Addie Morfoot: Last News

William Earl Variety and Rolling Stone announced on Friday the final lineup for their Truth Seekers Summit, presented by Showtime Documentary Films, on Aug. 25 in New York.  The summit coincides with the Truth Seekers journal, a collaboration between Variety and Rolling Stone.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In “Take Me Out Feet First,” a new docuseries now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, director Serene Meshel-Dillman chronicles people’s right to choose medical aid in dying.The six-part docuseries, made in partnership with the nonprofit advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, profiles 25 terminally ill people, their families, and friends, as well as experts in the medical field who advocate for MAID. The series chronicles people who have taken control of how their final days will play out.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Producer Ina Fichman, Oscar nominated for “Fire of Love,” was at the 25th edition of Hot Docs Forum on Tuesday to pitch her latest project “Ba’s Book.” Directed by Canadian filmmaker Ashley Da-Le Duong, the hybrid docu focuses on Duong’s father and his experiences living through both the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution. “Let me take you somewhere for a moment,” Duong told the Forum audience and participating distributors including Arte, A24 and Al Jazeera. “It’s 1968 and a young man stands in the middle of a rice paddy field and looks up and sees a helicopter.

Addie Morfoot Contributor MipDoc keynote speaker Dawn Porter is coming to Cannes to discuss not only the challenging doc marketplace, but also how to work and prosper within it. In the last few years the doc industry has favored a handful of big-name filmmakers, like Porter, who are commissioned to make one-off films or docuseries. Over the last 12 months two of Porter’s docus were released: “Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court” which was financed and distributed by Showtime and “The Lady Bird Diaries,” which was financed and distributed by Hulu/ABC News.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Documentary filmmaking has never been a profession one enters into to get rich — though for a brief period it seemed possible. Cable expanded documentary’s reach to wider audiences in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and films like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “March of the Penguins,” and “An Inconvenient Truth” became legitimate box-office breakthroughs, but nonfiction features on the whole remained something of a stepchild within the larger Hollywood ecosystem until 2017, when Netflix acquired Brian Fogel’s “Icarus” for $5 million.

Many documentary filmmakers want their work on the big screen and not small. So, what gives? Why isn’t that happening?

Addie Morfoot Contributor Stormy Daniels cried and laughed during the SXSW world premiere of “Stormy,” a Peacock documentary about the porn star who made national headlines when it was revealed that Donald Trump‘s lawyer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged affair with the former president. “Fuck Trump,” Daniels said onstage following the March 8 screening.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In 2013, Angela Patton gave a TEDWomen talk that described a father-daughter dance for incarcerated dads and their daughters. That talk was viewed over a million times and inspired the documentary “Daughters,” which has its world premiere Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. In the film, Patton, who in the past decade has helped arrange approximately 15 Daddy Daughter Dances across the nation, and co-director Natalie Rae follow four young girls preparing for the event with their fathers in a prison in Washington, D.C.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Carla Gutierrez is known in the documentary community for her work as a film editor. She was behind Oscar nominated docs “RBG” and “La Corona” as well as Emmy winner “Julia.” But in 2022, after two decades of editing, Gutierrez decided to direct “Frida,” a docu about iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, which has its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival this week. “A few months before we started working on ‘Frida,’ I would say, ‘I’m really content with editing.’ I had no thoughts of directing, but her story really pulled me in and I realized I have to direct this (film).

Addie Morfoot Contributor Ben Fowlie, executive and artistic director of the Points North Institute and founder of Camden Intl. Film Festival, is stepping down from his position after 20 years with the organization. Longtime board member Rick Rector will serve as interim executive director until a search for a permanent replacement is completed.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In “Sly,” director Thom Zimny (“Springsteen on Broadway,” “Elvis Presley: The Searcher”) captures a side of Sylvester Stallone seldom seen. The 95-minute docu exposes a relatable, vulnerable man who is often thought to be the movie characters he made iconic — Rocky Balboa or John Rambo.Born in 1946, Stallone grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen with little money and a father who might have hated him. Zimny’s docu reveals that the fraught upbringing turned out to work in Stallone’s favor when it came to Hollywood.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Writer, actor, filmmaker, studio head and media mogul Tyler Perry is the latest celebrity to be the subject of a documentary, “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story.” The title nods to Perry’s late mother, Willie Maxine Perry, who died in 2009. Directed by Armani Ortiz, the documentary is a revealing look at the entertainment behemoth’s abusive childhood, his time as a homeless playwright and his rise to media superstar. Ortiz began filming Perry in 2016, just a year after moving to Atlanta from New York to work at Tyler Perry Studios.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Documentary veterans Natalie Bullock Brown, Kirsten Johnson, Mary Lampson and Jacqueline Olive are the inaugural documentary film fellows for the documentary film in the public interest research initiative by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.As the first cohort of doc film fellows, the foursome will join the center for the fall 2023 semester. There, each fellow will conduct research and do public education activities about questions facing the documentary film field and civic information.Led by Shorenstein Center’s director Nancy Gibbs and doc filmmaker Sara Archambault, the initiative, which was established in March, will work to examine the challenges facing the documentary field and their impacts on civic life and information.“In this challenging moment for media and our information ecosystem, we are excited that the Shorenstein Center can provide the support and infrastructure to drive renewed and creative thinking about complex issues in the documentary film space,” says Gibbs.Archambault adds: “As the initiative considers the vital role of documentary film in our civic life, this group of fellows will advance research in documentary ethics, practices, pathways to audiences, and new directions for the field.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Writers and actors aren’t the only people in Hollywood grappling with the impact generative artificial intelligence will have on the entertainment industry. Documentarians are also concerned about AI and what it means for the ethical standards and practices of nonfiction filmmaking.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is the latest high-net-worth individual to get involved in the documentary business. As a producer on Waad Al-Kateab’s “We Dare to Dream,” about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Gebbia not only helped fund the project, he also played an active role in the film’s pre-production, production, and edit. “We Dare to Dream” is Al-Kateab’s second feature docu. In her first film, “For Sama,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, the Syrian director used her camera to capture her daily life during the siege of Aleppo.Gebbia produced “We Dare to Dream” alongside Violet Films’ Joanna Natasegara (“Virunga”) and Abigail Anketell-Jones (“The Edge of Democracy”) and XTR’s Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett. Angelina Jolie recently signed on as an executive producer on the project. Gebbia joins fellow philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs (Concordia Studio), Jeff Skoll (Participant Media) and Jim Swartz (Impact Partners) in the docu investment business.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Documentaries about celebrities are a dime a dozen these days. But docus about celebrities that don’t feel like infomercials and instead are raw, informative, and honest about their star subjects are few and far between. HBO Sport’s two-part docuseries “Golden Boy,” about Oscar De La Hoya, fits into the jaw-droppingly candid, no-holds-bar category.In the first three minutes of the doc, directed by Fernando Villena, the Olympic boxing gold medalist and multi-world title-winning professional boxer, who is now 50 years old, says, “Everyone thought they knew me.

Addie Morfoot Contributor With 109 narrative and documentary features, as well as a bevy of shorts, TV series, podcasts, games and live music events, the Tribeca Festival offers a wide range of media in its 22nd year.“It’s all about creating an entire festival program that harmonizes together,” says Tribeca Festival Director and VP of programming, Cara Cusuamno. “The idea of discovery is a touchpoint that we come back to quite a lot.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Corporate consolidation, along with shrinking publicity budgets and streaming services’ willingness to bury their own content, have made film festivals and series increasingly desirable to documentary filmmakers who are not only seeking distribution, but also to those nonfiction helmers who have found a platform for their work. The rocky landscape has made the competition fierce for a slot at not only top-tier festivals, but also regional film events like New York’s Rooftop Films’ Summer Series. Over the course of the last year, Rooftop Films president Dan Nuxoll received 3,500 film submissions for the nonprofit organization’s 27th annual Summer Series, which kicks off on May 25. Only 23 feature films and seven shorts were accepted. (Not all films have been announced.)

Addie Morfoot Contributor Nearly 10 years after his death, Peter O’Toole is making a return to the screen in a BritBox documentary from Jim Sheridan.The revered Irish director, known for narrative films including “My Left Foot” and “In the Name of the Father,” interviewed colleagues and family about the “Lawrence of Arabia” star for “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba.” They range from Kenneth Branagh, Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi and Stephen Fry to ex-wife Siân Phillips and daughter Kate O’Toole. Each interview helps shed light on the actor’s complicated yet brilliant life and career. O’Toole, who grew up in England with Irish heritage, was nominated for eight Oscars, winning an honorary Academy Award in 2003. The actor was also known for his stage work and fondness for alcohol.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Busy documentarian Dawn Porter will debut her latest project, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” March 10 at SXSW. The all-archival doc, which will bow on Hulu later this year, relies on 123 hours of personal and revealing audio diaries that Lady Bird recorded during her the presidency of her husband, Lyndon Baines Johnson. The tapes, which were not publicly released until 2017, reveal the critical role the former First Lady played in LBJ’s White House as a close advisor and trusted political partner.Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson began her recording diary shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 and kept recording through her family’s departure from the White House in January 1969. Julia Sweig spent five years researching the diaries for her 2021 biography “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” which she turned into an eight-part podcast that formed the basis for Porter’s 90-minute docu.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In 2018, Network Entertainment founder Derik Murray met with Sidney Poitier to discuss making a documentary about the star’s life and career. Over the next two years, Murray established a foundation of trust with Poitier and his family, who all eventually agreed to the film. The result is “Sidney,” an Apple TV+ doc that examines the legacy of Poitier, who died earlier this year at 94. Directed by Reginald Hudlin (“The Black Godfather”), the doc was produced by Oprah Winfrey. One of the most acclaimed and recognizable movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the first Black man to receive the best actor award, Poitier was also a director and an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. The film includes interviews with Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand and Spike Lee as well as an audio-recorded interview with Poitier’s longtime friend and colleague Harry Belafonte.