With Hollywood Productions on Hold, Documentary Filmmakers Keep Going

NY Times ^ | 5/08/20 | Nicole Sperling

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Still, Ms. Noujaim and Mr. Amer have managed to keep going at a time when Hollywood has closed down film and television productions.

After shuttering their 35-person office in Brooklyn, the married couple decamped to a house in the Berkshires, where they have made progress on six projects in various stages of production, including an HBO documentary series on Nxivm, a secretive self-help organization that has been depicted as a sex cult. And they’ve been working while watching over their three children, all under the age of five.

“It’s a complete juggling act for everybody,” Ms. Noujaim said.

For a project they’re working on with filmmakers around the world on the pandemic’s effects, Mr. Amer visited the U.S. epicenter with a small crew to film one of their subjects, an employee of the Gerard J. Neufeld funeral home in Queens, N.Y., where mortuaries have been overrun.

Mr. Amer and Ms. Noujaim are not the only documentary filmmakers who have managed to keep busy at a time when nonfiction programming - Netflix’s “Tiger King,” ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” Apple TV Plus’s “Beastie Boys Story” - has been all the rage for people stuck at home. Unlike directors of dramas and comedies, who are dependent on film sets where social distancing is all but impossible, documentarians can more easily make adjustments.

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The exempt non-essentials.