The continued rise of streaming platforms has had reverberating effects in online film communities. Every company, regardless of size and scope, must complete to find, maintain, and build online audiences. Courtney Sheehan shares news of new streaming services after speaking with industry reps at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Courtney Sheehan reports on digital media pioneer Katerina Cizek, who has brought a new documentary project to the Toronto International Film Festival. Cizek is leading the co-creation of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, a research center for emerging new media technologies. Sheehan discusses Cizek’s newest film project and the exciting innovations in documentary filmmaking that are being explored.
Courtney Sheehan talks with Serbian Director Mila Turajlic at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. Turajilic’s new documentary, The Other Side of Everything (Druga strana svega) mines the depths of family history to offer an untold story of Yugoslavia’s past. The filmmaker shares about her process, her family’s fascinating story, and the role of documentary in representing and reflecting upon cultural complexities.
How did the buying and selling stack up at this year’s TIFF? Courtney Sheehan takes the temp of the ever-feverish world of independent film exhibition and distribution by talking with Adam Birnbaum (Avon Theatre), Julie Anderson Friesen (Cinema Falls), and Andrew Carlin (Oscilloscope Laboratories).
Fittingly, Frederick Wiseman attended the 40th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival with his 40th documentary, In Jackson Heights, about a diverse New York neighborhood in flux. The Independent asks Wiseman to discuss the editing process, the communities he discovered in Jackson Heights, and the notion of screening all of his films in a continuous 100 hour stretch.
If cinema can function as a vehicle for a nation’s collective memory, Afghanistan only recently began to recollect itself. Pietra Brettkelly’s documentary, A Flickering Truth, mines the Afghan Film Archive for the nation’s cultural history and follows the team of people who are working to protect it and share it with the world.