Author Archives: basiltsiokos

Photograph by Irene Poon Andersen.

Director:
Pamela Tom

Premiere:
Telluride 2015

Select Festivals:
Sheffield, Hawaii, Asian American fests in NYC, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle

About:
A portrait of artist Tyrus Wong, best known for inspiring the look of Disney’s BAMBI.

I previously wrote about the doc here

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, February 6:
21 X NEW YORK

Director:
Piotr Stasik

Premiere:
Krakow 2016

Select Festivals:
Docs Against Gravity, DocPoint, Docs Barcelona, Durban

About:
Stray thoughts from a diverse group of NYC subway riders.

Stasik’s portrait trails over the faces of various subway passengers, focusing on 21. Their thoughts on sex, relationship, dreams, and hopes serve as the soundtrack for their underground ride, and, to some extent their continuing journeys above ground. What emerges is a meditation on the universality of loneliness and the need for human connection. At the same time, the random, meandering aspect of the premise would seem to have better suited a shorter length; its feature treatment here does not feel cumulative but instead often disjunctive, without coming to any particularly revelatory moment.

Coming to PBS’s American Experience and to DVD tonight, Tuesday, February 6:
THE GILDED AGE

Director:
Sarah Colt

Premiere:
American Experience (February 2018)

About:
An exploration of late 1800s America, its transformation into a global industrial powerhouse, and the economic disparity that resulted.

By the end of the 19th century, approximately 4000 American families owned as much as the remaining 11.5 million – the first instance of the economic inequality of the 1%. The extravagance and resources of families like the Carnegies, Morgans, and the Vanderbilts were emblematic of the titular Gilded Age, but, as pointed out by historian Nell Irvin Painter in Colt’s film, “gilded” denotes a shiny covering over something raw beneath – in this case an embrace of capitalism’s profits at the expense of the poor and working class. Following the conventional format of the PBS series, Colt profiles several of the major players of the period, such as Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan, even-handedly demonstrating both the virtues and failings of these captains of industry, while also putting attention on some who would fight for the common citizen, notably Mary Elizabeth Lease and the Populist Party, socialist organizers, and unions. Ultimately – and sadly – more topical than ever, the project questions whether America’s embrace of the unrealistic, ever-increasing profit motive has resulted in our government protecting and serving capitalism and those it makes wealthy, or the ordinary people who often suffer at its cutthroat pursuit.

New to VOD this week:
INTENT TO DESTROY

Director:
Joe Berlinger

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, IDFA, Krakow, Maryland, St Louis, IFF Boston, San Francisco Jewish, New Zealand, Haifa, Heartland, Denver

About:
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of a narrative feature about the 1915-1918 Armenian genocide.

Had Terry George’s THE PROMISE turned out to be a critical or box office success, this companion project by Joe Berlinger would be less of a misfit. As it stands, that would-be epic – starring Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, and Christian Bale – was little seen or admired, making this admirable but misjudged project feel like a DVD extra for an unlikely-to-be-released Criterion Collection version of an unwanted film. Saddled with the objective of filtering the controversial and long-denied ethnic cleansing through the lens of THE PROMISE, the doc never quite finds the right balance, with clips from George’s film and from the set too often serving as a distraction from the more interesting and provocative consideration of how denial has come into play over the past century, both in the historical record, and in past film projects, from the abandoned adaptation of THE FORTY DAYS OF MUSA DAGH to Atom Egoyan’s unsuccessful ARARAT – but, very strangely, nothing specific offered regarding efforts to stop THE PROMISE. Ultimately, Berlinger’s doc comes off as an overlong, too earnest promotional piece, despite its best intentions.