A pair of films on the same unusual subject – the Colony Collapse Disorder plaguing bees – are coming to audiences this month:
Coming to NYC’s Cinema Village this Friday, June 10 and indieScreen on Friday, June 24: QUEEN OF THE SUN
Coming to VOD (including Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Playstation, Cinemanow, and Xbox) on Tuesday, June 21: VANISHING OF THE BEES
Taggart Siegel’s QUEEN had its world premiere at Nashville last year, chalking up dozens of festival and theatrical engagements since then, including notable fests like Seattle and IDFA. George Langworthy and Maryam Henein’s VANISHING has also made the rounds, hitting a number of regional fests and organizing grassroots or specialized screenings with apiarist societies and the like.
As I’ve noted in my look at COLONY, there have been a spate of bee movies in the past couple of years due to the terrifying potential of Colony Collapse Disorder to completely decimate our food supply. While each has taken slightly different perspectives, many have featured a number of the same interview subjects – the apiary world is after all relatively small. These two are frankly about the same in quality for me – Langworthy and Henein’s film (which employs Ellen Page as a narrator) takes a broad and at times global overview of CCD, while Siegel (known for THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN) arguably takes a different tack, spending a bit more of its time examining the historical and cultural significance of the honey bee and its relationship with man – even if CCD is also its ultimate subject. I still think their approaches are a bit too scattered relative to the more artful COLONY, but their overall topic is important enough to warrant viewer interest.
what (not) to doc 