Author Archives: basiltsiokos

Coming to PBS’s American Experience tomorrow, Tuesday, January 9:
INTO THE AMAZON

Director:
John Maggio

Premiere:
American Experience (January 2018)

About:
Former President Teddy Roosevelt faces death during a South American expedition.

In 1913, still stinging from his electoral defeat which would have given him a third term as president, Roosevelt set off on an adventure to re-energize his spirits. Joining with famed Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon and a team of six Americans which included his son, Kermit, Roosevelt was tasked to chart an unexplored Amazon tributary known as the River of Doubt. As detailed in Maggio’s well-executed, if conventional, retelling, the experience turned out far more challenging and treacherous than anyone anticipated, costing the lives of several on the trek, and nearly adding Roosevelt’s to that number.

New to VOD this week:
BOBBI JENE

Director:
Elvira Lind

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Camden, Docaviv, Docs Against Gravity, Biografilm, Melbourne, Helsinki

About:
An American dancer leaves a position with Israel’s premier dance company to return to the US to begin a solo career.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, January 5:
IN THE LAND OF POMEGRANATES

Director:
Hava Kohav Beller

Premiere:
January 2018 (theatrical)

About:
An exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Beller attempts to tackle the massive, and seemingly perpetual, issue of peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians in this thoughtful but flawed project. While ostensibly about Vacation From War, an effort to bring together the younger generation of both sides in dialogue with a hope toward perhaps reaching some kind of mutual understanding, Beller makes the strange choice to bypass the potential stories these participants might have been able to share and instead profiles several unconnected individuals, from a traumatized Israeli survivor of a suicide bombing to a young Palestinian boy who receives life-saving heart surgery from an Israeli doctor. This broadening results in the project becoming a loose survey, taking on far too much and greatly lessening whatever potential transformative impact might have come from the Vacation From War discussions.