The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s popular BAMcinemaFest kicks off tomorrow night, Wednesday, June 15. This year’s edition, the eighth, will present nearly 30 features before it wraps on Sunday, June 26, among them eight recent documentaries from Sundance and elsewhere on the circuit and one retrospective presentation. Continue reading
Author Archives: basiltsiokos
BAMcinemaFest 2016: Documentary Overview
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
On VOD: DOGLEGS
Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, June 14: DOGLEGS
Heath Cozens profile of an underground wrestling league which includes disabled competitors had its world premiere at Hot Docs last year. Other screenings have included Fantastic Fest, Cleveland, and Nippon Connection. It now comes to VOD platforms via FilmBuff.
The titular Tokyo-based setting originated decades ago as a support group for the disabled. Seeing the potential of confronting spectators – and themselves – about disability and ableism, the participants organized wrestling bouts pitting themselves against able-bodied opponents. Rather than going the route of providing a space for a feel-good display of inclusion, however, this league is confrontational – disturbingly so, as evidenced by the seemingly neverending rivalry between founders “Sambo” Shintaro, who has cerebral palsy, and “Antithesis” Kitajima, the group’s non-disabled volunteer leader. Likened to SM play, Kitajima is ruthless in the ring, not only physically, but psychologically, hurling humiliating insults about Shintaro’s frailty. Another combative pair, married couple L’Amant, a crossdressing alcoholic with severe cerebral palsy, and Mrs L’Amant, twice his size, also publicly work out their complex psychodramas in the ring. Cozens presents his audience with often shocking images, making the viewer question from one scene to the next whether what’s on display is empowering or exploitative – or, somehow, both – making for an ever-provocative, complex re-assessment of one’s conscious or subconscious perspectives on the disabled.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Special Screening: MY WAY TO OLYMPIA
Coming to NYC’s Bronx Documentary Center as part of their Sports Film Series tonight, Monday, June 13: MY WAY TO OLYMPIA
Niko von Glasow’s profile of Paralympic athletes debuted at Berlin in 2013. Other fest screenings included Thessaloniki Doc, DocPoint, DOK.fest Munich, and Montreal World, while its US broadcast debut was on POV.
Disabled himself – born with foreshortened arms due to prenatal thalidomide exposure – von Glasow makes himself a major part of his film, appearing on camera in interviews with the 2012 London-bound athletes he interviews, à la Michael Moore. He also borrows that documentarian’s approach as a provocateur, bluntly beginning the film by telling Greg, a Greek boccia player with muscular dystrophy, that he hates sports and that the Paralympics are a terrible idea that merely reinforce the disabled’s inability to fit into mainstream society. Ostensibly using his own film to prove himself wrong while actually aiming to change similarly skeptical audience expectations, the somewhat irksome von Glasow visits with several parathletes – including an archer with the same shortened arms condition – to find out why they compete. But, in actuality, the filmmaker often seems far less interested in his subjects as sportsmen and women and more curious about their lives as a whole, peppering interviews with existential questions about mortality or personal biographical queries about loneliness or companionship. While lending a meandering sense to the proceedings – not at all aided by occasional bits of indulgence where von Glasow himself ineptly tries out various sports to not-so-subtly suggest how accomplished his interviewees are – these discussions do succeed in providing a rounder sense of his subjects, not just as people with disabilities, but as people, period.
Filed under Documentary, Film
On VOD: THOSE WHO FEEL THE FIRE BURNING
Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, June 14: THOSE WHO FEEL THE FIRE BURNING
Morgan Knibbe’s immersive imagination of refugee life bowed at IDFA in 2014. Screenings followed at True/False, Thessaloniki Doc, Hot Docs, Docs Against Gravity, Sarajevo, and AFI Fest, among other fests. FilmBuff now releases the film on various VOD platforms.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
On VOD: HE NAMED ME MALALA
Coming to VOD tomorrow, Saturday, June 11: HE NAMED ME MALALA
Davis Guggenheim’s look at the influential activist had its world premiere at Telluride last year. Screenings followed at DOC NYC, Toronto, Tokyo, Mumbai, Adelaide, London, Hamptons, and Athena, among other fests. The film now comes to VOD exclusively via Hulu.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Human Rights Watch 2016: Documentary Overview
Tonight, Friday, June 10 sees the opening of the 27th New York City edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which uses the power of storytelling to expose and bear witness to human rights issues both internationally and domestically. The event is primarily a nonfiction showcase, with a smaller number of vetted, fact-based fiction features and special panels also included. This year’s lineup offers seventeen documentary features which will screen through Sunday, June 19, including the following highlights:
Several films explore human rights in the United States, such as Michael Collins’ ALMOST SUNRISE (pictured), which follows two veterans as the cross the country by foot as a way to combat the after-effects of war. Other treks are explored in films about crises and migration, including George Kurian’s THE CROSSING, about the flight of Syrian refugees to Europe.
Among the projects addressing issues of accountability and justice are Tatiana Huezo’s consideration of victims of corruption in Mexico, TEMPESTAD (pictured); and Michele Mitchell and Nick Louvel’s look at the struggle to have rape acknowledged as a war crime, THE UNCONDEMNED.
Women’s rights are the subject of a number of offerings, including Maisie Crow’s JACKSON, which looks at the battle being waged against abortion clinics in the South; while films focusing on LGBT rights include Eric Juhola’s GROWING UP COY, about a six-year-old transgender girl whose barring from using her school’s girls’ bathroom leads to a civil rights case.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
On TV: OJ: MADE IN AMERICA
Coming to ABC beginning tomorrow, Saturday, June 11 for its first episode, then to ESPN for an encore broadcast and the remainder of the series this coming Tuesday, June 14 through Saturday, June 18: OJ: MADE IN AMERICA
Ezra Edelman’s in-depth look at the infamous celebrity athlete-turned-murder suspect made its debut at Sundance earlier this year. It also screened at Hot Docs, Tribeca, and the Freep Film Festival.
I profiled the series before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
In Theatres: GERMANS & JEWS
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, June 10: GERMANS & JEWS
Tal Recanati and Janina Quint’s consideration of the complex relationship between the two titular groups makes its debut today at the Greenwich film fest before opening in NYC’s Cinema Village.
Taking on a thought-provoking topic, Recanati (American, Jewish) and Quint (German, non-Jewish) host a dinner party for Jewish Germans, non-Jewish Germans, and non-German Jews living in Germany to reflect on the two people’s shared history and their ongoing modern reconciliation as the population of Jews in Germany continues to rise. Taking as a point of contrast the ways that the East and West approached the legacy of the Nazi era, the film offers viewers a concise history of how, when, and why a reckoning with the past came, and the impact this had on their respective populaces. Moving beyond the topic of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, other conversations explore more explicitly present-day concerns, including fears of the growth of anti-Semitism as the nation’s Muslim population grows, and the challenges of being de facto perceived as anti-Semitic if one criticizes Israel. While the topic lends itself to these and other engaging ideas, the conventional filmmaking approach taken, with an excess of talking heads, makes it more appropriate for the small screen than theatrical venues.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Sheffield Doc/Fest 2016 Overview
Sheffield Doc/Fest‘s 23rd edition begins tomorrow, Friday, June 10. The popular six-day event draws filmmakers and industry to South Yorkshire for a lineup featuring over 100 new and recent feature docs, plus retrospective work, shorts, and industry programming. In addition to presenting the UK bows of some of the standout titles that have debuted elsewhere over the past year, the event also showcases notable new titles, such as the highlights noted below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Special Screening: BOUNCE: HOW THE BALL TAUGHT THE WORLD TO PLAY
Coming to NYC’s Bronx Documentary Center as part of their Sports Film Series tonight, Wednesday, June 8: BOUNCE: HOW THE BALL TAUGHT THE WORLD TO PLAY
Jerome Thélia’s meditation on play debuted at SXSW last year. Other screenings included DOC NYC, IFF Boston, Telluride Mountainfilm, Portland, DocUtah, Napa Valley, St Louis, and Bergen, among other events.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In this wide-ranging and buoyant essay film, Jerome Thélia explores the universal appeal of play as realized in the ubiquity and versatility of the ball. Observing its popularity across time, language, nation and even species, the film’s intriguing multidisciplinary survey of historians, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and sports commentators reveals the ball’s simple, yet profound impact on behavior, from its enabling of socialization to its role in encouraging problem solving and creativity.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
what (not) to doc 