Sundance News: Documentary “The Librarian” To Receive Subject Matter Grant At Sundance Film Festival

thelibrarianSubject Matter announced their first grants of 2025 today, awarding $25,000 to Kim A. Snyder’s film The Librarians which will world premiere in the Premieres category at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. In addition, a $25,000 grant will go to PEN America, a 103-year-old writers’ organization that defends free expression.

As an unprecedented wave of book banning is sparked in Texas, Florida, and beyond, librarians under siege join forces as unlikely defenders fighting for intellectual freedom on the front lines of democracy in Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians.

PEN America has documented the rise of book bans and educational gag orders erasing subject matter in public schools since 2021. The organization has documented more than 15,000 instances of book bans during these years, censorship not seen since the Red Scare period of the 1950s. The most frequently targeted books are those that have long fought for a place on shelves–books by authors of color, LGBTQ+ authors, and women, which examine racism, sexuality, gender, and the history of marginalized groups. PEN America has mobilized the public against this censorship and the intolerance and exclusion that undergird it.

Subject Matter’s grant will help PEN America leverage its expertise to connect, support, and protect brave librarians fighting for intellectual freedom.

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Sundance 2025: “Hold Me Close” Documentary Short Film by Aurora Brachman & LaTajh Simmons-Weaver

“Hold Me Close” will have its world premiere in the Documentary Short Film category at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Directed by Emmy Award-winner Aurora Brachman (2020 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship) & LaTajh Simmons-Weaver, Hold Me Close is “a chronicle of the power and complexity of the relationship between Corinne and Tiana, two Queer Black womxn who experience cycles of life’s joys and pains together in the home they share”

Watch the “Meet The Artist” feature below:

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“Becoming Led Zeppelin” IMAX Release Date and Full-Length Trailer

Becoming-Led-ZeppelinBecoming Led Zeppelin, the highly-anticipated documentary about rock legends Led Zeppelin’s early years, is set for release in February.

Powered by awe-inspiring, psychedelic, never-before-seen footage, performances, and music, Bernard MacMahon’s experiential cinematic odyssey explores Led Zeppelin’s creative, musical, and personal origin story. The film is told in Led Zeppelin’s own words and is the first officially sanctioned film on the group.

Directed by Bernard MacMahon and produced by writer-producer Allison McGourty, Sony Pictures Classics is set to release the documentary on February 07, 2025 on Imax.

Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty wrote the screenplay.

See the trailer below for “Becoming Led Zeppelin” and find a showing near you at Imax.com.

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New Trailer For Philip Gelatt’s “First Word On Horror”

FIRST-WORD-ON-HORRORETCH announced today the upcoming release of their documentary series FIRST WORD ON HORROR, which will be available exclusively via Substack on February 7, 2025, featuring Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Elizabeth Hand, Laird Barron, and Mariana Enriquez.

This will be the first project from the independent animation and production company run by the award-winning trio of Philip Gelatt, Will Battersby and Morgan Galen King.

FIRST WORD ON HORROR is a fifteen-part documentary series that profiles five of the finest horror writers working today.

Across multiple episodes, each author discusses their life, their inspirations, their philosophies, and their writing techniques while reading one of their short stories. As fact and fiction blend, secrets are revealed and the delicate alchemy that turns human experience into creative expression begins to emerge.

The series is a love letter to writers of all ilk, to the primacy of the human experience, and to the simple act of reading a damned good story.

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2025 PGA Awards Announce Documentary Motion Pictures Nominees

SuperMan--The-Christopher-Reeve-Story-The Producers Guild of America has released its 2025 PGA Awards nominees for the category of Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Pictures.

The nominees were announced on December 10, 2024. The ceremony is set take place on February 8, 2025 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, California.

The films nominated for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Pictures are listed below in alphabetical order:

  • Gaucho Gaucho
  • Mediha
  • Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa
  • Porcelain War
  • Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
  • We Will Dance Again

These films are in the process of being vetted for individual producer eligibility.

“The Producers Guild Awards honors excellence in motion picture, television and emerging media productions, as well as the most notable names in the industry shaping the producing profession. Honorees this year include Chris Meledandri (David O. Selznick Achievement Award) and Dana Walden (Milestone Award).”

Last year, producers Lauren Domino, Matthew Heineman and Joedan Okun were honored with the award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Picture for “American Symphony.”

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Award-Winning Doc Feature “Fairy Creek” to Debut at WFF

fairy-creekFairy Creek documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history; a blockade which made international headlines and broke records with nearly 1200 people arrested for protesting to protect BC’s last old-growth forests

Understory Films’ documentary feature film FAIRY CREEK will screen for audiences at home in BC for the first time at the Whistler Film Festival on December 7, 2024, 2024 at 3:45pm at the Village 8 Cinemas in Whistler. It was also recently announced that Cinema Politica boarded the film as distributor ahead of the film’s world premiere at Planet in Focus, where the film took home the Best Canadian Feature Award.

In FAIRY CREEK, director Jen Muranetz documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, creating a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to go to protect British Columbia’s last old growth forests. With unique insider access, the team behind FAIRY CREEK follows the Ada’itsx (Fairy Creek) blockade from its early inception to its bittersweet ending through the lens of an ensemble cast of blockade vanguards and those who oppose them. Employing in-the-trenches cinema vérité, the film introduces spirited environmentalists embroiled in a series of often violent altercations with loggers and RCMP, all while trying to stop old-growth logging in the untouched Fairy Creek valley. The activists show unwavering dedication to their cause, while having compelling internal debates about whose voices are prioritized in the movement. By documenting this significant and contentious juncture in time, FAIRY CREEK calls attention to a much larger conversation: what does it take to find common ground in the fight for a climate-just future?
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Water Crisis Doc “Lead & Copper”

lead-and-copperFlint isn’t America’s first major lead crisis, and it will not be the last.

On April 24th, 2014, Flint, Michigan switched water sources to the Flint River, a cost-saving measure enacted by former Governor Rick Snyder and his appointed Emergency Manager. This decision poisoned a city that had already been neglected for decades.

Over the course of 8 years, through interviews of members of Congress, local officials, environmental and engineering scientists, former EPA employees, and the families affected by lead poisoning, LEAD & COPPER investigates how city, state, and federal policies contributed to environmental crises like those experienced in Flint, Newark, and Washington, D.C.

LEAD & COPPER is directed by William Hart. Produced by Patrick Letterii and Alex Olsen. Editing and Cinematography by Hart. Composed by Jacob Bloomfield-Misrach and William Sammons. A Vehicle City Films production.

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Andrew Abraham’s documentary “Dog War” will make North American Premiere at Chelsea Film Festival October 19

dog-warThe film is Andrew Abraham’s “on the front lines” documentary about two ex-military men on a mission to save dogs from hidden meat farms in South Korea.

Dog War follows a duo of war-hardened, canine-loving combat veterans fighting to stop the dog meat trade in South Korea. Surveilling and infiltrating hidden meat farms and markets, they risk it all to save as many dogs as possible.

At the same time, the film spotlights a country at war with itself over the issue, igniting questions about cultural difference, and social and generational change. Dog War probes these questions without simple black and white answers—about animal rights vs. human livelihood, heroism vs. vigilantism, respect for another culture, and how far we can justly go to save man’s best friend.

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TEA CREEK Documentary Feature Film Centring Indigenous Food Sovereignty Debut

tea-creekBoreal Wolf Film Productions and Winter Hawk Studios have announced that the documentary feature film TEA CREEK from director Ryan Dickie (In the Land of Dreamers) will be available to audiences across Canada starting October 11th, 2024. It was also just announced that the film has been selected for the 25th anniversary of Planet in Focus Film Festival (PiF) in Toronto in October, which will be the films Ontario debut. PiF is a festival that celebrates film as a catalyst for public awareness, discussion and engagement on a broad range of environmental issues and is the perfect fit for TEA CREEK.

Filmed at Tea Creek Farm in Kitwanga, BC, TEA CREEK is a documentary feature film set against the backdrop of colonization and the climate crisis. In 3 short years, Indigenous Food Sovereignty Activist Jacob Beaton transformed his family farm into Tea Creek; an Indigenous Food Sovereignty training center with a mission to revive the abundance that once defined Turtle Island. Following Tea Creek through the growing season, the film explores the rich history of Indigenous agriculture, the ongoing impacts of colonization and intimately portrays a passionate leader who’s vision for change is creating space for healing and abundance.

“Growing up in a small community in the north, I have a deep understanding of the fragility of our food networks, and how our traditional food systems as Indigenous people have been reshaped over time,” says TEA CREEK writer/director Ryan Dickie. “There is a sense of urgency for Indigenous people and within our communities to find solutions which will help our people achieve food sovereignty today, and for our future generations. The work that is being done at Tea Creek farm is not only a template for what can be done, but is also saving lives.”
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“Studio One Forever”: Doc of America’s Iconic Gay Disco

Directed by Marc Saltarelli, the documentary “Studio One Forever” is set to release in theaters on September 13 at the Landmark Theatres sunset and on VOD on October 8 via Gravitas.

studio-one-foreverA beacon of dancing and freedom for gay men looking for identity in a world that saw them as outcasts, Studio One was a haven and the blossoming center of nightlife in West Hollywood. From merging the gay community and Hollywood elites like Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to being at the forefront of the LBGTQ+ rights movement and the fight against the AIDS crisis, the venue was more than just a disco, it was a movement.

In “Studio One Forever”, Marc Saltarelli and narrators Bruce Vilanch and David Del Valle dive into the history of the historic venue, offering a testament to an era and immortalizing the club’s legacy for future generations.

The documentary features candid, modern-day interviews with Chita Rivera, Sam Harris, Felipe Rose, Charlo Crossley, Melissa Rivers, Roslyn Kind, Lance Bass, Thelma Houston along with former bartenders and patrons who recount their experiences at Studio One, and what the iconic club stood for.

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