David France
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Risk Aware Filmmaking: Devising New Documentary Security Protocols for David France’s Welcome to Chechnya
Despite its ironically inviting title, Welcome to Chechnya, a new documentary by director David France, depicts a harrowing tale of escape. The film, which is being released by HBO on June 30, follows a group of Russian activists working to rescue LGBTQ people from a vicious anti-gay government campaign in Chechnya. Beginning in 2017, Chechen authorities detained, tortured and, in some cases, forcibly disappeared more than 100 (likely many more) members of the gay community, according to reports by journalists and human rights groups. Paced like a spy thriller, the documentary captures the Chechens’ perilous journey, aided by the Russian […]
by Sara Rafsky on Jul 7, 2020 -
Personal Doesn’t Mean Small: IFP Week Filmmakers On Tackling Big Issues With Intimate Stories
“I think we have this profound misrepresentation around personal films being small,” said Cecilia Aldarondo, one of three filmmakers of personal docs who spoke at IFP Week 2017. The panel was called “When the Personal Gets Political and the Political Gets Personal.” In the case of all three filmmakers’ films, they’re both. “I’ve gotten so many responses from potential funders of people who think that way. They hear ‘personal’ and they hear ‘small.’ They think it won’t have an audience. With these projects, I think we’ve demonstrated that’s not the case. If we’re dealing with questions of social change and […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 22, 2017 -
Who Gets to Tell Whose Story?: IFP Week Filmmakers and Funders Talk the Politics of Representation in 2017
When Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit came out this summer, some charged that it shouldn’t have been made by Kathryn Bigelow. Critics, including rogerebert.com’s Angelica Jade Bastien, felt that the story — about ten Black civilians (and two Caucasians) tortured and, in some cases, killed by racist white cops during the 1967 Detroit riots — should have been told by Black filmmakers. These commentators argued that Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal, both white, not only lacked the perspective to get the events right; they also ran the risk of aestheticizing suffering and the destruction of Black bodies. This is not a new […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 20, 2017 -
Sights and Sounds of the IFP Gotham Awards
Disclaimer: I attended last night’s Gotham Awards in various capacities: as a journalist, as a Best Film Not Playing at a Theatre Near You jury member, and as an IFP staff member involved in the behind-the-scenes running of the show. So my perspective on the event is somewhat fractured. As the Gothams is the first award show of the season, people are always looking to it as a bellwether for the future. Last night, Beasts of the Southern Wild — although not nominated in the Best Feature category — came away with the headlines and further awards momentum, having won two statuettes […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 27, 2012 -
TRAILER WATCH: “HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE” AND “KEEP THE LIGHTS ON”
Released in the past few days were two terrific trailers for films coming out in September that we covered in our Summer issue: David France’s AIDS activism documentary How to Survive a Plague, and writer/director Ira Sachs’ late 90s NYC-set gay drama Keep the Lights On. Go here to read “Of Time & The City,” the fascinating conversation between France and Sachs about these two films, which act almost as companion pieces to one another, and the poignant histories behind them.
by Nick Dawson on Aug 15, 2012 -
Of Time & The City
Artistry, despair and rage — the New York City of the 1980s and ’90s was defined by its fusion of these elements as artists and activists became frontline soldiers in the fight against the health crisis of AIDS. “Silence = Death” was the slogan of activist group ACT UP, an admonishment to all those who’d deny the severity of the epidemic by not taking a position. And as ACT UP members took direct action against fearful politicians, a generation of artists incorporated the movement’s anger and social critique into their own passionate work. These New York years form the backdrop […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 19, 2012 -
How To Survive A Plague | Director, David France
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22, 3:00 pm –Temple Theatre, Park City] It’s a quirky, but not inconsequential, fact about HIV that the virus made its hideous debut in medical journals just a few months before the first camcorders hit the stores. In the long years before the Internet, before cell-phone cameras or social networks, these low-cost marvels democratized the power of moving images and built the first bridge between mass media and previously hidden worlds. Thus was born the Sex Tape, of course. But the world where AIDS first struck was also a hidden world. It’s hard to fathom now, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2012
