Author Archives: basiltsiokos

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday April 5: AMERICAN JIHADIST

This profile of the controversial militant American Muslim Isa Abdullah Ali by director Mark Claywell premiered at Slamdance 2010, where it claimed the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary. It’s played more than a dozen additional festivals since then.

Ali, an African-American Muslim born Clevin Raphael Holt, grew up in Washington, DC’s ghettos, exposed to violence and racial inequality on a daily basis in what he describes as a “warzone.” His experiences in the US Army made him a Black nationalist and later a convert to Islam. He fought in Lebanon and Bosnia for years to help his fellow Muslim brothers and sisters. Though labeled a “known terrorist” by the US Defense Department, he’s never been charged with a crime and flies from his home and family in Bosnia to the US several times a year without trouble. He makes for a fascinating, if often frustrating subject – his intensity makes him hard to relate to, and he never quite seems to be completely genuine. AMERICAN JIHADIST offers a potent insider look at the complex conditions and background that might predispose an individual to militancy in the name of religion.

Coming to theatres this Wednesday, April 6: BLANK CITY

Celine Danhier’s debut film had a special work-in-progress screening at Tribeca in 2009 before its official world premiere at Berlin in 2010. It went on to play more than twenty festivals, including Hot Docs, Edinburgh, Melbourne, AFI, and the Viennale.

The film explores New York City’s underground “No Wave Cinema” and “Cinema of Transgression” of the 1970s-80s, focused largely in the East Village – then an often dangerous, drug-ridden neighborhood popular with artists due to low rents. Danhier showcases the largely still-unseen films of the period, which were characterized by virtually zero budgets and a decidedly non-traditional DIY aesthetic and production model, and interviews a dizzying number of key figures from the period, including directors Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman, Amos Poe, Beth B, and Nick Zedd, with additional commentary from notables like Deborah Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore, Steve Buscemi, Richard Kern, and John Waters. While BLANK CITY might oversimplify the diversity of the different filmmakers in an attempt to more neatly fit them into a consideration of the overall movement, it still has value in providing present day audiences with access to a whole generation of filmmaking that never received much attention upon its scrappy self-release. It serves as a time capsule of sorts, especially in showing what toll NYC’s economic bankruptcy had on the East Village and how artists responded to it, turning adversity into a source of inspiration through self-reliance.

Coming to theatres this Friday, April 1: CIRCO

Aaron Schock’s feature documentary debut, a portrait of four generations of a Mexican circus family, had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year, as well as screenings at True/False, London, Silverdocs, Morelia, and the Hamptons, where it picked up the award for Best Documentary. First Run Features is now bringing the film to NYC’s IFC Center, with the LA release next Friday, April 8.

At the heart of CIRCO is Tino, the ringmaster of Circo Mexico, a small circus run by his parents that travels to rural towns and villages for a day or two at a time. Though Ivonne, Tino’s wife, ran away from home to marry into the circus family, she is close to the end of her rope, watching their children exhaustively work and train for the circus at the expense of their education and their childhood. Tino doesn’t want to disappoint his parents, especially his father, who is carrying on the circus tradition of his own parents – a career that all of his siblings are also involved in with separate small circuses. As Circo Mexico increasingly suffers financially from Mexico’s economic difficulties and from the debt it has had to absorb to keep operating, the conflict between Tino and Ivonne threatens to come to a head and tear their family, and the circus apart. Reminiscent in certain respects to Doug Pray’s SURFWISE, which also detailed the legacy of an unorthodox family upbringing, Schock’s documentary similarly crafts a captivating, specific yet universal portrait of family dynamics, where the tension between individualism and familial responsibility and tradition is palpable and poignant.

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, March 29: COOL IT

I posted my take on two-time Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner Ondi Timoner’s collaboration with controversial climate change author Bjorn Lomborg before the film’s theatrical release. Read it here.

Coming to DVD next Tuesday, March 29: COLONY

Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell’s unusual and beautiful portrait of beekeepers dealing with the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder is both directors’ feature documentary debut, and had its world premiere in Toronto’s 2009 slate.

Colony Collapse Disorder is the term that’s been applied to an ongoing and still not fully explained crisis in which entire beehives or bee colonies simply vanish. Some of the immediate consequences for the apiarists who depend on the honeybee are succinctly stated in COLONY’s tagline: “No Bees. No Honey. No Work. No Money.” Beyond the direct financial strain this puts on Gunn and McDonnell’s subjects David Mendes and Lance and Victor Seppi, there is the far larger impact the disappearance of the honeybee has – on a global scale, they pollinate many of the world’s crops. Without them, we could add “No Food. No Life.” to the film’s tagline. Because of this potential severity, CCD has been a very popular subject for documentary filmmakers – I’ve seen at least half a dozen feature docs on the issue. COLONY continues to impress as one of the strongest, if not the strongest. The film features stunning photography, a clarity of storytelling, and intriguing characters – especially in the form of the struggling Seppis, devout Christians who almost seem displaced in time from some simpler era, being forced to deal with the collapse of their livelihood.