the great work they are doing there. The Lab assists young mediamakers in creating short films and encourages them to experiment with new ways of making and interacting with content. It’s very cool, cutting-edge stuff. Every few months, the Lab announces an open […]

WATCHING e2 A PBS series about the economics of being environmentally conscious. Beyond the Multiplex: The Year’s Best Docs Critics from Salon.com and IFC take a look at Oscar-worthy documentaries. READING The 100 Greatest Websites EW lists their favorite movie and TV websites Nerakhoon: The Betrayal Director Ellen Kuras indieWire interviews veteran DP and first-time […]

We test out the service from Netflix that allows instant viewing of movies for PC users. When Netflix’s ‘”Watch Now” feature, which allows users* to watch* movies* instantly*, launched earlier this year, there was some excitement, until all those asterisks reared their ugly heads. And rear they did, and quickly, which is always how things […]

Andy Blubaugh is a young filmmaker from Portland, Oregon whose 15-minute short film, Scaredycat, will air alongside Oscar-winner Freida Lee Mock’s Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner this week on PBS. An experimental documentary about the role fear plays in our lives, Scaredycat takes as a point of departure the beating of Andy at the […]

Each week, we’ll highlight links from the “Watching” and “Reading” sidebars on the right side of the page. WATCHING 9500 Liberty Thanks to the Utne Reader blog for pointing out this extraordinary interactive documentary that truly “elevates the immigration debate.” Watch videos. Frontline Examine why the 2000 Oslo Accords almost succeeded, and ultimately failed in […]

When the Charlie Rose Show started putting the entirety of its archives on YouTube (3,860 videos and counting), it allowed us to revisit old interviews, and get insightful peeks into the brains of some of the most intelligent, powerful and creative people in American today. Among those are some of America’s greatest documentarians. Charlie Rose […]

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 […]

POV alums Doug Hawes-Davis and Drury Gunn Carr (Libby, Montana, 2007) made their documentary short, Star Spangled Blues, as part of the International Documentary Challenge, a timed filming competition, held every year in March. The short won the best writing and best original song awards. Star Spangled Blues (2006) is a contemplative and moving look […]

So you’ve got a great idea for a documentary short, and you want to get started making your film. But how do you light your shoot? What music is legal for you to use? What releases should you have your subjects sign? How do you edit, compress and upload your video? Luckily, there’s a ton […]

In honor of Thanksgiving, I took a spin around YouTube this weekend to see whether there were any good cooking or food-related videos worth watching. The first video I stumbled across was produced by a group called Cooking Up a Story. They have been producing videos and posting them on YouTube since May of last […]

With so much video and multimedia on the web, how do you figure out what to watch? POV Blog’s Media Guide is here to recommend some of our favorite online videos. If you’re looking to watch online journalism at its finest, a good place to get started is with the list of winners from the […]