The country’s longest-running non-fiction event, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, opens its 37th edition tomorrow, Thursday, October 17, under the theme “See for Yourself.” The festival, known for its ethnographic focus, will present more than two dozen new feature docs, as well as shorts and special events, at its home base, NYC’s American Museum of Natural History, through this Sunday, October 20.
Among this year’s offerings are the world premiere of Pegi Vail’s GRINGO TRAILS (pictured), an eye-opening exploration of the unanticipated impact of international tourism; Otilia Portillo Padua’s THREE VOICES, a portrait of three generations of Mexican women approaching love; and two docs exploring the pull of films and filmmaking on unconventional subjects: Vincent Coen and Guillaume Vandenberghe’s CINÉMA INCH’ALLAH!, about four Muslim filmmakers in Belgium; and Leah Warshawski and Chris Towey’s FINDING HILLYWOOD, on one man’s mission to establish Rwanda’s film culture.
Many of Margaret Mead’s selections are notably focused on places, including: Miriam Smith and Christopher Pryor’s HOW FAR IS HEAVEN, an observational portrait of a small Maori town and the nuns who tend to it; Miguel Filgueiras’ ALTO DO MINHO (pictured), about daily life in a Portuguese mountain village; Gerardo Barroso and Lisa Tillinger’s CALLE LÓPEZ, which captures activity on a Mexico City street; Sebastian Mez’s METAMORPHOSEN, a look at the area around a faulty Russian nuclear plant; Jérôme le Maire’s TEA OR ELECTRICITY, tracing the transformation of a Moroccan village as it gains electricity; and Lalita Krishna’s MALLAMALL, an exploration of the development of modern malls in an India used to traditional independently-run outdoor markets.
what (not) to doc 