Access is always an issue with documentary, creating unique challenges in war zones or similar areas where filmmakers would be in physical danger or simply cannot go. The documentary Last Hijack, produced by Submarine Channel and directed by Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta, doesn’t just deal with these issues but makes them one of the film’s greatest strengths. In documenting piracy in Somalia, the filmmakers turned to techniques like animation — Pallotta produced both Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly — to show what could not be filmed, and then went one step further by creating an interactive documentary to accompany the traditional linear film. […]

The title Years of Living Dangerously could just as easily refer to the time its creators spent producing the recent series, and it has indeed been a busy few years for the journalists-turned-film producers Joel Bach and David Gelber. The pair left their posts at 60 Minutes several years ago to pursue a passion project, a long-form documentary on global warming. The result was a nine-part series that aired on Showtime this spring and, last week, took home the Emmy for the best nonfiction series, beating out Fox’s fantastic, much-lauded series Cosmos. Now the team is gearing up for phase two of the release, a DVD […]

With Netflix in the midst of filming Orange Is the New Black‘s third season and putting $3 million into new content this year, the paradigm seems to have permanently shifted from the service being seen primarily as a content distributor to an established content creator. In other words, its continual production of scripted programming is no longer novel, which is why its push into the exclusive acquisition of nonfiction material is no less remarkable. Following the success of films like Jehane Noujaim’s The Square (a 2013 Oscar contender), Greg Whiteley’s Mitt, and the Holocaust-themed short The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life earlier […]

It’s never easy to pull off a successful film festival, but current conditions in Ukraine have made it nearly impossible. Five years ago, when organizers initiated an annual summer event in Odessa, the Ukrainian film industry was developing and the first festival rather small. But the Odessa International Film Festival grew quickly, reportedly beyond its organizers’ expectations, and began to receive the attention of the international film community, particularly in Europe. Now the Potemkin steps made immortal by Eisenstein are the site of outdoor screenings of classic films like (of course) Battleship Potemkin and the in-competition feature films have swollen by 140%, besides […]

Screenings have just kicked off in Manhattan for the Tribeca Film Festival, but as always not all the films are showing in theaters–and there’s more available online this year than ever before. Here’s a quick guide to what you can see and how to see it. Streaming select titles: Four feature films and four shorts will be online after their initial theatrical screenings this week and next; they’ll also be eligible for an audience choice award with prize money totaling $15,000. All of Tribeca’s online material discussed below, including these eight films, is available at http://tribecafilm.com/online. The short films include: * Love in […]

Yesterday IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced that an annual lab for web series will be added to its existing programs for narrative and documentary films. The Web Storytellers Sidebar, part of IFP’s RBC Emerging Storytellers program, is designed to promote web series through an in-depth consultation during Independent Film Week in September, with additional logistical support extending beyond. Up to five series–in any stage of development, production, or post–will be selected to participate in the conference, which constitutes the largest meetings-based film forum in the United States. As part of their acceptance, the projects also will have exclusive access to additional IFP web series […]

For ten days in January a documentary called The Book of Lone Peak ranked as the top-selling short film on iTunes. The film, which profiles a high school basketball team from the town of Highland, Utah, was made by New York City-based filmmaker Ben Altarescu and a fifteen-year-old journalism student named  Zack Samberg. The pair moved quickly to push the project through to completion before the basketball players left for post-high school pursuits. The filmmakers talked with me about how a professional filmmaker and teenager collaborated and how they helped push the film on iTunes and other platforms. Filmmaker: You both came to this project […]

It’s been two full decades since Hoop Dreams, but any basketball documentary is still bound to be compared to that iconic film. Still, technological changes over those 20 years beg the question of how Steve James and Kartemquin Film would handle distributing the film today. When director Robert Herrera was faced with the same challenge for his new film The Gray Seasons, about the women’s basketball team at St. Louis University, he struck upon a series of festival screenings, simultaneous cable PPV and VOD (via Vimeo on Demand) availability, and finally a DVD release and iOS app that encapsulates much of […]