News

Utopia has acquired Participant’s feature documentary “Unseen Skies,” which the U.S. distributor will release on Sept. 13.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Yaara Bou Melhem, “Unseen Skies” explores the evolution of state and corporate surveillance. The film follows American artist and geographer Trevor Paglen as he launches an artwork called “Orbital Reflector” into space, visible with the naked eye from Earth, to highlight the global impact of technology in the modern world.

Having achieved international notoriety for his conceptual art, which fuses photography and large-scale multidisciplinary events, Paglen’s work reveals the largely unseen power structures of technology and surveillance that shape, impact and increasingly define the framework of our lives.

A MacArthur Genius award winner and author, Paglen is known for his photography documenting the black ops sites of government surveillance and data collection, as well as installations such as Sight Machine, in which the musical group Kronos Quartet...

Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox), which runs in-person from March 23 to April 3, has unveiled its Science sidebar, a program consisting of 15 science-related films.

Among the films are “A.I. at War,” which takes the viewer on a journey with an A.I. robot to some of the world’s conflict zones, “Pleistocene Park,” which follows a Russian geophysicist’s quest to recreate the ecosystem of the last ice age through radical rewilding, and “How to Survive a Pandemic,” a look behind the scenes of the Covid-19 vaccination rollout.

Also included are “Going Circular,” which urges us to rethink the entire economic system by respecting the planet’s limited resources, “Unseen Skies,” which suggests ways to resist state surveillance, and “Healers,” which looks at the relationship between doctors and their patients, and examines the latest trends in alternative medicine.

Niklas Engstrøm, artistic director at Cph:Dox, said: “Science and its...

Sales and distribution company Utopia, co-founded by filmmaker Robert Schwartzman, has swooped on the distribution rights to documentary “Unseen Skies” by Yaara Bou Melhem, a two-time Un Peace Award-winning filmmaker and investigative journalist.

“Unseen Skies” follows conceptual artist Trevor Paglen, known for combining photography and large-scale art, on the final phase of his 10-year endeavor to launch a work of art into space via satellite. Paglen’s art often touches on the issues of mass surveillance and data collection.

“Trevor’s work dispels myths about A.I., including that it is neutral and objective,” said Melhem, who also wrote and produced the feature-length doc.

“We are excited to work with Utopia to share this film with audiences, and hope they come away from the film with the tools to recognize how technologies are opaquely making decisions about our lives,” he continued. “It’s only when we can peer inside the...

Magnolia Pictures International has acquired international sales rights outside of the US for Yaara Bou Melhem’s Unseen Skies.

The In Films and Participant Media documentary follows artist Trevor Paglen during the final stretch of his decade-long journey to put a work of art into space.

Melhem, a two-time Un Peace Award-winning filmmaker, and investigative journalist, highlights the global impact of technology in the 21st century and its adverse impact on privacy through Paglen’s story as a geographer and a former punk rock musician working to launch the Orbital Reflector.

The Australia/US production, backed by Screen Australia and Screen Nsw, premiered at this San Francisco International Film Festival in April. Last week it was announced as one of the films set to compete for the Documentary Australia Foundation (Daf) Award for Australian Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival in November.

‘Unseen Skies’.

Producer Ivan O’Mahoney, of In Films,...

Participant is yet to announce US distribution plans.

Magnolia Pictures International has acquired Yaara Bou Melhem’s documentary Unseen Skies from Participant and will commence sales during Toronto next week.

The film follows contemporary artist Trevor Paglen during the final stretch of his decade-long journey to put a work of art into space.

Paglen, who served as a cinematographer on Participant’s Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour, is known for his work that focuses on the impact of largely unseen monolithic power structures of technology and surveillance and documents black ops sites that gather government surveillance and data collection.

Participant has not...

Rosemary Kariuki of ‘Rosemary’s Way’.

Screen Australia has announced the final round of documentary funding for the 2018-19 financial year, which sees $3.8 million spread across 18 projects – five under the commissioned program and 13 under the producer program.

The announcement comes as Screen Australia prepares to seek industry feedback on proposed updates to its documentary funding programs; the agency will release an issues paper in late September.

“The last time our documentary programs were revised was in 2014-15, and since that time there has been substantial change in screen business models, content creation and audience viewing habits,” said Screen Australia head of documentary Bernadine Lim.

“We will be looking to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the sector, and how Screen Australia can best support quality, culture and innovation in the documentary industry.”

A review of the documentary programs was first announced in January, when the agency flagged that the base...

The Most Crucial Art Documents of the Season

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The Main Art Documents of the Year

Environment from the Zombie panel. It had been an eventful year for craft writing, with lots of shifts inside the scenery, as new journals popped (including this 1), or sprang up. or reinvented themselves. But beneath all the institutional shuffles, what were the tips that got people excited? I interviewed peers to attempt to answer that problem, but the remaining choice below is obviously a personal one. It displays the entire world and it is weighted towards parts that echo my own personal location and my own feeling of this yr’s struggling qualities. Regardless, listed here are a number of the pieces of publishing that I think are touchstones of 2014: Holland Cotter – Complex, New York Times. Jan 17, 2014 It;s somewhat crazy if you ask me that #039 Cotter&; s fretful, sweeping express -of-the-picture item is already per year old. But it stands here...

The Most Important Art Essays of the Entire Year

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Further reminding us that the Academy Awards are irrelevant in year-end discussions for the best in documentary film, according to the experts at the Cinema Eye Honors’ voting committee, Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, Steve James’ Life Itself and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days on Earth would be among the best docu films of the year, leading the pack in almost all categories. Not to be overlooked, Jesse Moss’ The Overnighters and Robert Greene’s Actress received kudos in Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking and Outstanding Achievement in Direction while the major surprise of the noms belongs to Orlando von Einsiedel’s Virunga (presented at the Tribeca and Hot Docs Film Fests) grabbing a total of three. Left completely off the scorecard, Manakamana failed to produce a single nom. The Cinema Eye Honors winners will be announced on Wednesday, January 7 at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image.