Founded 2003 (2003) Website afi.com/afidocs | Number of films 108 (in 2008) | |
Location Washington, DC & Silver Spring, Maryland | ||
The AFI Docs (formerly Silverdocs) documentary film festival is an American international film festival created by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel. It is held every year in Silver Spring, Maryland and Washington, D.C.. Started in 2003, the festival is held for five days in June at the AFI Silver Theatre as well as several landmark locations in Washington, DC. AFI Docs is dedicated to showcasing the best in documentary films.
Contents
Notable participants
AOL vice-chairman emeritus Ted Leonsis, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, former Vice President Al Gore, Academy Award-winning film makers Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Barbara Kopple, LeBron James and Alex Gibney. Yoruba Richen won the audience award in 2013 for The New Black, her documentary about the African American community response to marriage equality initiatives.
Participating organizations
BBC, CPB, Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, The Ford Foundation, HBO, Latino Public Broadcasting, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Miramax, National Black Programming Consortium, National Geographic, PBS, the Sundance Institute, The Weinstein Company.
Response
AFI Docs has been called the "pre-eminent US documentary festival" (Screen International) and as "non-fiction nirvana" (Variety).
Advisory Board
The AFI Docs Advisory Board includes: Ken Burns, Davis Guggenheim, Chris Hegedus, Werner Herzog, Barbara Kopple, Spike Lee, Albert Maysles, Errol Morris, D A Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman.
Festival Dates
The 2008 Festival presented 108 films selected from 1,702 entries, included 27 significant premieres and welcomed over 21,000 attendees. All six 2009 Academy Award-nominated documentary films were screened at Silverdocs 2008. Of these, The Garden and Smile Pinki were Silverdocs world premieres.
The 2009 festival ran from June 15–22.
The 2010 festival ran from June 21–27.
The 2011 festival ran from June 20–26.
The 2012 festival ran from June 18–24.
The 2013 festival ran from June 19–23.
The 2014 festival ran from June 18–22.
The 2015 festival ran from June 18–22
The 2016 festival ran from June 22–26
The 2017 festival is scheduled to run from June 14–18.