Ford Foundation: The Art of Democracy: Creative Expression and American Greatness

Ford Foundation: The Art of Democracy: Creative Expression and American Greatness

By Darren Walker

Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Thelma Golden, for your gracious introduction—and, more importantly, for your groundbreaking, visionary leadership at the Studio Museum in Harlem. And thank you, all, for this extraordinary honor: the privilege of delivering this 30th annual lecture in tribute to the incomparable Nancy Hanks.

IndieWire: Stories of Trump’s America: How Documentary Filmmakers Plan to Escape the Liberal Bubble

IndieWire: Stories of Trump’s America: How Documentary Filmmakers Plan to Escape the Liberal Bubble

By Anthony Kaufman

On November 12 of this year, Impact Partners executive director and documentary producer Dan Cogan wrote a powerful call to action on Facebook. “The last 4 days have been a horror. The next 4 years will be worse,” he wrote. “And yet my pulse is quickening, because there is so much to be done, and we, the documentary film community, are in pole position to make a huge difference.”

Let Us Cover the World in Gold

Let Us Cover the World in Gold

By Myah Overstreet

When I first began working on this project, to curate an inspiring collection of media created by youth in 2016, I didn’t know where to start—I didn’t know who to contact, what artists to recruit, or what kind of media I was really going for. The only thought that truly gave me inspiration was the thought, the vision, of living in a world transformed by art that young minds created, and how much I yearned to create this world.

#DocsSoWhite: A Personal Reflection

#DocsSoWhite: A Personal Reflection

By Renee Tajima-Peña

I once considered documentary to be a fallback for filmmakers of color who were shut out of the fiction universe. I was wrong. As it turns out, we may be more under-represented in nonfiction filmmaking. Sundance estimates the proportion of documentary directors of color screening at the festival to be around 15 percent. The Directors Guild of America estimates 82 percent of its narrative members are white males; it doesn't even bother to calculate documentarians.