New to DVD: REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM
Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P Scott’s look at Noam Chomsky’s views on inequality debuted at Tribeca last year. Additional screenings have included IDFA, AFI Docs, Vancouver, Antenna, Adelaide, and DocPoint, among other events.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to PBS’s American Experience tonight, Tuesday, August 2: THE BOYS OF ’36
Margaret Grossi’s chronicle of the US rowing team that upset Hitler’s plans for Olympic gold makes its debut on the long-running public television strand. Special promotional screenings have been held in Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angles over the past month.
Timed to correspond with the upcoming Summer Olympics, and inspired by the New York Times bestselling THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown, Grossi tells the tale of the nine young men from the University of Washington’s rowing team who participated in the contentious 1936 Games, hosted by Nazi Germany, and their coach and shell builder who led them to victory. While the sport was widely popular across America at the time, this Pacific Northwest team differed from their East Coast counterparts, coming largely from poor and working-class backgrounds. Individual biographies, like that of Joe Rantz, reveal particularly poignant histories of poverty, abandonment, and resilience, in many ways serving as a microcosmic representation of a nation still contending with the Great Depression. While hewing close to the PBS strand’s conventional storytelling format, the film zeroes in on the U of W’s underdog story, revealing how the team beat the odds – even with stroker Don Hume nearly incapacitated by sickness – to claim the gold medal over Hitler’s Aryan athletes.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Tomorrow, Wednesday, August 3 sees the opening of the 69th annual Locarno Film Festival, which this year will offer nearly 100 new and recent features over the course of its run, which ends on Sunday, August 13. About a third of these are nonfiction or hybrid projects, with some highlights noted below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, August 2: LITTLE WHITE LIE
Lacey Schwartz’s personal uncovering of family secrets debuted at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in 2014. Screenings followed at DOC NYC, New Orleans, Sidewalk, Black Harvest, BlackStar, Martha’s Vineyard African American, and Philadelphia Jewish fests, among other events.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tomorrow, Tuesday, August 2: T-REX: HER FIGHT FOR GOLD
Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari’s profile of a female boxer’s Olympic dreams premiered at SXSW last year. Its festival circuit also included Hot Docs, New Orleans, San Francisco, Traverse City, Camden, Hot Springs Doc, DOK Leipzig, Cucalorus, Athena, and Atlantic, among others.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to PBS’s POV tonight, Monday, August 1: IRIS
Al Maysles’ profile of a NYC style icon debuted at the New York Film Festival in 2014. The doc went on to screen at the Hamptons, San Francisco, Tallinn Black Nights, Palm Springs, Miami, Ashland, Full Frame, Sarasota, and Belfast fests.
I previously wrote about the doc upon its theatrical release here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Rooftop Films tomorrow, Saturday, July 30: IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE
Patrick Shen’s meditation on the place of silence within modern life debuted at CPH:DOX last year. Festival berths followed at SXSW, Atlanta, Cleveland, Ashland, Full Frame, Dallas, Docville, DOXA, Sheffield, and San Francisco Green, among others.
Traversing the globe, Shen’s film identifies some of the most quiet places on Earth, going so far as to note their average decibel levels. These stand in stark contrast to the rest of the world, where an increasingly cacophonous soundscape threatens concentration, sanity, and even physical health, as revealed by a select group of interview subjects, experts on silence and noise, including George Prochnik, whose eponymously-titled book inspired this project. The quiet spaces are captured in artfully composed shots, with equally striking aural qualities serving as an immediate reminder of just what we’re missing behind all the manmade discord. Shen prompts audiences to pause and appreciate the importance of silence, as a space for contemplation in contrast to our increasing drive to keep ourselves distracted and occupied – demonstrated concisely in an appreciation for John Cage’s once-derided silent classic, 4’33”.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Coming to VOD today, Friday, July 29: HOLY HELL
Will Allen’s look back at a life spent in a cult had its world premiere at Sundance this year. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, Nashville, Montclair, Minneapolis-St Paul, DocAviv, Martha’s Vineyard, and Biografilm, among other events.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to theatres today, Friday, July 29: MISS SHARON JONES!
Barbara Kopple’s profile of a musician’s resilience debuted at Toronto last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, Nantucket, Montclair, Dallas, Sarasota, Sydney, DocPoint, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, New Zealand, SXSW, IDFA, and AFI Docs, among other events.
I previously wrote about the doc for Nantucket’s program, saying:
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple crafts a stirring portrait of soul singer Sharon Jones. Dubbed “the female James Brown,” Jones left a career as a correctional officer in her forties to find success with the R&B funk band The Dap-Kings. Just as the band is poised to launch a new album, Sharon is diagnosed with cancer, upending all of their plans. Kopple follows the singer over a tumultuous yet inspirational year of resilience and healing, culminating in an electrifying comeback show.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, July 29: HOLLYWOOD BEAUTY SALON
Glenn Holsten’s collaborative portrait of recovery and mental health screened at the Awareness Film Festival last year. Other screenings have included the Reel Mind Film Festival.
Holsten’s titular setting is housed within Philadelphia’s Germantown Recovery Community, a nonprofit mental health program that provides treatment and support to those suffering from mental illness or disability. The beauty salon offers staff and clients the chance to interact while providing a service, helping those who may have found themselves unable to tend to their appearances while dealing with the more serious issues of mental health. At the same time, the environment, like traditional hair parlors or barbershops, affords a natural space for conviviality and confessional conversation. Presided over by Rachel “Hollywood” Carr Timms, the salon is a safe space for those in recovery to express themselves and keep healing, and also offers room to let loose, like in the annual hair recovery show Hollywood plans to let her clients walk the runway showing themselves off. While this setting could have made for a heartfelt and quietly revealing portrait, Holsten perhaps takes a step too far, adding to his film a more metafilmic layer, as he involves a number of clients in the process of making short films about themselves and their mental health issues, in a variety of genres. This gives the project an overly scattered feel which unfortunately proves distracting. Still, the film does provide a welcome and necessary platform for its largely African American and female subjects to openly discuss struggles with mental health, pushing back against the cultural stigmas of addressing such topics within this community.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
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