October 2019 Newsletter

Center For Independent Documentary

Industry News & Opportunities

SAVE THE DATE FOR MASS MEDIA EXPO  Mark your calendar on  Saturday, November 2nd  for MPC's annual Mass Media Expo  at  WGBH Boston !  The region's l argest film and media conversation returns, and promises a truly special lineup of exhibitions, speakers, panels, interactive media, screenings, and more! W atch for announcements throughout the fall and opportunities to secure early bird passes. Stay tuned to the Expo website for updates!

IDA'S DOCUMENTARY MAGAZINE EDITORIAL FELLOWSHIP With support from  National Endowment for the Arts , International Documentary Association 's  Documentary Mag azine  Editorial Fellowship is designed to enhance opportunities for emerging writers from underserved and underrepresented communities. 4 fellows will receive stipends of $2,000 each to: - Participate in quarterly editorial meetings - Pitch, write and deliver a minimum of 3 print or online articles each between January and December 2020 - Participate in 3-4 video mentorship sessions throughout the year with documentary industry representatives who will offer insights on the field - At IDA’s expense, travel to and provide coverage of Getting Real 2020 or another local or regional film festival or industry event. Deadline to apply is Friday, October 25. More information here .

CID Film News & Updates

DAWNLAND WINS EMMY FOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCH The Upstander Project team is incredibly honored to accept the Emmy award for its film DAWNLAND for Outstanding Research from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Here is what co-director/producer Adam Mazo said in accepting the award: “We’re honored to accept this award in the territory of the Leni Lenape people.  Dawnland is a story for the Wabanaki people - the people of the dawn land. Our film presents testimony from Wabanaki people who are being separated from their families, nations, tribes, and communities by Euro-American settlers like me.  The greatest recognition belongs to the Wabanaki people who have lived that experience and showed immense courage in telling their stories or holding them in their hearts. And to my wife Liza and all of our spouses and families - your support for us is what makes this possible.” Dawnland will be streaming free in a live online event with the filmmakers on Indigenous People’s Day on Monday, October 14 at 3pm EDT . And the following screenings are scheduled in October: Oct 4 - NatiVisions Film Festival - Parker, Arizona Oct 10 - National Indian Educational Association Conference - Minneapolis, Minnesota Oct 14 - Global Online Screening - Worldwide Oct 15 - Keene State College - Keene, New Hampshire Oct 16 - Dolby Theater - New York City Oct 30 - Boston, Massachusetts Upstander Project’s short film Dear Georgina will be premiering this month too: Oct 6 - Globe Docs Film Festival - Cambridge, Massachusetts Oct 17 - Maine Public Television Premiere Oct 17 - 20 New Hampshire Film Festival - Portsmouth, New Hampshire Oct 18 - Made Here Showcase - Burlington, Vermont Oct 19 - Maine Public Television Premiere Times and details for all screenings are at  dawnland.org/screenings

PATERNAL RITES AT KANSAI QUEER FILM FESTIVAL PATERNAL RITES , directed by Jules Rosskam, will screen at the Kansai Queer Film Festival on Saturday, October 19th at 3:45pm. Paternal Rites examines the secret underbelly of a contemporary Jewish-American family as the filmmaker grapples with the after-effects of childhood physical and sexual abuse in his present-day life and in the lives of his family members. Interrogating the nature of emotional upheaval and memory itself, the film reflects on the ways in which trauma encrypts in uncanny ways, the function of speech and narrative in the process of decryption, and the role of film and filmmaking in the practice of healing.

FEEL MEMORY IN ART HABENS REVIEW A 6 minute version of Viviane Silvera’s short film See Memory , made out of her thousands of hand painted stills - is currently installed at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters throughout 2019. Silvera’s handpainted video Moon on a String , also an excerpt from her film See Memory, was recently acquired by Davidson College and is currently on view at their Van Every Smith Galleries A thirty-eight page interview and spread on Silvera’s animation process and feature film in production FEEL MEMORY , can be seen in the latest edition of Art Habens Review.

WORLD PREMIERE OF MORE JOY LESS PAIN MORE JOY LESS PAIN , directed by James Michael McCoy, will have its world premiere in New York City on November 11th. More Joy Less Pain is a documentary feature surrounding the life of award-winning journalist and raconteur Peter Gorman. Watch the new trailer for the film here .

CID Sponsored Film Of The Month

"YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE" Directed by Rajee Samarasinghe Your Touch Makes Others Invisible is a hybrid documentary that focuses on the casualties and enforced disappearances through 26 years of civil war in Sri Lanka. The film fuses first hand accounts and vérité observations with narrative and performative elements. The fictional narrative thread of the film focuses on the mysterious disappearance of a young boy at the hands of a supernatural force which haunts a small Tamil community in Northern Sri Lanka. Through a close collaboration with locals, the film develops and threads this fiction into the reality of the situation there. The film follows the lives of the Tamil locals whilst observing rituals and everyday interactions. Interviews expand on their experiences during and after the war within the framework of the disappearances. Politically-inflected performances or “happenings” developed and enacted by locals describe the different aspects of their lives. The film weaves together the many personal narratives of loss with broader observations on current political and social conditions within the Tamil community in the post-war era. In tandem with a quest for answers and accountability, the film constructs a stark portrait of the lasting effects of the civil war now a decade after its conclusion. Read more and contribute to the film here.

Featured Resource Of The Month

"Documentary Budgeting (and so much more!)" Has budgeting, scheduling and managing your documentary got you down? Are you struggling to prepare a realistic budget for prospective funders? Or is the phase-by-phase nature of indie doc fundraising frustrating your ability to make – or stick to – your planned budget? In a practical weeklong special topic starting today on The D-Word,  Documentary Budgeting (and so much more!) , Emmy and Berlinale award-winning filmmaker  Robert Bahar  and veteran producer  Lisa Remington  will provide an overview of the budgeting process, and answer any and all of your budgeting questions. The conversation will draw on Bahar's popular Documentary magazine article  A (Revised!) Introduction to Documentary Budgeting  (which includes a downloadable budget template) and his budgeting workshop, most recently presented at the IDA’s Getting Real ’18 conference. Register for a free D-Word Pro Membership here .

We are grateful for the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency which is funded by the Mass Cultural Council, and administered by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture.

Center For Independent Documentary | 1-339-364-1278 | www.documentaries.org

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