The genius documentary filmmakers to watch out for in 2016
- Text by Josh Gabert-Doyon
This year the MacArthur Foundation is funding documentaries that cover topics ranging from indigenous activism in Cambodia, to the relationship between Middle Eastern translators to American armed forces, and community organizing in Ferguson. The MacArthur Foundation is best known for their “Genius” grants, but they also fund exceptional American documentary projects through their Documentary Film Grant. The grant is a phenomenal opportunity for filmmakers to produce documentaries about human rights, eco-activism, global security, urban planning, and technology with the hopes of reaching policy-makers and wide audiences.
Here are some previews from the documentaries that received grants this year:
An independent, hard-hitting documentary tracking the racial justice movement in Ferguson since the shooting of Michael Brown.
2.. Tribal Justice
Super thought-provoking documentary looking at restorative (as opposed to punitive) justice in two Indian Reservations tribal courts in in the US
3. The Fire and the Bird’s Nest
Cambodian director Kalyanee Mam looks at indigenous resistance efforts against logging and hydro dams in Areng Valley, Cambodia, challenging the way we think about our relationship to land.
4. Survivors
From director Banker White, an intense documentary about the workers battling Ebola in Liberia
The story of Iraqi and Afghani interpreters and the American veterans they worked with, documenting their efforts to continue their lives after war.
Intimate doc from Air Media looking at public radio and TV stations and the stories they tell about their communities across the States
Multi-platform, interactive, video project investigating the way people’s experience of Whiteness factors into American race relations. It’s nuts how open people are in these interviews
Still from “Donald” from the Whiteness Project
See the full list of recipient documentaries here.
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Capturing life in the shadows of Canada’s largest oil refinery
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Susan Meiselas captured Nicaragua’s revolution in stark, powerful detail
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Youth violence’s rise is deeply concerning, but mass hysteria doesn’t help
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A visual trip through 100 years of New York’s LGBTQ+ spaces
Queer Happened Here — A new book from historian and writer Marc Zinaman maps scores of Manhattan’s queer venues and informal meeting places, documenting the city’s long LGBTQ+ history in the process.
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Nostalgic photos of everyday life in ’70s San Francisco
A Fearless Eye — Having moved to the Bay Area in 1969, Barbara Ramos spent days wandering its streets, photographing its landscape and characters. In the process she captured a city in flux, as its burgeoning countercultural youth movement crossed with longtime residents.
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