The Doc Society Climate Story Fund announced today nine new creative projects from around the globe that will receive a combined $645,000 in grants, with each work demonstrating a concerted effort to advance climate justice and protect biodiversity.  This is the second cohort to receive the Climate Story Fund, which supports work from a wide array of storytelling mediums, including musical dramas, podcasts and documentaries. The fund prioritizes storytellers from underrepresented communities on the front lines of the global climate crisis, with the intent of providing much-needed support from production to impact campaigns. There is special emphasis on projects that […]

When 16-year-old Julius Tate, Jr. was killed during a SWAT raid by undercover Columbus police officers in December of 2018, citizens swiftly gathered to protest the unjust killing of a child. One year later, during an anniversary vigil mourning Tate’s loss, Ingrid Raphaël, co-creator of No Evil Eye and Film Futura, and Melissa Gira Grant, a New York-based reporter covering police brutality, came together to co-direct and collaborate on They Won’t Call It Murder, a documentary short from Field of Vision that captures the enduring grief and activism that surviving families of police violence undertake. The film, embedded above, makes […]

At a time when big-budget Hollywood films have no guarantees of being seen by audiences at all, it’s gratifying that independent films can still find unique ways to connect with the public, largely by controlling their own destinies.  I’m happy to say that after playing 25 festivals on four continents, touring with a 60-city theatrical release this summer and releasing on VOD in four countries, my Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ will also start “airing” this September on JetBlue Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Singapore Airlines, among others.  For the next several months, there’s a good chance […]

Mexican-American filmmaker Eva Aridjis announced today the launch of (Screen)Play Press, which will publish scripts that have not yet been developed into feature films. Founded by Aridjis and fellow filmmaker/screenwriter Christine Vartoughian over a cup of coffee this past May, the first six titles published by (Screen)Play Press specifically spotlight scripts written by women. Each title will be available in paperback and e-book versions. “What we’d really love to emphasize is how many great un-produced screenplays we know are out there, and our desire to get these stories out into the world regardless of whether or not a film version […]

After 11 years of residence in Greenpoint, co-founders Ed Halter and Thomas Beard are moving their microcinema, Light Industry—dedicated to screening film and electronic art in Brooklyn since 2008—to Williamsburg. Ed and Thomas found inspiration for Light Industry in Amos Vogel, who founded the New York Film Festival, pioneered early alternative film spaces such as Cinema 16 and once wrote that “the avant-garde’s delight in the unpredictable, its insistence on the deconstruction of ossified codes, its probing of the unacceptable, signify gestures of freedom in an increasingly commercialized cinema.” I would repeat this remark, word for word, about the indispensable […]

The conversation about documentary impact has undergone a number of shifts since impact producing began to emerge as a practice within the documentary field around 20 years ago. Today it is almost expected that a social issue documentary film will be accompanied by an impact campaign to help ensure its story will reach audiences and motivate them towards social change, deeper engagement with a story’s themes and further learning. But earlier, things were different—the argument had to be made that some documentary filmmakers should focus on impact and to develop best practices for engaging audiences around a film and its […]