The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s popular BAMcinemaFest returns for its sixth year, opening tomorrow, Wednesday, June 18, and running through Sunday, June 29. After recent staff changes at the venerable institution, this year’s event was curated by BAMcinématek programmers Nellie Killian and David Reilly together with new Programmer at Large Ryan Werner, appointed at the beginning of the year. The lineup of over two dozen films includes several standouts – a mix of heralded titles from Sundance, SXSW, and beyond.
New nonfiction offerings are Göran Hugo Olsson’s exceptional, confrontative rumination on colonialism, CONCERNING VIOLENCE; Amir Bar-Lev’s complex exploration of the impact of the Penn State scandal, HAPPY VALLEY; Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s engaging portrait of an infamous international criminal, THE NOTORIOUS MR BOUT; Amanda Rose Wilder’s fascinating immersion into a free school, APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT (pictured); Darius Clark Monroe’s personal reflection on the mistakes of his past, EVOLUTION OF A CRIMINAL; and Joe Callander’s look at the limits of philanthropy, LIFE AFTER DEATH.
Retrospective doc programming includes a retrospective program of the late Les Blank’s doc shorts, and a rarely seen cult classic, STATIONS OF THE ELEVATED (pictured), Manfred Kirchheimer’s 1981 graffiti-focused city symphony.
what (not) to doc 