International Documentary Association (IDA)

After spending her early career making documentaries for British television, Victoria Mapplebeck’s life took a sharp turn, finding herself unexpectedly a single mother, leaving her all-consuming job as a TV director and becoming a full-time film professor as she raised her son Jim. ‘Motherboard,’ her latest feature doc filmed primarily on her iPhone, tells the story of the first 20 years of her life with Jim. It threads the difficult needle of revisiting material covered in Mapplebeck’s short films in a new and fresh way. Carol Nahra spoke to Mapplebeck ahead of Motherboard’s UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. Last week, Motherboard was announced as one of the shortlisted features for the IDA Documentary Awards in the Best Feature category. Read the full interview at #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/eVEDs935

Robinson Devor is no stranger to unusual subjects. In his new film, ‘Suburban Fury,’ Devor sits with Sara Jane Moore, a middle-aged five-time divorcee and mother of four, a suburbanite turned informant for the FBI on various radical groups turned radical herself, attempted to shoot Gerald Ford, to learn her story. Dan Schindel sat down with Devor over Zoom to discuss how he approached Moore and then weaved her story into the broader one about the period. Read the full interview at #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/gSJrKqxg

Though Burden of Dreams was made in close collaboration with Herzog and his crew, its funereal opening passages begin to dispel potential accusations of a puff piece. Herzog’s voice accompanies a shot of two Natives traveling along the river, looking back at the crew with equal parts curiosity and suspicion. Read Alexander Mooney’s observations of ‘Burden of Dreams’ and ‘My Best Fiend’ for #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/gJRFsgrj

Examining one of the most important decisions that shape us all—where we choose to live, ‘New Yorker’ staff writer Lawrence Wright authored ‘America’s Future Is Texas’ and ‘The Dark Bounty of Texas Oil’ for the New Yorker in 2017. The following year, he finished ‘God Save Texas,’ the book that inspired the 2024 HBO documentary series of the same name. Read about the Cinema Eye nominated film for best anthology series in #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/gW-8UceB

This week’s #DocOfTheWeek is ‘Unmuted’ by director Dena Hysell-Cornejo. Doc of the Week highlights a documentary project raising funds through IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship program! Learn more at https://lnkd.in/gdWcdQXM. 1 in 3 women globally will experience gender-based violence. Unmuted follows women from across the globe on their journeys of survival and resiliency as they reclaim their agency and rebuild their lives against seemingly insurmountable odds. From this series, audiences will learn about the complex socio-cultural factors that lead to people becoming victims of gender-based violence - and the non-traditional solutions that individuals and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) are using to protect women and girls around the world. This film is currently in distribution.

In Jessica Chaney’s ‘I Am,’ five Black women directly address the audience to discuss their personal struggles with mental health—a therapist and a holistic life coach are both also on hand to help contextualize their stories, to demonstrate that no one need truly be alone in their personal journeys in anxiety, depression, and more. Dan Schindel met Chaney and Willoughby to discuss how the project finally came to fruition. Read the full interview at #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/gxHQqYS4

Mati Diop’s trim, 68-minute documentary ‘Dahomey’ (2024)—which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale earlier this year—recounts the diplomatic aftermath of the 2018 report ‘The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics,’ written by Senegalese academic Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy: 250 pages on confiscated objects of worship residing in Quai Branly alongside an actionable plan to restitute the items to their countries of origin. Read more about the film from Saffron Maeve at #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/gYi7RXnY

This week’s #DocOfTheWeek is ‘Si La Isla Quiere’ by director Cece King. Doc of the Week highlights a documentary project raising funds through IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship program! Learn more at https://lnkd.in/g3NvFRMZ. With 61 times more endemic plant species than the Galapagos and an equally diverse human population, Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island might be the most unique place in the world. SI LA ISLA QUIERE (“Island Willing”) immerses audiences in a radical culture of stewardship through the eyes of three island families. Against the backdrop of a climate in crisis, this film shows what it means to live with nature. This film is currently in post-production.

Cullen Hoback has developed something of a specialty in chasing elusive cultural figures. Hoback does something similar with his new film ‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.’ A look at the history of the namesake cryptocurrency is also a hunt for “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the original creator of Bitcoin, who has managed to remain hidden for more than 15 years. Ahead of the film’s premiere on HBO, Dan Schindel spoke with Hoback about his investigation and making all the information legible for viewers. Read the full interview at #DocumentaryMag. https://lnkd.in/gxA9FizV

This week’s #DocOfTheWeek is ‘Backstreet to the American Dream’ by director/producer Patricia Nazario. Doc of the Week highlights a documentary project raising funds through IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship program! Learn more and donate at https://lnkd.in/gaCb9Y6K.