Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, February 16: THE IRON MINISTRY
JP Sniadecki’s observational profile of Chinese train travel made its world premiere at Locarno in 2014. Other screenings have included the NYFF, Rotterdam, Vancouver, Edinburgh, Camden, Chicago, DocLisboa, Viennale, CPH:DOX, RIDM, and Ambulante.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, February 16: BONNIE & CLYDE
John Maggio’s look at the lives of the infamous criminal duo debuted on PBS’s American Experience last month.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to The WORLD Channel’s America ReFramed tomorrow, Tuesday, February 16: THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN
Brittany Huckabee’s look at a Muslim woman’s controversial stand against her local mosque debuted at True/False in 2009. It also screened at San Francisco Asian American, where it was awarded best documentary. The film was nominated for an Emmy after its initial public television broadcast.
Morgantown is a West Virginia college town with a small but vibrant Muslim community, largely drawn from the nearby school. The Islamic Center of Morgantown doubles as their place of worship and community hub. When Asra Nomani returns from a stint in Pakistan as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, she believes her hometown will be the best place to raise her child. After recognizing signs of intolerance among the mosque’s more conservative leaders and prejudicial treatment of women, Asra decides to take a very visible stand, drawing media attention and criticism against supposed “extremism” in the mosque, and, in the process, precipitating a schism among its members. Huckabee deftly charts the fallout, following not only Asra in her crusade, but other members of the mosque, both allies and those alienated by her tactics, to craft a provocative exploration of the tension between tradition and progressive ideas in today’s Islam with regard to gender.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tomorrow, Tuesday, February 16: TRAPPED
Dawn Porter’s exploration of embattled abortion clinics just had its world premiere at Sundance last month. The film picked up a Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking at the festival.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
Coming to Al Jazeera America this Sunday, February 14: HELP US FIND SUNTIL TRIPATHI
Neal Broffman’s exploration of a missing man’s unexpected intersection with social media made its debut at Atlanta last year, where it won the Audience Award. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, New Orleans, DMZ Docs, Brooklyn, Boston Asian American, St Louis, Denver, and Oxford, among others.
After Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student suffering from depression, vanished without a trace from his apartment late one night, his family is desperate to locate him. As detailed in Broffman’s sensitive retelling, they methodically spread Sunil’s story and his picture as far and wide as possible, garnering attention from traditional and social media in the hopes that someone, anyone will recognize their family member and provide a lead. Despite this initial interest, with no one coming forward, the story soon died down. While the family wished for a resurgence of interest, they were soon faced with more media coverage than they wanted when Sunil is inexplicably linked to a grainy photo of one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Through the virality of the Internet, rampant speculation on reddit soon crosses over to the mainstream media, and, despite zero official corroboration, their beloved, lost family member is declared to be a terrorist and murderer, with threats lobbed at him and his relatives from all directions. This cautionary tale demonstrates the dark side of so-called citizen journalism and Internet activism, their infiltration of traditional news, and a young man and his family who are caught in its wake.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens and to DVD this coming Tuesday, February 16: THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION
Stanley Nelson’s chronicle of the Black Power organization made its debut at Sundance last year. Screenings followed at San Francisco, Sheffield, Pan African, IFF Boston, AFI Docs, Full Frame, Seattle, Encounters, Cleveland, MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, DOXA, Sidewalk, and Black Harvest, among many other events.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to PBS’s American Masters tomorrow, Friday, February 12: BB KING: THE LIFE OF RILEY
Jon Brewer’s profile of the late blues legend debuted in a longer version in London in 2012. This earlier version screened at various fests, including New Orleans, NXNE, and Sedona, and has since been cut down for its television broadcast debut and revised to acknowledge KIng’s passing last year.
Born Riley B King on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers, Brewer’s famed subject rose to the heights of the blues to become synonymous with the American music genre. Working in collaboration with King and his estate, the filmmaker constructs an appreciative biography of the musician through interviews with the man himself and glowing testimonials from family members, fellow musicians and famous fans, including Bonnie Raitt, Bono, Ringo Starr, John Mayer, and Morgan Freeman, who also narrates. Archival footage of performances both classic and more recent supplements the proceedings, amply demonstrating the consummate skills of the King of the Blues, and his well-earned place within cultural history.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
The 66th edition of the Berlinale opens tonight, Thursday, February 11 and runs through Sunday, February 21. A massive undertaking, the world-class festival, Germany’s largest, annually screens approximately 400 new and retrospective films across a wide range of programming strands. Among the new features on offer this year are just about seventy documentaries and hybrids, a sampling of which are noted below. Additionally, the festival is once again presenting Meet the Docs, a networking platform that is part of its corresponding European Film Market. The latter includes fifteen documentaries not in the official Berlinale fest program co-presented under the Docs Spotlight series by festivals IDFA, CPH:DOX, and DOK Leipzig; Meet the Festivals sessions; and a series of nonfiction-focused panels and conversations. Beyond this, the festival also presents Doc Station as part of the Berlinale Talents program, featuring ten projects in development. While my schedule continues to make attending the festival inconvenient, my attention would be drawn to the following programmed documentary features, were I to be heading to Berlin this weekend: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
New to DVD this week: SECUNDARIA
Mary Jane Doherty’s portrait of students at Cuba’s National Ballet School made its bow at IFF Boston in 2013. Other screenings have included the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera, Cartagena, Milwaukee, Havana, Newburyport Doc, and San Francisco Dance film fest.
Over nearly two dozen trips in the course of three years, Doherty traces the development of three young dancers, who began the prestigious school’s program in 2007: outgoing Gabriela, who comes from a relatively privileged background; shy Maryara, who, in contrast, is raised by a poor single mother; and Moisés, even poorer, and of African descent, making his road the hardest – though his story surprisingly doesn’t pop. Instead, after offering a quiet but unremarkable view of the school, its teachers, and the likeable enough but subdued subjects for a chunk of its initial running time, circumstances end up ultimately turning the film’s focus on Maryara, who takes the opportunity of being outside of Cuba while on an international tour to unexpectedly defect to America. This incident offers Doherty a surprising climax to an otherwise fine but unremarkable portrait, allowing the film to subtly explore some of the underlying tensions of life, culture, and politics in the island’s communist setting.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
New to DVD this week: MACHINE GUN PREACHER
Kevin Evans and Zac Simpson’s look at an unlikely humanitarian made its debut at the Gasparilla International Film Festival in 2014.
Already the subject of a poorly-reviewed Hollywood action film by the same name, Evans and Simpson’s documentary profiles Sam Childers, a biker and former drug dealer who, after finding God, has dedicated his life to helping the orphans of South Sudan. A controversial figure, he has raised funds to build a compound to house, educate, and feed the charges he rescues, while protecting them with armed guards. Though produced for the NGO Angels of East Africa, the film admirably tries to avoid descending into outright hagiography, detailing the strain Childers’ self-appointed mission has placed on his family relationships and their finances. At the same time, the film’s general praise of his missionary work overwhelms any extended consideration of the serious contradictions its subject poses as a self-professed man of God gleefully toting guns, and is altogether too scattershot in its approach to create a cohesive portrait.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
what (not) to doc 