Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, April 18: DEMOCRATS
Camilla Nielsson’s exceptional portrait of strange bedfellows in Zimbabwean politics had its world premiere at CPH:DOX in 2014. Screenings followed at Göteborg, Belgrade Docs, Tempo Doc, Tribeca, San Francisco, Doc Aviv, Docs Against Gravity, Sheffield, Melbourne, New Zealand, Zurich, and Hamptons, among other events.
I previously wrote about the doc upon its theatrical release here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD today, Friday, April 15: THE GLAMOUR & THE SQUALOR
Marq Evans’ profile on an influential grunge-era DJ made its debut at Seattle last year. Additional fest appearances have included NewFest, Outfest, Seattle LGBT, Spokane, Portland, Milwaukee, Sidewalk, Palm Springs, Calgary, and Aruba.
Evans tells the story of Marco Collins, a Seattle-based DJ and tastemaker who is credited with breaking several bands, including Nirvana, Garbage, Beck, Pearl Jam, and Weezer, helping to establish the Seattle sound before grunge entered the mainstream. At the same time, working in a male-dominated industry when homophobia was common, Collins struggled as a closeted gay man and battled serious drug addiction, which ultimately cost him his career. Evans gives Collins his due, capturing the latter’s appeal, vulnerability, and abiding love of music, which in part helps the project transcend it’s distinctive, and somewhat insular, Seattle focus.
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Coming to theatres and to VOD today, Friday, April 15: THE SYNDROME
Meryl Goldsmith’s investigation of a disputed child abuse theory debuted at the Kansas International Film Festival in 2014. Fest screenings followed in Fargo, New Hampshire, Twin Cities, Newport Beach, and Arizona, among others.
Goldsmith, basing her work here on the investigative reporting conducted by her cousin, Susan Goldsmith, since the 1990s – credited here as a writer and producer – takes on Shaken Baby Syndrome, also known as the more general “abusive head trauma.” Diagnoses of SBS have been used to accuse and prosecute parents and other caretakers, but skepticism has developed as to the validity of the classification and the physical evidence that purports to support such charges. As argued here by the Goldsmiths and their research, there’s questions as to whether SBS even exists, or if it is instead an unfounded public health panic along the lines of the Satanic ritual abuse charges of the 1980s, which saw innocents imprisoned based on ill-formed medical conjecture and the suggestibility of small children. While the film offers some compelling interviews with experts and impacted parents, it goes a few steps too far in suggesting a kind of shadow conspiracy by a triumvirate of doctors – Chadwick, Reece, and Jenny – to somehow profit from promulgating SBS and by connecting them to doing the same from pushing the Satanic ritual abuse theory earlier. While the trio do not participate in the film, when questioned by other reviewers of the film, they have denied having anything at all to do with Satanic ritual abuse. It’s unclear where the accusation stems from, casting a pall over the overall validity of the arguments made here. Beyond that, the project is workmanlike in its approach, heavy on media montages and talking heads, making it more suited for the small screen.
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Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 15: OUR LAST TANGO
German Kral’s chronicle of the fiery relationship between Argentine dance pioneers made its bow at Toronto last Fall. The film has gone on to screen at Miami, Cleveland, Stockholm, San Diego Latino, Sarasota, the Film Society’s Dance on Film, and Minneapolis/St Paul, among other events.
Credited with popularizing the tango beyond its origins in Argentina’s nightlife and taking it to the international stage, María Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes reflect on long lives which match the tempestuous nature of their dance. Meeting as teenagers, as recreated here by young dancers who are coached by the now octogenarians they are portraying, Nieves Rego and Copes became partners in life and in dance for half a century. Even after they divorced in 1976, following an extramarital affair by Copes, the pair remained tango partners for two more decades before an acrimonious final split that has left them unwilling to communicate for twenty years. Kral expertly plays off this tension, revealing their complicated relationship through separate contemporary interviews, fantastic archival footage, and stylized re-enactments that accentuate the theatricality of the tango.
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Available on VOD: THE CULT OF JT LEROY
Marjorie Sturm’s look at an infamous literary sensation had its world premiere at DOC NYC in 2014. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, SF Indiefest, Florida, Outfest, Boston LGBT, Portland’s QDoc, Durban, Melbourne, Antenna, RIDM, Rio, and Queerlisboa, among others. The doc is available on VOD via iTunes as well as on Fandor, SundanceNow Doc Club, and the film’s website.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
JT LeRoy burst onto the literary scene in the late 1990s, attracting a devoted following through stark tales of poverty, abuse and underage prostitution in books like SARAH and THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS. His was a rags-to-riches story, with his own tortured life inspiring his writing – or so he claimed. Drawn into LeRoy’s inner circle before the truth came to light, director Marjorie Sturm was misled like many others. Through intimate interviews with many close to the tarnished figure, she attempts to untangle what really happened, and in the process explores how this deception called into question not only the value of LeRoy’s writing absent authenticity, but our culture’s complicity within the author’s seductive cult of personality.
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Switzerland’s Visions du Réel holds its 47th annual edition beginning tomorrow, Friday, April 15 through Sunday, April 23. The Nyon-based documentary event will screen nearly 100 new and recent features in addition to retrospective and shorts programming. Highlights from various sections are noted below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, April 15: ABOVE AND BELOW
Nicolas Steiner’s look at survival outside mainstream society had its world premiere at Rotterdam last year. Screenings also include DOC NYC, Hot Docs, BAFICI, Docs Against Gravity, Edinburgh, Karlovy Vary, Vancouver, CPH:DOX, DocPoint, Big Sky, and Cucalorus.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
Nicolas Steiner’s sublime exploration of lives lived on the fringe is set in a seemingly apocalyptic world that happens to be our own. Living above ground, April dons a spacesuit to simulate life on Mars as part of a remote science program in Utah, while Dave has left modern society for an abandoned military bunker in the California desert. Meanwhile, finding shelter below, in Las Vegas storm drains, are Lalo, Rick and Cindy, who contend with frequent, dangerous flooding to survive on their own terms.
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New to VOD this week: 20 YEARS OF MADNESS
Jeremy Royce’s look at the reunion of a 1990s public access television troupe had its world premiere at Slamdance last year. Its fest circuit also included Traverse City, Cleveland, Brooklyn, Boston Underground, Portland, Cinedelphia, and San Francisco Doc, among others. Gravitas now releases the doc on VOD.
Two decades ago, a group of smalltown Michigan misfits celebrated their weirdness in the form of 30 MINUTES OF MADNESS, a fourteen-episode public television sketch series that was something of a precursor to JACKASS and Tom Green’s style of chaotic revelry. After interpersonal conflicts brought an end to not only the show, but to the friendships that made the creative collaboration possible, MADNESS’ ambitious co-creator, Jerry White Jr left for Hollywood, but struggled to make it in the business, only graduating from a film program at USC as the doc opens on the eve of his twenty year high school reunion. It’s there that he reconnects with the show’s other co-creator and erstwhile best friend, Joe Hornacek, and the two off-handedly muse about getting the old gang together to tape a final episode – since it seems no one else has left their hometown. While some of their cast is a bit worse for wear, struggling with addiction and psychological problems, they nevertheless seem game to let loose for a bit, shaking up their ordinary, middle-aged lives with a return to the follies of their youth. At the same time, neither they nor Jerry are able to avoid the selfsame pitfalls that tarnished the program in the past, threatening the possibility that the final episode might not be completed. Royce finds unexpected poignancy not only in the various players’ stories, but in the impact and import they ascribe to their long ago participation in what, from the outside, seems like a silly diversion, but which now stands as a nostalgic symbol of unrealized youthful dreams and creativity.
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New to VOD this week: FORCED PERSPECTIVE
Nick Cavalier’s portrait of artist Derek Hess made its debut at the Cleveland International Film Festival last year. Screenings followed at Beverly Hills and the Atlanta Doc fests, among others. FilmBuff now releases the film on VOD.
While not a household name, the Cleveland-based Hess has cultivated a cult following while also being recognized by the more mainstream art world and media outlets. Cavalier traces the artist’s background and career, spotlighting the eye-catching promotional music poster art that established him in the 1990s before he crossed over into fine art, and which laid the groundwork for Hess’ forays into music and art festivals and a popular line of clothing merchandise featuring his designs. The well-shot film also reveals the impact bipolar disorder and alcoholism has had on Hess’ life and work in the past, bringing a darker element to the proceedings that helps contextualize and inform his artwork, and allows Cavalier to expand his project from what’s otherwise a respectful, if somewhat insular, tribute.
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Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed tonight, Tuesday, April 12: REVERSING THE MISSISSIPPI
Ian Midgley’s look at the meeting of two innovators made its debut at the New Orleans Film Festival this past Fall. The film has also screened at Austria’s Crossroads, UnionDocs, and Palm Springs’ American Doc fests.
Marcin Jakubowski has a disruptive idea: His Open Source Ecology has developed blueprints for farm equipment and has made them free for anyone to use to build their own. In this way, he hopes to help individuals interested in sustainability bypass the high financial bar for entry into farming, and he’s attracted a cadre of volunteers to the Factor E Farm in Missouri to assist the development of his plan. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, Nat Turner, a former NYC school teacher, relocated to the Lower 9th Ward after Katrina to open Our School at Blair Grocery, a community center that serves a sanctuary to youth, empowering them to grow and sell their own vegetables. Both men are beset by problems as they try in their own way to change the world – Jakubowski’s lack of interpersonal skills leads to a disgruntled team that threatens to abandon his dream, while Turner struggles with a lack of financial and technological resources to keep his endeavor in operation. When these two men meet, they see the potential that that their collaboration can be stronger than their individual efforts. Enabling their intersection, Midgely offers an intimate look at the highs and lows that result as they attempt the seemingly impossible.
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