Ken Burns will be sharing his secrets in an online masterclass. 

This is a great podcast on all things documentary, here talking about the rash of not only excellent documentaries but financially successful ones too!

I don’t know if you guys heard about this, but Errol Morris, who is one of the most prolific and respected documentarieans of our time wrote a book. I was pleased to find that it’s a philosophy book of sorts, dealing with the nature of truth. I’ve of course always been a fan of Errol’s movies, and based on the nature of the questions he’s asking, the the level the conversations in his movies usually reach, I was always certain he’d had an intellectual background. Well, now that I’m finally delving into his book, I can’t help but admire him even more. As it turns out, he has a background in philosophy (as I do) and had some of the same encounters with great postmodern thinkers as a young grad student that I had (with similar frustrations, as fate would have it). I want to present this bit of reading to you so that you might better understand the type of work that goes on under the surface when constructing a documentary film (or a book for that matter). Werner Herzog famously tells his student to “read, read, read, read, READ!” Should they want to become great filmmakers. Well, Errol […]

This is is VERY encouraging, and very much in line with what I’ve been saying about a golden age for documentary.  Here are all-time documentary box office earnings from Box Office Mojo. What do you notice that’s interesting? We see that several types of film are big earners:   – controversial or partisan political docs. Michael Moore has four in the top 30 and Dinesh D’Souza has three.  – animal and nature documentaries (which was surprising to me even though I love March of the Penguins)  – singer or celebrity based documentaries (not surprising because of the star power)  – but LOOK at this: there are SEVEN documentaries from this year among the top 100 Three of them are excellent biopics: Won’t You Be My Neighbor is my favorite, but RBG is very well done and Whitney does a great job of paying tribute to the talented singer.  One is another partisan political doc (D’Souza again), there are two nature docs and Three Identical Strangers, which is just a good, crazy story.  Most of you should know how I feel about partisan bully pulpits that degrade an art form especially suited to generate empathy (or if not you will if you […]

How to Film Truth: The Story of Documentary Film as a Spiritual Journey is available now! Get a copy HERE.

As you guys know, I LOVE the Mr. Rodgers documentary, as this indie wire article points out, it’s created a renewed interest in him over at PBS. I love seeing things like this, when a film starts to have a positive impact on the world.

Here’s another great write up for Minding the Gap. It’s goung to be on Hulu soon! https://theoutline.com/post/5669/minding-the-gap-review

This is an interesting documentary that explores what it means to have a twin, even if that person is not a part of your life. It’s about two artists, who share almost nothing in common by the way of their experiences, yet share the same physiology. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/documentary-film-witkin-witkin-1301411