OUTwatch 2020 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
Features Four Docs on the History and Ongoing Struggle for LGBTQIA Civil Rights, Streaming Oct. 16-25
SDFF partner fest, OUTwatch calls attention to the history and future of civil rights with its 2020 fest theme “Looking Back, Moving Forward.” Held virtually this year due to COVID-19, OUTwatch will feature four outstanding docs that elucidate distinctive perspectives, ranges of experience and points in time. At a time when civil are embattled, festival organizers hope the films they’ve selected will honor LGBTQIA folks who have fought for civil rights, and shed light/inspire ongoing struggles to maintain and expand human rights to the entire community.
This year’s virtual festival showcases four enlightening, empowering and entertaining documentaries: Tongues Untied(Marlon Riggs, 1989), Ahead of the Curve (Jen Rainin, Rivkah Beth Medow, 2020), Transmilitary (Gabriel Silverman, Fiona Dawson, 2018), and Cured (Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer, 2020).
The festival will stream from Oct. 16-25, tickets are $12/household at www.OutWatchFilmFest.org.
Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival 2020 To Finish the Year Online
NEW DMHC PASSES ON SALE NOW
$40 for 4 film programs + t-shirts!
SDFF 2019 Selection, The Silence of Others,
Garners Two Emmys
Image from The Silence of Others (Almudena Carracedo & Robert Bahar, 2018), SDFF 2019 official selection.
Tuesday night at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards, SDFF 2019 Official Selection, The Silence of Others, won two Emmys. Filmmakers Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar garnered one Emmy for Best Documentary and a second for Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary.
The Silence of Others reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. Filmed over six years, the film follows victims and survivors as they organize the groundbreaking “Argentine Lawsuit” and fight a state-imposed amnesia of crimes against humanity, in a country still divided four decades into democracy.
The Silence of Others appeared as Episode 11 of PBS’s POV Season 32, and will be available on the PBS website for free until 10/08. It is also available on Netflix.
Bellingcat up for Emmy in innovation in Docs and News.
Bellingcat, the independent, international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists, which was the topic of SDFF 2020 Official Selection, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World (Hans Pool, 2018) is up for an Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches: Current News. The online news source was nominated, along with collaborator Newsy, for this News and Documentary Award for a series of open-source investigations by the two entities over the past year.
SDFF 2020 Filmmaker Speaks Out On Health Care Desert, How Hospital Closures Have Impacted COVID
As COVID has torn through the country over the past several months, it has refocused attention on long-standing issues in American healthcare that have put low-income folks and people of color at much greater risk of both contracting and dying from the disease. SDFF 2020 selection The Desert (Bo Kovitz, 2019) documents the closure of an East Bay hospital that left almost 250,000, mostly low-income, people in the Bay Area over a 30 minutes away from the nearest hospital. Since COVID began spiking in California, Kovitz has spoken out eloquently on “health care deserts.” See her exclusive interview with SDFF co-Director Jean McGlothlin here.
Claudia Escobar, Dear Homeland
Thanks to the support of Volunteers, Filmmakers, Partners, Donors and Patrons…
SDFF has Attained Coveted Recognition as Academy Award® Qualifying Festival
Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival is proud to announce that it has been approved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an Academy Qualifying Festival for the Documentary Short Subject category.
Currently in its 13th year, the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival’s mission to bring the best in documentary film to Sonoma County has just been enhanced by its inclusion as an Academy Award® qualifying festival. Of more than 8,000 film festivals currently listed on FilmFreeway’s entry portal, only 158 of those festivals have Academy Award® qualifying status. Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival is honored to be in their company.
Recipients of the SDFF Jury Award for Short Subject and Jury Award for Mini-Doc are now eligible for consideration in the Documentary Short Subject category of the Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run, provided the film otherwise complies with the Academy rules.
Jury Awards for SDFF 2020 were scheduled to be announced on March 25 at Opening Night ceremonies. With the advent of the pandemic, those ceremonies were postponed. The award winners have been notified. It is with great pride that we list the winners below, noting that both the Short Subject and the Mini-Doc are eligible for consideration in the 93rd Academy Awards® Short Subject Category.
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