docLAHOMA

The docLAHOMA Film Festival occurs twice a year, every January and July in Oklahoma City's historic Film Row District. By emphasizing the art and craft of the documentary, docLAHOMA places a premium on story and character. Whether your film is expository, participatory, exploratory, experimental, observational, or poetic, we want cinema that makes us FEEL as well as LEARN.

We want movies that ENGAGE as well as CHALLENGE.

We want docs that ENTERTAIN as well as INFORM.

So please channel your best Vertov, Flaherty, Capra, Grierson, Wiseman, Maysles, Amalie Rothschild, Ken Burns, Frederick Wiseman, Ross McElwee, Errol Morris, Michael Moore, Andrew Jarecki, Eugene Jarecki, Agnes Varda, Steve James, Werner Herzog, Barbara Kopple, DA Pennebaker, Morgan Spurlock, Laura Poitras and the like. If you're a documentarian, we want to see what you've been documenting.

For much of the 20th Century, Paramount Pictures, MGM, Warner Bros, and various other studios operated film production facilities on Oklahoma's Film Exchange, also known as Film Row (http://filmrowokc.com/). Now, this district houses an array of photography studios, art galleries, restaurants, coffee shops, concert venues, a radio station, and even the Oklahoma Film and Music Office.

If you have any questions, please contact: doclahomafilmfestival@gmail.com

In its inaugural year, docLAHOMA will take place in The Paramount (http://www.theparamountokc.com/#paramountokc). The last of its kind, the Paramount Cinema was built for the Famous Players Laskey Corporation which later became Paramount Pictures. During that time, any theater owner, distributor, or member of the press could pay fifty-cents to screen a Paramount release. Today, the Paramount Cinema is open to the public for special films, events, premieres, concerts, screenings, and festivals.

Furthermore, throughout the Paramount, docLAHOMA will feature an assortment of photography submitted to our festival. We're looking for your most striking, visually arresting works. As long as it's original, unique, and resonates with the eye we're going to be interested. The tone, image, and content are completely up to you.

“Factuality alone does not define documentary films; it’s what the filmmaker does with those factual elements, weaving them into an overall narrative that strives to be as compelling as it is truthful and is often greater than the sum of its part.”
--Sheila Curran Bernard

"Documentary appeals to us precisely because of its truth claims, whether at the level of fact or image. Because it is the form of cinema that is most closely bound to the real world, to actual personal and collective problems, hopes, and struggles, it is understandable that concrete issues of ethics, politics, and technology (the physical apparatus) would take precedence over the intangibles of aesthetics."
--Barry Keith Grant