Abby Sun

To counter the decentralization of local film production, BAVC Media (Bay Area Video Coalition) has just released the Bay Area Film Production Memo. The memo summarizes the tax incentives, institutions, collaborations, and filmmaker pipeline infrastructure of the San Francisco-Bay Area and, crucially, compares them to structures that exist in other U.S. regions.

With a flurry of announcements in the last six months, the Doris Duke Foundation’s Building Bridges program has stepped squarely into the film funding space in a concerted effort to broaden the pipeline of Muslim-American filmmakers in media and entertainment. The program is partnering with a handful of film institutions, most notably the Islamic Scholarship Fund, the Center for Asian American Media, Sundance Institute, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Hollywood Bureau, on a series of public activations, funds, and fellowships. The programs have taken place in a variety of spaces, from Sundance festival to IDA’s own Getting Real. The activities caught our attention.

Dear Readers,

Another year, another Sundance. This second edition under festival director Eugene Hernandez doesn’t portend many changes from last year’s. The big news is that the day before the festival’s opening night, Participant Media pulled Khalil Joseph’s BLCKNWS: Terms & Conditions from the lineup due to Joseph’s alleged additional edits after the film was delivered to its financier in fall 2024.

IDAinsight: Budgeting and Scheduling 101 Workshop with Robert Bahar

Due to high demand and to better accommodate our international IDA and community members, we’ve scheduled a second iteration of the Budgeting and Scheduling 101 workshop with Robert Bahar. If you missed the first session, don’t miss your chance to reserve a spot!

Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PT

Dear Readers,

Over the past several years, when discussing the audience exodus to large platform streamers, I’ve encountered exhaustion from filmmakers, arts workers, funders, broadcasters, distributors, and exhibitors. Everyone wants to help fix the problem, but no one knows where to start. That’s because there are real issues that stack the deck against documentary filmmakers and our audiences. They can be classified into three main categories: funding, discoverability, and unequal market power.

David Osit discusses how Predators, his house of cards examining Chris Hansen’s controversial sting show and its YouTube imitators, stealthily reflects both true crime and documentary commodification of human suffering