Author Archives: basiltsiokos

Coming to NYC’s Maysles Cinema for a one-week run beginning this Friday, April 12: THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA

Marten Persiel’s look back at skateboarding in 1980s East Germany made its world premiere at last year’s Berlinale, where it picked up a jury award. It went on to screen at Karlovy Vary, Warsaw, CPH:DOX, Tempo, and Rooftop Films, among others.

Seamlessly blending non-fiction and fiction, Persiel’s film revels in the subversive freedom a group of GDR teens found in skateboarding, and the close-knit, family-like community they helped found around the underground sport in the repressive Eastern Bloc nation. Structured as a memorial to the wild boy “Panik” (by some accounts a composite character based on real skaters who were part of the group), the film gathers a number of former skaters more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as they reflect on their turbulent youth. Utilizing Super-8mm footage (some re-created, other contemporary), Persiel wonderfully translates the gleeful joy in the stories his subjects share of resisting authority and attempting to adopt the trappings of Western popular culture within their tightly constrained, Soviet-controlled bubble – a form of political defiance despite their surface apoliticism. Though the film has come under fire for not explicitly announcing its hybridized form – and perhaps it does take too many liberties with the audience in this regard – it remains an eloquent, ridiculously enjoyable depiction of a singular time and place, and to the power of subcultures to unite individuals and leave an indelible impression on their life experiences.

Coming to VOD today, April 9: ONLY THE YOUNG

Elizabeth Mims and Jason Tippet’s refreshing portrait of adolescence made its premiere at True/False last year. It went on to screen at San Francisco, Hot Docs, and Silverdocs, where it picked up an award. It enjoyed a limited theatrical release this past Winter, and now comes to iTunes, Amazon, XBOX, Vudu, Google Play, cable on demand, and direct digital download from Oscilloscope.

I included the film in my Hot Docs coverage here.

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, April 9: THE LAST FLIGHT OF PETR GINZ

Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts’ creative recounting of one boy’s experience of the Holocaust has screened at a number of Jewish film festivals over the past year, including Atlanta, Toronto, Zagreb, Cleveland, Hong Kong, Warsaw, UK, Washington, Houston, and Miami. The film has also screened at the Czech Republic’s Zlin children’s fest, and picked up a special award at last year’s Jerusalem International Film Festival.

Dickson and Roberts’ film tells the story of a young Polish Holocaust victim through his surviving diaries and imaginative drawings and stories, produced while he was held at the Terezin concentration camp before his murder at Auschwitz at the age of sixteen. His journals, and his sister’s narration, relate the harsh reality of life in Poland under the Nazi occupation, but it is in Ginz’s fictional writing and artwork that he let his imagination free him from his bonds. Inspired by Jules Verne and other science fiction writers, the young man wrote numerous novels, including a thinly-veiled indictment of the Nazis in the form of mechanical monsters trying to enslave the world, and, most remarkably, a secret underground literary journal co-produced with fellow camp prisoners. His experiences structure this film, with animated segments in different styles reflecting both his real-life and fictional flights of fancy. While some of the storytelling and journal recital sequences overstay their welcome, the filmmakers have made a concerted effort to produce a very different kind of Holocaust narrative – one that celebrates life, creativity, and defiance even in the direst of circumstances – and in that they have decidedly succeeded.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, April 9: LA SOURCE

Patrick Shen’s profile of the efforts to bring clean water to a Haitian village made its world premiere at Silverdocs last year. It went on to screen at DocuWeeks, DocuWest, Big Sky, Palm Springs, and the Arclight Doc fest, where it picked up an award. It comes to VOD on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, CinemaNow, and other platforms.

I previously wrote about the film here.