On May 9, at the historic Missouri Theatre in downtown Columbia, the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism will hold its second annual Stronger Than Fiction Film Festival, a showcase of the work of the students graduating from the Documentary Journalism interest area. The festival marks the world premiere for these films, many of…
When Myles Kane and Josh Koury were looking to distribute their film Voyeur, they had a lot of interest in the documentary. The pair had spent three and a half years working independently on the film, and wanted to make sure to find the right place for it. Enter Netflix. While the directors had offers…
Arguably one of the best-known documentaries of the last 20 years is March of the Penguins, the beloved nature documentary. Anyone who has watched it can remember the scene when the baby penguin is taking its first steps. Layered on with Morgan Freeman’s sagely voice, audiences can hear the light steps on the snow and feel…
He arrived via Department of Defense and Highway Patrol escort, to the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas to do a Q&A after his film Grizzly Man and teach a two-hour master class. However, legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog almost immediately undercut the idea of the master class, pointing out that he could not teach…
Many feature filmmakers are entering the feature film world from nontraditional beginnings, such as music videos, and this includes documentary filmmakers. Feature filmmakers, fiction and nonfiction alike, often enter the world of feature films from studying film in school or getting their foot in the door with feature films–or at least films of the same…
The film frame has remained relatively unchanged since the invention of the camera. Aside from a few changes in common aspect ratios, films have remained contained in a static frame. Filmmakers have worked around this limitation through creative camera motion and editing. Despite those efforts, cinema has remained trapped within the confines of a rectangle.
Richard Brody of the New Yorker has said, “There are as many ways of making movies as there are movies, and there are as many experiences of movies as there are viewers.” You could say the same for the film festival; there are as many ways to program a festival as there are festivals. Film…
“Osiyo” is the traditional greeting of the Cherokee people. It translates to “hello,” but within the culture, it’s also used to set the tone when beginning something new. Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People, is a magazine-style program featuring the people, places, history, and culture of the Cherokee Nation. The program is setting the tone…
The Stronger Than Fiction Film Festival celebrates the work of students graduating from the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism. 2017 marks our very first graduating class. Our talented students have spent nearly a year developing their own short films for the festival. Each student has directed his or her own documentary, collaborating with…
BLOOMINGTON, IN – The old and new guard in the documentary world met Wednesday, April 5 at the Indiana University Cinema when groundbreaking observational filmmaker Frederick Wiseman sat in conversation with Murray Center Filmmaker-in Chief Robert Greene, himself an important voice in modern cinematic nonfiction. The event launched Indiana University’s “Filmmaker to Filmmaker: Conversations from…