GETTING REAL ‘24 will be held April 15–18, 2024 in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. All conference events, with the exception of select closed sessions, will be live streamed to virtual passholders and available for post-conference viewing on IDA’s YouTube channel. New in 2024 will be a slate of conference related programming leading up to the conference itself, which includes mini-conferences and symposia. All pre-conference programming features opportunities to brainstorm conference elements and themes that will contribute to conference programming.
GETTING REAL ‘24 conference attendees will have the chance to:
- Engage in participatory workshops that work to flip traditional power dynamics
- Exchange information, ideas and best practices with peers
- Brainstorm strategies to harness opportunities and mitigate challenges in the field
The 2024 conference theme will be Transitions, encouraging a groundswell of initiatives, research, connections, and action dedicated to connecting documentary filmmakers with their audiences. Thinking holistically about both the lives and afterlives of documentaries, we’ll spotlight how documentarians should access institutions, people, spaces, and resources so we can benefit from being in community with each other. Through this theme, the conference will explore several programming strands, including:
- Networks. Documentary filmmaking infrastructures are often marked by limited resources that filmmakers compete over, especially when filmmakers maintain creative and political independence. It’s time to focus on the creation and sustenance of networks that cooperatively connect makers across physical and digital borders with the audiences we seek.
- Strategy. As individuals working within larger systems, collective and effective action to create an equitable world and creative freedom can be difficult to imagine. We will build space for us to strategize around documentary language, production, and circulation.
- Access. Over the past few years, documentarians are ingeniously questioning long-held tenets on what we promise to the people, institutions, and movements in our films, and what we expect from the institutions, companies, and individuals that support filmmakers. Our examinations of access will expand our understanding of how we make films, as well as how we profit off them.
