Nanking is a 2007 documentary film about the Nanjing Massacre, committed in 1937 by the Japanese army in the former capital city Nanjing, China. It was inspired by Iris Chang's book The Rape of Nanking (1997), which discussed the persecution and murder of the Chinese by the Imperial Japanese Army in the then-capital of Nanjing at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). The film draws on letters and diaries from the era as well as archive footage and interviews with surviving victims and perpetrators of the massacre. Contemporary actors play the roles of the Western missionaries, professors, and businessmen who formed the Nanking Safety Zone to protect the city's civilians from Japanese forces. Particular attention is paid to Nazi Party member John Rabe, a German businessman who organized the Nanking Safety Zone, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon who remained in Nanjing to care for legions of victims, and Minnie Vautrin, a missionary educator who rendered aid to thousands of Nanjing's women.
Michele Mitchell is an American filmmaker, journalist and author best known for her on-camera reporting for PBS and CNN Headline News and her documentaries Haiti: Where Did the Money Go? and The Uncondemned (2015).
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17, 2008 to January 27 in Park City, Utah. It was the 24th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was In Bruges and the closing night film was CSNY Déjà Vu.
Jennifer Lynn Siebel Newsom is an American documentary filmmaker and actress who is the current First Partner of California as the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. She is the director, writer, and producer of the film Miss Representation (2011), which premiered in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines how the media has underrepresented women in positions of power. The Mask You Live In (2015), her second film which she wrote, produced and directed, scrutinizes American society's definition of masculinity.
Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, released in paperback with the title Man on Wire. The title of the film is taken from the police report that led to the arrest of Petit, whose performance lasted for almost an hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside re-enactments and present-day interviews with the participants, including Barry Greenhouse, an insurance executive who served as the inside man.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Jonathan David Stack is an American documentary filmmaker. He is also a co-founder of World Vasectomy Day.
Patrick Creadon is an American filmmaker and actor primarily known for his work in documentaries. His first film, Wordplay, profiled New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The film screened in over 500 theatres nationwide and became the second-highest grossing documentary of that year. His second film, I.O.U.S.A., is a non-partisan examination of America's national debt problem and forecast the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. I.O.U.S.A. premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was later named one of the Top 5 Documentaries of the Year by film critic Roger Ebert.
Women Make Movies is a non-profit feminist media arts organization based in New York City. Founded by Ariel Dougherty and Sheila Paige with Dolores Bargowski, WMM was first a feminist production collective that emerged from city-wide Women's Liberation meetings in September 1969. They produced four films by 1973. Dougherty and Paige incorporated the organization in March 1972 as a community based workshop to teach film to everyday women. A distribution service was also begun as an earned income program. In the mid-1970s a membership was created that screened and distributed members' work. In the early 1980s focus shifted to concentrate on distribution of independent films by and about women. WMM also provides production assistance to women filmmakers.
Jennifer Fox is an American film producer, director, cinematographer, and writer as well as president of A Luminous Mind Film Productions. She won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her first feature documentary, Beirut: The Last Home Movie. Her 2010 documentary My Reincarnation had its premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2010, where it won a Top 20 Audience Award.
Miss Representation is a 2011 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The film explores how mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions by circulating limited and often disparaging portrayals of women. The film premiered in the documentary category at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Margaret Brown is an American film director who has directed four feature length documentaries. Her film Descendant, about the descendants of survivors of the last ship to carry enslaved Africans into the United States, was shortlisted for the 2023 Academy Awards.
Crime After Crime is a 2011 award-winning documentary film directed by Yoav Potash about the case of Deborah Peagler, an incarcerated victim of domestic violence whose case was taken up by pro bono attorneys through The California Habeas Project.
The Invisible War is a 2012 American documentary film written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering and Tanner King Barklow about sexual assault in the United States military. It premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the U.S. Documentary Audience Award. The film has been lauded by advocates, lawmakers, and journalists for its influence on government policies to reduce the prevalence of rape in the armed forces.
Lisa F. Jackson is an American documentary filmmaker, known most recently for her films, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (2007) and Sex Crimes Unit (2011), which aired on HBO in 2008 and 2011. Her work has earned awards including two Emmy awards and a Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival. She has screened her work and lectured at the Columbia University School of Journalism, Brandeis, Purdue, NYU, Yale, Notre Dame and Harvard University and was a visiting professor of documentary film at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Heidi Ewing is an American documentary filmmaker and the co-director of Jesus Camp, The Boys of Baraka, 12th & Delaware, DETROPIA, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, One of Us, Love Fraud (series), I Carry You With Me (narrative) and Endangered.
Amy Ziering is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's Derrida and 2020's On the Record, with Ziering also producing several of Dick's films.
Diana El Jeiroudi, is a Berlin-based, Syrian independent film director and producer. El Jeiroudi’s films as director were celebrated at many festivals, including the Venice Film Festival, IDFA, DokLeipzig, Visions du Réel, CPH:DOX… among others. Her producing credits include the Sundance 2023 film 5 Seasons of Revolution, the Cannes Film Festival 2014 selection Silvered Water, the IDFA 2013 selection The Mulberry House, among others. She was the first Syrian to be a juror in Cannes Film Festival in 2014, when she was part of the first Documentary Film Award jury in the festival. Together with her partner Orwa Nyrabia, El Jeiroudi was also the first Syrian known to be invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017. El Jeiroudi was also a co-founder of DOX BOX International Documentary Film Festival in Syria and DOX BOX e.V. non-profit association in Germany.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017. Their first scripted film venture was Nyad, a biopic chronicling Diana Nyad's quest to be the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida.
Summer of Soul is a 2021 American independent documentary film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in his directorial debut. It had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 28, 2021, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the documentary categories. It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. by Searchlight Pictures on June 25, 2021, before expanding and being released for streaming on Hulu the next weekend.
