The Los Angeles Film Festival returns for its 21st edition tonight, Wednesday, June 10, and runs through Thursday, June 18. After a major shift in its programming team which saw the departure of longtime programmers David Ansen and Doug Jones and the addition of curator Elvis Mitchell, associate director Roya Rastegar, and senior programmer Jennifer Cochis, the event has gone through some significant retooling, with the introduction of several new sections and a refocusing of existing ones. Just over 70 features will screen, with nearly two dozen documentaries counted within that number. Among the highlights are the following:
This year’s Documentary Competition has been beefed up from 2014’s eight contenders to twelve, and includes such titles as: Holly Morris and Anne Bogart’s THE BABUSHKAS OF CHERNOBYL (pictured), which looks at those who have continued to live within Chernobyl’s dead zone; Jake Witzenfeld’s ORIENTED, a portrait of gay Palestinian-Israelis; Åse Svenheim Drivenes’ MAIKO: DANCING CHILD, about a prima ballerina juggling her career and impending motherhood; Daphne McWilliams’ IN A PERFECT WORLD…, a personal meditation on the impact of absent fathers on their children’s lives; Shalini Kantayya’s CATCHING THE SUN, on the potential of solar power jobs to uplift struggling communities; and Lilibet Foster’s BE HERE NOW (THE ANDY WHITFIELD STORY), which details the star of SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND as he faces a life-threatening cancer diagnosis.
Other new nonfiction programming includes the Social Impact section, with selections like Lyn Goldfarb’s portrait of LA’s first African-American mayor, BRIDGING THE DIVIDE: TOM BRADLEY AND THE POLITICS OF RACE and Shari Cookson and Nick Doob’s upcoming HBO gun death doc, REQUIEM FOR THE DEAD: AMERICAN SPRING 2014; from the Premieres section, Natalie Johns’ portrait of a promising South African skateboarder, I AM THALENTE (pictured); the return of the lauded LA Muse strand, with doc programming including Renee Tajima-Peña’s NO MÁS BEBÉS, which revisits a case of forced sterilization of Mexican immigrant women in 1960s and ’70s Los Angeles; and Baron Davis, Chad Gordon’s THE DREW: NO EXCUSE, JUST PRODUCE, about an amateur basketball league that began as a haven from gang life; and the LA premieres of several festival favorites in the Buzz section.
what (not) to doc 