Documentary News

Factual News Kylie Boltin 22 Dec 2011

Crowdfunding on the rise

Independent filmmakers are celebrating a milestone of sorts. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival will showcase fourteen films funded via the crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

Factual News Julia Scott-Stevenson 21 Dec 2011

The second Vimeo Festival launches

Submissions are now open for the second annual Vimeo Festival + Awards. Flipping the usual film festival rule on its head, Vimeo will only accept videos that have premiered online - a physical film festival premiere screening renders you ineligible. There are some new categories this year, including Action Sports, Fashion and Lyrical - the latter to capture those personal stories that don’t quite fit the other categories.

Festival Reports Craig Courtice 20 Dec 2011

Dubai Film Fest: Wrap

Nujoom Alghanem is an Emirati director, and she wants you to tell her what you didn’t like about her documentary. Really. This might surprise you. The United Arab Emirates is not known as a breeding ground for robust criticism or for its outspoken women. But the director of Amal wants that to stop.

“Criticism is not appreciated here even if it is constructive,” Alghanem tells me. “Here it is destructive or constructive, with nothing in the middle, just to please the people around. It’s not part of our custom. A group of expats started doing this. They thought it was pleasing, but, with the process of time, it stopped being this. There weren’t many Emiratis working in journalism, so this is how it was set. I’m sure it wasn’t out of bad intention, but it has lost its meaning. People have to start saying things objectively.”

Festival Reports Craig Courtice 18 Dec 2011

Dubai Film Fest: Sandeep Ray and storytelling economy

Kokkho-Poth (The Sound of Old Rooms) is the rare documentary in which the director’s cut is shorter than expected. Sandeep Ray spent 20 years accumulating close to 70 hours of footage, yet the film’s running time is only 72 minutes. “I was merciless,” Ray told the audience at a screening at the Dubai International Film Festival. “I didn’t want to lose focus.”

In Depth Julia Scott-Stevenson 15 Dec 2011

Be your own Bozza

There are those who sniff at developments in mobile phone movie making as a passing fad for young’uns, but in townships in South Africa, the mobile is leapfrogging the computer as the media platform of choice. In locations where most don’t have television, and certainly don’t have computers, everyone has a mobile - and most are internet-enabled. People who have never used a mouse or keyboard are accessing content through their phones, and Bozza is an organisation aiming to to make that content local.

Factual News Kylie Boltin 15 Dec 2011

Sundance doc-drama on and off the screen

Doc lovers, we are in the midst of a meta-phenomenon.

Sundance Film Festival has announced its Documentary Premieres.

Festival Reports Craig Courtice 15 Dec 2011

Dubai Film Fest: Mid-fest report

There’s a moment in the documentary Surviving Progress (which screened as part of the 8th annual Dubai International Film Festival) that gives away its agenda. Ronald Wright, the author of A Short History of Progress, the book that inspired the film, is speaking about the Roman Empire and how it relates to his thesis that civilization is just an experiment and that the current state of the world is proof that perhaps it’s time for us humans to try a more communal approach. Wright looks straight at the camera when he speaks, his eyes bulging with intensity.

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Factual News Kylie Boltin 14 Dec 2011

Two more winners in the awards season

Pina, directed by Wim Wenders, has won the European Film Academy Documentary 2011 - Prix Arte. Watch the trailer here.

Senna, directed by Asif Kapadia, has won Best Documentary at the British Independent Film Awards. Trailer is here.

Factual News Julia Scott-Stevenson 14 Dec 2011

Merapi - Stories from the Volcano

Merapi Stories is an interactive documentary about the volcano that erupted in Java in late 2010. Made as a graduate project for UTS by Josephine Lie, it consists of a collection of navigable stories from individuals who were affected by the eruption.

Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 13 Dec 2011

Documentary schedule: New year, new look

To our wonderful SBS viewers can I first just say a big thank you for watching in 2011 and for being part of the fantastic SBS community! I hope you found some great documentaries on SBS over the past year (if you have some favourites please let me know what they were in the comments below) and I also hope you get time for a break over Christmas and New Year. The point of this post is to look forward to what’s in store for next year – there’s a lot of really exciting documentary content coming and as you’ll soon discover, the SBS ONE schedule has a new look from January.

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Festival Reports Craig Courtice 12 Dec 2011

Dubai Film Festival: Preview

The tallest building in the world is threatening to overshadow a film festival.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol stars the 828-metre Burj Khalifa (and some actor named Tom Cruise) and premiered in Dubai last week. As an example of how feverish the United Arab Emirates press has become for the film, The National, an Abu-Dhabi-based broadsheet, ran a story interviewing extras, crew and even craft services, anyone it seems who had even a tangential local link to MI4.

Factual News Julia Scott-Stevenson 6 Dec 2011

Power to the Pixel sessions online

The northern hemisphere inches a tiny bit closer with the news that Power to the Pixel has just loaded the presentations from their October Cross Media Forum online. Check out the website to listen to Lance Weiler talking about building storyworlds, Christopher Sandberg talking about creating experiences for people, and Jeff Gomez talking about accessing your audience, among others.

Factual News Kylie Boltin 6 Dec 2011

Peter Jackson involved in new documentary “West Memphis 3”

Peter Jackson has announced the completion of a new documentary through his company, Wingnut Films. Directed by Amy Berg, (Deliver us from Evil), “West of Memphis,” is produced by Damien Echols and his wife Lorri Davis.

Factual News Julia Scott-Stevenson 5 Dec 2011

AACTA Award nominations announced

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), formed this year to replace the Australian Film Institute, announced the nominations for its annual awards last week.

Q&A Kylie Boltin 5 Dec 2011

Interview: David Weissman, director of We Were Here

We Were Here is a portrait of the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco. Told via extended interviews with five survivors of the epidemic, the moving documentary has been shortlisted for an Academy Award and nominated for Best Documentary at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards. I spoke with director/producer David Weissman by phone from California.