Documentary festivals are certainly not immune to scandal and controversy, and this year’s RIDM, which took place in Montreal in November 2015, was no exception. Following on the heels of…
RIDM always has way more films that look fantastic than any one person with other commitments can reasonably see in the space of ten days, which is a great problem…
The Exhibiton — Peter Kennard: A Very Unofficial War Artist, Imperial War Museum, London The Film — Zygosis: John Heartfield and the Political Image by Gavin Hodge & Tim Morrison…
Though often situated at the centre of grandiose political and activist projects, tasked time and again with capturing visible evidence of exploitation, violence, deprivation, and inequality, documentary, as both a…
North America’s largest and most sweeping doc-deluge, the Canadian International Hot Docs Festival, is once again in full swing, and the moment wouldn’t be complete, for me at least, without…
An appeal from the international community of film scholars, cinephiles and archivists: Dear Colleagues, Avala Film, the former Yugoslavia’s oldest film studio – which was at the heart of Mila…
Julia Kwan’s NFB-produced Everything Will Be (Canada, 2014) examines the gentrification of Vancouver’s Chinatown as an uneasy balance of preservation, assimilation, and creative re-purposing. A flurry of condo development encroaches…
Nearly two dozen filmmakers have yanked their films from the 34th Istanbul Film Festival in response to the last-minute cancellation of documentary screening about the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The…
In 2001, filmmakers Kathryn Xian and Brent Anbe broke new ground with their documentary Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place. The film, which documents the lives, struggles,…
“>Screening Truth to Power: A Reader on Documentary Activism is a collection of essays and interviews related to the films and filmmakers of Cinema Politica (CP), and as such provides…
Sergei Loznitsa’s latest film, Maidan, falls firmly in the tradition of documentaries that use the real to question the possibilities of cinema. Those expecting a more activist documentary like Jehane…
The only thing I hate more than bad puns is bad ethnography, and La cour de Babel walks a fine line on that. Following an integration class for new immigrants…
A lot of people didn’t like The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2012 film exposing the impunity the perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1965 genocide continue to benefit from. The biggest objection…
The Secret Trial 5, director Amar Wala’s first feature, is an engaging and enraging look at five men labelled security risks by the Canadian government and detained without trial for…
On the outside, The Condemned is what you would expect of a documentary about a prison: bad food, unsympathetic guards, tearful family reunions, letters from Lonely Hearts, and a lot…
“… it’s a place I call home, although I blend in only as a familiar stranger.” Evaporating Borders, written and directed by Iva Radivojevic, is a five-act exploration of asylum-seekers…
It’s springtime in Toronto and that means Canada’s premiere documentary showcase is back for another jam-packed ten day event that will deliver the world of doc to eager local audiences…
This week marks the third anniversary of the crisis in Syria, and a new campaign involving Banksy asks that we stand in solidarity with Syrians. #WithSyria asks the public to…
VoiceOver | Riots Reframed (2013) is Fahim Alam’s first film, shot in the aftermath of the 2011 riots in London and other UK cities, while Alam was under conditional release…
The Act of Killing: My family lived through it
Editor’s note: Christine Phang has recently written a contextual analysis of the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Act of Killing. After we read her essay we asked her to give us her…