Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, July 19:
DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME
Director:
AJ Eaton
World Premiere:
Sundance 2019
Select Festivals:
Nantucket, SXSW, Santa Barbara, Sun Valley, Seattle, Revelation Perth, Boulder
About:
A candid, warts and all portrait of the rock and roll legend.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Festival:
The 37th Outfest
Dates:
July 18-28
About:
Nearly 70 feature are included in the lineup of this venerable LGBTQ event, including 24 documentaries. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s Rooftop Films tomorrow, Thursday, July 18:
THE GREAT HACK
Directors:
Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim
World Premiere:
Sundance 2019
Select Festivals:
Sheffield, Traverse City, NewportFILM, Martha’s Vineyard
About:
A disturbing investigation into data and privacy in the modern digital age.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
New to VOD this week:
THE EXPERIMENTAL CITY
Director:
Chad Freidrichs
World Premiere:
Chicago 2017
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Denver, St Louis, Big Sky Doc, Planet in Focus, DC Environmental, Salem, Sarasota, Revelation Perth, Architecture & Design fests in New York City, Washington DC, Los Angles, Rotterdam, Milan, Zurich, Copenhagen, and New Orleans
About:
A chronicle of an almost successful attempt to build the city of the future.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In the 1960s, frustrated by the growing problem of urban pollution, Athelstan Spilhaus, a visionary scientist and futurist comic strip writer, assembled a team of experts to develop a bold experiment: the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). MXC would be the city of the future, a domed metropolis for 250,000 pioneering residents, built from scratch and using cutting-edge technology to prevent urban sprawl and pollution. Things didn’t quite go as planned, as explored in Chad Friedrichs’ fascinating look back at the would-be city of tomorrow.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to PBS tomorrow, Wednesday, July 17:
8 DAYS: TO THE MOON AND BACK
Director:
Anthony Philipson
World Premiere:
BBC broadcast (July 2019)
About:
An immersive revisitation of the Apollo 11 mission.
This PBS presentation may very well be the last of a veritable subgenre of Apollo documentaries released this year, all timed, of course, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of mankind setting foot on the moon. In some ways, director Anthony Philipson’s project is similar to both Todd Douglas Miller’s epic APOLLO 11 and Tom Jennings’ APOLLO: MISSIONS TO THE MOON, in that it puts heavy focus on archival material. Unlike both of those takes on the Apollo mission, however, this one chooses to incorporate extensive dramatized re-enactments to supplement extant material. In practice, this amounts to actors portraying Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins lip-synching actual audio recordings of conversations between them and Mission Control. It’s frankly an odd stylistic choice, and one which viewers may find to be distracting more often than not. Leaving that aside, Philipson is more successful at weaving together the audio with actual mission footage, as well as Walter Cronkite’s useful CBS News coverage of those historic eight days in space. As the former plays out, particularly, of course, the lunar landing and return to Earth, the film does achieve its intended immersive impact, resulting in an at times absorbing watch that would seem to approximate the experience of watching the events on those days back in 1969.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Rooftop Films tomorrow, Wednesday, July 17:
ANBESSA
Director:
Mo Scarpelli
World Premiere:
Berlin 2019
Select Festival:
Hot Docs, Maryland, Mountainfilm Telluride, Woods Hole, Human Rights Watch, Berkshire
About:
A portrait of a rural Ethiopian boy as he contends with modern development.
10-year-old Asalif lives on the outskirts of Addis Ababa with his mother in a small structure with intermittent electricity. Sprouting up around them but financially out of reach for his family is a new complex of condominiums, whose inhabitants frequently throw out treasure that the creative Asalif scavenges to repurpose into lights and toys. At night, he hears hyenas in the distance, and during the day, he occasionally listens to tall tales from the older men at the local bar. In her likeable but too understated portrait, director Mo Scarpelli observes Asalif’s childlike wonder as he explores his rapidly changing environment, plays – and fights with – local boys, and, less successfully, injects a dose of magical realism by reimagining Asalif as a would-be lion – the film’s title in Amharic – on the prowl, defending his limited domain.
Filed under Documentary, Film
Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, July 16:
ROBERT SHAW: MAN OF MANY VOICES
Directors:
Pamela Roberts and Peter Miller
World Premiere:
Atlanta Symphony Hall (April 2016)
Select Festivals:
Newport Beach, San Diego Jewish, Breckenridge
About:
An appreciation of acclaimed conductor Robert Shaw.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
