The Documentary Life18 Sep 2020

Winning an Oscar for Your Documentary Film

Imagine stepping up to the podium to accept your award for Best Documentary Feature for the film that you have put your heart, soul, blood sweat tears into. What would you say? Who would thank? Where would you even start?

Well, Steven Bognar, of this year's American Factory knows precisely what this feels like. And he details the story of he and his partner, Julia Reichert's walk to that Oscar podium.

And he details a heckuva lot more about what it means to live the life of a documentary filmmaker in Dayton, OH, far from the neon lights of New York, London, or L.A. And what it means to make meaningful documentaries that impact a lot of people and win a lot of awards.

What it means to live and lead a documentary life.

Topics Discussed

host Chris G. Parkhurst gives some History 101 of documentaries and the Academy Awards
why its beneficial to the world that documentary filmmakers make films from where they are at
how American Factory came from turning down what was initially meant to be a corporate video for the Fuyao factory
play-by-play of Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert's walk to the podium to accept their award for Best Documentary Feature
unique sound approaches that were brought to American Factory

Additional Resources

Trailer for American Factory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36QeKOJ2Fc

American Factory wins Best Documentary Feature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF4ytC3-M3g

Sponsors & Thank Yous

° Free Music Archive – Special Thank You to recording artist, Dlay who supplied music for this week’s episode of TDL. You too can download his music or other artists’ music by going to Free Music Archive today!

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