Imagine spending forty years collecting newspaper photographs, six years editing them into a film, watching it premiere at top festivals, and landing a confirmed HBO broadcast—only to have it stopped cold by a major legal challenge. For decades, Alan Berliner has been one of documentary's most beloved essayists, whose obsessive, first-person archives of family, memory, and daily life have made him a quiet touchstone for generations of nonfiction makers. Five years after the dust has settled on Letter to the Editor, he is finally ready to talk about it publicly. His story is filled with cautionary tales, lessons learned, and personal reflections. Through clips and a guided tour through his creative process, Berliner will walk through what happened, what he learned about fair use law and the emotional cost of fighting it, and what it means for any filmmaker who has staked a project on the right to transform what already exists. Panelist: Alan Berliner (Nobody's Business, First Cousin Once Removed) Biographies (submitted by the speakers): Alan Berliner's uncanny ability to combine experimental cinema, artistic purpose, and popular appeal in compelling film essays has made him one of America's most acclaimed independent filmmakers. The New York Times has described Berliner's work as "powerful, compelling and bittersweet... full of juicy conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique, unpredictable in their structures... Alan Berliner illustrates the power of fine art to transform life."Berliner's experimental documentary films have been broadcast all over the world, and received awards, prizes, and retrospectives at many major international film festivals. Over the years, Berliner’s films have become part of the core curriculum for documentary film classes at universities worldwide and are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.In 2025, Berliner received the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at the Hamptons Doc Fest. In 2024, Berliner received a Visionary Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award from DOC NYC.

Here's What Really Happened: Letter to the Editor

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Getting Real is a biennial conference designed for and by documentary practitioners and focused on the business and art of nonfiction storytelling. The sixth edition of Getting Real will celebrate a decade of what is now the largest peer-to-peer gathering of its kind in North America.

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