Coming to theatres today, Wednesday, April 17:
HAIL SATAN?
Director:
Penny Lane
Premiere:
Sundance 2019
Select Festivals:
Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, Full Frame, San Francisco, What The Fest!?, Salem, Boston Underground, Freep, Sidewalk
About:
A provocative exploration of the separation of church and state through the unlikely rise of the Satanic Temple religious movement.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, April 16:
ANOTE’S ARK
Director:
Matthieu Rytz
Premiere:
Sundance 2018
Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Vision du Reel, Docs MX, Black Nights Tallinn, Human Rights Watch, Big Sky Doc, Thin Line Doc, Washington DC Environmental, Movies That Matter, Cleveland, Minneapolis, LA Asian Pacific, DocLands, DOXA, Docs Against Gravity, Doc Edge, Mountainfilm
About:
An intimate chronicle of the consequences of climate change on a disappearing island nation.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, April 16:
SEALAB
Director:
Stephen Ives
Premiere:
American Experience (February 2019)
About:
The story of the pioneering US Navy project which expanded the limits of deep sea diving.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed tonight, Tuesday, April 16:
EXIT MUSIC
Director:
Cameron Mullenneaux
Premiere:
Hot Docs 2018
Select Festivals:
Full Frame, Camden, Big Sky Doc, Bergen, Rooftop, SF Indie, GlobeDocs
About:
A portrait of a young artist facing his impending death after a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to NYC’s JCC Manhattan tomorrow, Tuesday, April 16:
MOVING STORIES
Director:
Rob Fruchtman
Premiere:
MoMA Doc Fortnight 2018
Select Festivals:
Mill Valley, Berkshire, Chagrin Falls Doc, Kansas, Heartland, Milwaukee, Cinequest, Sebastopol Doc, SF Dance, Transilvania
About:
A profile of an international dance program for at-risk youth.
Recognizing the power of art to bridge divides, NYC’s Battery Dance Company has developed Dancing to Connect, a program that uses modern dance to help youth around the world express themselves while working collaboratively with others, under the direction of professional dancers. With just a week between initial dance workshop and public performance, the program can be high-stress, but also transformative for both students and teachers alike. Fruchtman’s film follows six instructors in four countries working with marginalized students: slum-dwelling girls who have experienced violence and sex trafficking in India, North Korean refugees living in South Korea, together with South Korean orphans, the perpetually stigmatized Roma in Romania, and, in a departure from the typical program’s focus, a solo Muslim hip-hop dancer in Iraq, who faces severe repercussions were he to dance in public. Working with at-risk and troubled youth, the dance teachers face their fare share of disruption and resistance, not to mention culture clash, but the overwhelming majority of the participants are shown to benefit enormously from the program. While the film takes on a bit too much in its expansive focus, lending it a too cursory, survey-like feel at times, the overall message is a welcome one of hope, interconnection, and growth through art.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s Pure Nonfiction at IFC Center series tomorrow, Tuesday, April 16:
THIS IS PERSONAL
Director:
Amy Berg
Premiere:
Sundance 2019
Select Festivals:
Athena
About:
A candid look at the work and challenges of modern day feminist activism.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
Photo by Kimmer Olesak
Director:
David Sutherland
Premiere:
San Diego Latino 2019
Select Festivals:
Salem, Garden State, Ft Myers
About:
A Marine Corps vet struggles to reunite her family after her husband is deported to Mexico.
Elizabeth Perez was a ten-year decorated veteran of the US Marines when she met and married her husband, Marcos, in 2009. A year later, when their first child was six months old and she was pregnant with their second, Marcos was detained after a traffic stop and deported back to Mexico. Having been previously deported and having re-entered the US illegally, Marcos was now subject to a minimum ten-year bar before he could even apply for a visa to return, regardless of his marriage to a US citizen or parentage of multiple children. As shown in Sutherland’s sobering chronicle, the entire family suffers gravely by this forced separation. While Elizabeth raises their children alone – whose number grows after Elizabeth visits Marcos in Mexico – and leads a seemingly Sisyphean campaign to bring her husband home, Marcos struggles with depression and loneliness, only able to watch his kids grow up via Skype calls and the rare in-person reunion. With Marcos urged by their lawyer not to attempt to re-enter the US via illegal means, the family tries to rally whatever support they can, partnering with a local Cleveland area Latinx organization, meeting with elected officials on both sides of the political divide, and attempting to use Elizabeth’s past military service to cut through bureaucratic red tape. As Elizabeth faces heartbreaking rejection after rejection, she must ponder giving up and relocating to Mexico with her children to live in exile with Marcos until his ban runs its course, or risk losing her marriage while Marcos misses out on his kids’ entire childhood. Sutherland’s film, while disarmingly intimate, feels epic in scope. Coming at a time of particular politicization of the issue of the US’s broken immigration system and its deleterious impact on families, the film is also notable in its resistance to easy partisanship or demonization of either side, instead using the story of the Perez family to humanize and universalize the immigration issue in the hopes of finding a better way forward.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 12:
SATAN & ADAM
Director:
V Scott Balcerek
Premiere:
Tribeca 2018
Select Festivals:
Nashville, Mountainfilm, Thin Line, Boulder, St Louis, Heartland, Calgary, Martha’s Vineyard, SF Jewish, Salem
About:
The story of an unlikely musical duo.
Filmed on and off over the course of 20 years, this musical portrait explores the parallel stories of two musicians -one black, one white – who met on the streets of a pre-gentrification Harlem in 1986, a time of especially deep racial division in NYC. The older, black man, Mr Satan – once known as Sterling Magee, a musician who had been exploited by the record industry in the past – had long been a fixture of the neighborhood, while the younger, white man, Adam Gussow, was an Ivy League novice who chanced upon the former’s street performance and asked to join in. From there, the pair partnered up, performing together regularly, going on tour, getting a record deal, and even appearing on a U2 album. But, as recounted here, their 12 years together were not all smooth sailing, as Satan and his ever-present wife apparently struggled with mental illness, which eventually led to the dissolution of the musical partnership. Gussow pursued a career in academia, while Mr Satan vanished for a time, resurfacing in a senior care facility in Florida, where he reclaimed his Sterling Magee name and ended up having a surprising third act with music, eventually reuniting with Gussow. While the odd couple pairing, and Balcerek’s extensive longitudinal footage, makes the project compelling, its framing almost entirely from Gussow’s perspective is a strange and disconcerting choice, serving in many ways to “other” Magee, even if this wasn’t the filmmaker’s, or Gussow’s, intent.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 12:
MOSUL
Director:
Daniel Gabriel
Premiere:
Cleveland 2019
About:
The diverse coalition of anti-ISIS forces fighting to free Mosul is viewed through the eyes of an Iraqi journalist.
Daniel Gabriel’s film chronicles the liberation of Mosul from ISIS/Daesh in 2016-2017 as seen by journalist Ali Maula, who serves here as a too-frequent narrator, while the latter heads north along the Tigris, meeting various members of the surprisingly diverse but tenuous coalition of Iraqi fighters trying to win back their freedom, and frequent worrying about the sectarian divisions that will likely continue the violence regardless. The doc profiles several of the coalition leaders, from outspoken Sunni tribal leaders and commanders (including a female Sunni militia commander who lost her own husband to battle) to an Iraqi Army Special Ops commander, a Kurdish Pershmerga fighter, and a Christian soldier. As Maula follows the combat, bringing some sense of normalcy to cleared areas, his crew speaks to civilians and soldiers as they struggle with PTSD and the trauma of war, but perhaps the most chilling interview is with an ISIS detainee, who appears in silhouette and speaks ominously about the long-lasting impact of radical Islamic ideology which he claims will win out in the end. While addressing a complex and compelling subject, the film suffers from the approach taken, with Maula’s centrality lending the project a TV feel and the mix of profiles and ridealongs resulting in a disjointed effort as a whole.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 12:
THE MOST DANGEROUS YEAR
Director:
Vlada Knowlton
Premiere:
Seattle 2018
Select Festivals:
St Louis, Rhode Island, Newburyport Doc, Atlanta Doc, Kansas, Portland
About:
The parents of trans kids fight against discriminatory legislation in Washington State.
The titular time covered in Knowlton’s project is 2016, which the Human Rights Campaign noted due to the disturbingly regressive spate of bills put forward in state legislatures to target transgender individuals. Colloquially known as “bathroom bills,” this legislation attempted to force individuals to use public bathrooms that corresponded to their biological/birth gender, using unfounded fears of infiltration of women’s bathrooms by perverts or rapists to trigger popular support. The film focuses on such a bill proposed in Washington, and the impact it has on families with transgender children, like the director’s. Knowlton, who unfortunately chose to (over)narrate here, profiles her own daughter and the latter’s struggle to be accepted as a girl as one of the film’s featured stories. While doing an adequate enough job of highlighting the issues unfairly facing trans people, this well-meaning but very basic production struggles to stand out.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
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