Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Planete + Doc Film Festival opens this Friday, May 10 in Warsaw, expanding to Wroclaw on Sunday, May 12, and continuing in both cities through Sunday, May 19. One of Poland’s signature cinema events, the festival screens over 100 feature docs, in addition to shorts, panels, masterclasses, music events, and family programming. Ten competitions totaling over 20,000 Euros will be presented, along with awards with names like Chopin’s Nose (music docs), Green Cross (ecology docs), and Magic Hour (mid-lengths) in addition to audience awards and the like. Programming is organized around fifteen thematic sections, which include three retro series on the films of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Canada’s Peter Mettler, and Russia’s Sergei Loznitsa. Here are some of my picks of new or unfamiliar films from the remaining twelve sections: Continue reading
Author Archives: basiltsiokos
Planete + Doc 2013 Overview
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
DOK.fest Munich 2013 Overview
Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 8 sees the launch of the 28th edition of DOK.fest Munich, the second largest doc event in Germany. Running through Wednesday, May 15, the festival includes over a hundred titles, many vying for the more than 35,000 Euros in cash and in-kind prizes, ranging for jury awards for best international, German language, and emerging country films to best Bavarian, student, and music docs. The programming reflects a balance between higher-profile selections that have emerged elsewhere on the festival circuit to a healthy assortment of new or more obscure titles, including an intriguing mix of local productions, as well as a retrospective of Werner Herzog’s work. While I’m not attending, the following section overview represents some of the feature docs I’d check out: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
In Theatres: STORIES WE TELL
Coming to NYC this Friday, May 10 and expanding to Los Angeles and beyond next Friday, May 17: STORIES WE TELL
Sarah Polley’s look at mysteries within her own family debuted at Venice last year. Its fest circuit has included Telluride, Toronto, Sundance, True/False, and New Directors/New Films, among others.
I wrote about the film before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions 2013 Overview
Beginning this Wednesday, May 8, and running through the rest of the month, MoMA presents Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions, a retrospective series of nonfiction and nonfiction-inspired film from China. The work reflects changes to the nation’s documentary aesthetics over the past quarter century, which has come hand-in-hand with rapid modernization in the wake of China’s remarkable economic transition. Series curators Sally Berger and Kevin B Lee have assembled examples from as far back as 1988, pre-Tiananmen Square, to brand new work, spanning state-sanctioned productions to underground, independent work – the majority largely unseen by Western audiences outside of some limited festival exposure. In addition to panels, more than two dozen films make up the series, including several fiction films employing documentary strategies as well as hybrid projects. The following highlights a number of the notable documentary selections: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Hot Docs Forum 2013 in Brief
Nonfiction insiders got a sneak peek at a number of upcoming projects during the Hot Docs Forum, running alongside the public festival. My article on the pitches that made a roomful of international commissioning editors take notice is up at Indiewire here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, In Brief, Recommendations
Hot Docs 2013 In Brief, Part One
Due to back-to-back travel, I’m woefully behind in my festival roundups – Tribeca is still in the queue and Hot Docs has now joined the to-do list. I plan to catch up over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, I contributed to a brief roundup of ten notable Hot Docs selections for Indiewire last week here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, In Brief, Recommendations
In Theatres: THE SOURCE FAMILY
Now screening at the IFC Center and opening in San Francisco and Seattle today, May 3: THE SOURCE FAMILY
Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille’s indepth revisitation of 1970s Los Angeles counterculture made its world premiere at SXSW last year. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, Seattle, San Francisco, and Silverdocs, among other fests.
I included the doc in my SXSW coverage here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
In Theatres: THE WORLD BEFORE HER
Coming to theatres via Cinedigm’s Docurama initiative this Tuesday, May 7: THE WORLD BEFORE HER
Nisha Pahuja’s exploration of extreme expressions of Indian femininity had its world premiere at Tribeca last year, where it won a jury award. It repeated the win at Hot Docs, Traverse City, and San Diego Asian, and also screened at Warsaw, Little Rock, Sydney, Reykjavik, CNEX Doc, Vancouver, Abu Dhabi, Bergen, IDFA, and Big Sky, among others. The film is part of Cinedigm’s new seven-film program bringing feature documentaries to theatres weekly in up to fifteen US markets, including NYC, LA, Pasadena, Encino, San Diego, Palm Desert, Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Hartford, New Haven, Ithaca, Richmond, and Helena. The films are also available for additional theatrical-on-demand screenings via Tugg. In NYC, Cinema Village will screen the doc this Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
I wrote about the doc out of Hot Docs here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Special Screening: TOUBA
Coming to NYC’s Maysles Cinema for the African Film Festival and Doc Watchers series “Five Days of African Docs” this Sunday, May 5: TOUBA
E Chai Vasarhelyi’s immersive exploration of a Senegalese Muslim pilgrimage made its world premiere at this year’s SXSW. The jury noted its exceptional cinematography, giving a special jury recognition to DP Scott Duncan.
I included the doc in my SXSW coverage here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Special Screening: DEAR MANDELA
Coming to NYC’s Maysles Cinema for the African Film Festival and Doc Watchers series “Five Days of African Docs” this Saturday, May 4: DEAR MANDELA
Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza’s look at housing activism among South Africa’s poor premiered at Durban in 2011. Since then it’s screened at numerous fests, including Camden, One World, Brooklyn, and Zanzibar, as well as university and community screenings around the world.
As the South African generation born post-apartheid comes into its own, the promises made by the previous freedom fighters are found to be unfulfilled. Among the most contentious is the long-deferred plan to provide housing for the poor, who otherwise make due in hastily constructed shacks organized into shanytown slums. Despite the constitutional protection against forced evictions, a new law theoretically designed to curtail the growth of slums has empowered authorities to destroy unauthorized shacks, angering the populace and reinforcing a sense that the inequality once based on race has instead given way to one based on economics. Taking on this issue is the group Abahlali BaseMjondolo – the “people of the shacks” – who work to organize from within, educating shack dwellers about their rights, and take the government to court over the unconstitutionality of the Slums Act. Kell and Nizza profile some of the young leaders of the movement as they face death threats, imprisonment, and the anger of an older generation who don’t take kindly to disparaging words being leveled against the political party that freed them from the shackles of an unjust system – even if it might be repeating some of the mistakes of the past. While focused on the housing issue, the film eloquently speaks to the challenges facing the relatively young South African democracy as a whole – generational divides, political stagnancy, and the global problem of the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
