This week, a stirring new documentary from the Voice of America called “AIDS: Living in the Shadows” made its world premiere at the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia. The documentary takes audiences on a journey to Nigeria, Cambodia, Haiti, Uganda, Canada, and the United States to meet those living with HIV and AIDS. This is the most recent example of the excellent work done by VOA as it serves its audiences around the world while promoting the interests of the United States — in this case, helping halt a global pandemic.

In his hour-long documentary, “Live To Dive” (Lusong), Ang explores how Totoy, 11, and Pirot, 10, eke out a living for their families by diving for scraps of garbage like discarded plastic bottles and bits of metal in the severely polluted waters beside the ramshackle coastal village of Puting Bato...Now he is taking his film to North Korea.

In light of the "Kony 2012" saga -- the story of one valiant white hero who was ready to take down Central Africa's Lord's Resistance Army... until a mental breakdown of the naked variety brought about his tragic downfall -- more NGOs are contemplating the ethics of utilizing social and digital media to promote their causes.

The documentary is a smart and savvy approach to hasbara (public diplomacy) because it does no persuading, arguing or advocacy whatsoever. Politics could not be further from this film.

"Chinese film-makers are going to shoot a documentary about Baku, the soundtrack of which will be a Chinese song about Baku performed by [Azerbaijani singer] Rashid Behbudov," Valeriy Ruzin, president of the Eurasian Academy of Television and Radio and a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, told a press conference in Baku.

Kim A. Snyder's “Welcome to Shelbyville” is a melting-pot movie, asimmer with social issues: immigration, racism, unemployment, intolerance. Its examination of the clash between Somali Muslims and rural Tennesseeans does not sugarcoat the kinds of conflicts that have bedeviled the country for centuries; it questions, in its way, what America means. And it’s been shown around the world by the United States State Department.

I went to Angola as a delegate with the American Documentary Showcase, a State Department-funded program that sends American documentaries around the world, accompanied by filmmakers who teach filmmaking workshops.