Coming to select theatres and to virtual cinemas tomorrow, Friday, January 8:
THE REASON I JUMP
Director:
Jerry Rothwell
World Premiere:
Sundance 2020
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, Docs Against Gravity, London, ReelAbilities
About:
A profile of non-verbal autistic young people, based on the New York Times bestseller by Naoki Higashida.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to virtual cinemas tomorrow, Friday, January 8:
BEAUTIFUL SOMETHING LEFT BEHIND
Director:
Katrine Philp
World Premiere:
SXSW 2020 (unscreened)
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Camden, Reykjavík, Nordisk Panorama, Haifa, Bergen, Montclair
About:
An intimate child’s eye view of a counseling center which focuses on mourning the loss of loved ones.
The film screened as part of DOC NYC, for which our program notes read:
New Jersey’s Good Grief counseling center offers a holistic approach to mourning. Filmmaker Katrine Philp presents viewers with a child’s perspective of its programs, offering an affectionate and intimate look at the lives of several children who have recently lost their parents and must navigate their grief by embracing sadness with honesty, bravery, humor, and love. The result is an enlightening film in which the students become our teachers in finding better ways of coping with loss.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
CUSP
Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt intimately chronicle the lives of three teenage girls in a Texas military town.
Festival Section:
US Documentary Competition
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
AT THE READY
Maisie Crow profiles Latinx teens in El Paso as they contemplate careers in border patrol and law enforcement against the backdrop of increasing xenophobia.
Festival Section:
US Documentary Competition
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
Coming to virtual cinemas today, Wednesday, January 6:
MY REMBRANDT
Director:
Oeke Hoogendijk
World Premiere:
IDFA 2019
Select Festivals:
Docs Against Gravity, Montclair, Vancouver, GlobeDocs, Docville, Cologne
About:
Profiles of various owners – private and institutional – of works by the Old Master.
While still limited to the elite, there are surprisingly more private owners of Rembrandt paintings than one might expect. Filmmaker Oeke Hoogendijk introduces viewers to a handful in her somewhat shambolic art world exploration, such as the amiable Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, who renovates his sitting room to serve as the perfect backdrop for his beloved Rembrandt, Old Woman Reading; Baron Eric de Rothschild, whose Paris home is crammed full of remarkable work, including Portrait of Marten Soolmans and Portrait of Oopjen Coppit, a pair of Rembrandts that are sought by both the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum; and art dealer Jan Six XI, the latest in a family of Rembrandt collectors. Others float in and out of Hoogendijk’s film, which unfortunately has too much of a loose, episodic structure for most of its running time before settling in for the final stretch around a controversy around Six’s discovery (and sale) of a hitherto unknown new work by the Old Master.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to PBS’s Frontline this Friday, January 8:
A THOUSAND CUTS
Director:
Ramona Diaz
World Premiere:
Sundance 2020
Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, SXSW, AFI Docs, Full Frame, San Francisco, Cleveland
About:
A chilling look at the assault on fundamental democratic freedoms in the Philippines.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE
Theo Anthony interrogates the idea of objectivity through the shared histories of cameras, weapons, policing, and justice.
Festival Section:
US Documentary Competition
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
AILEY
Jamila Wignot presents a revealing, moving portrait of pioneering choreographer Alvin Ailey.
Festival Section:
US Documentary Competition
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
The 37th Sundance Film Festival takes place later this month, running January 28-February 3 both online and via satellite screens, with a lineup consisting of 71 features, 50 shorts, 4 episodics, and 14 exhibitions, performances, and VR experiences.
Once again, as I’ve done since 2011’s festival, I’ll profile each of the more than 30 feature and long-form episodic documentaries in advance of the festival, beginning tomorrow.
Please note: These are not reviews. As a Documentary Programming Associate for Sundance, I recommend every film in the 2021 lineup. These profiles instead provide background about the teams behind this year’s docs in anticipation of the festival and the films’ later release. For a sample, check out last year’s series, which began here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, January 5:
SHE IS THE OCEAN
Director:
Inna Blokhina
World Premiere:
International Ocean Film Festival (2018)
Select Festivals:
San Diego, Santa Cruz, Long Beach, Maui, Honoulu Surf, Worldfest Houston
About:
Profiles of nine girls and women who are connected to the ocean, mostly through surfing.
Filmmaker Inna Blokhina attempts to construct a unified film through a series of unconnected vignettes about various women and how they relate to the ocean, threading the five-year story of Cinta Hansel, a young Balinese girl who is fulfilling her American father’s unrealized dreams of surfing success, throughout the doc. While the intent seems to be a metaphorical trajectory of women’s involvement with the ocean from girlhood to senescence, this doesn’t really come across successfully, given that most of the subjects are within the same age range. Other than Cinta, the subjects, profiled in overly slick sequences with excessive music-video montages, include a young professional surfer who is the daughter of a Hawaiian surfing legend, a shark conservationist who educates the public about the misunderstood species through shark diving tours, a cliff diver who was inspired by her gymnast mother, a ballet dancer who likes to free-dive, an acclaimed barrel surfer, a big wave surfer, the surfing mother of a deceased surf champion, and Sylvia Earle, the noted marine biologist. These profiles are unfortunately too brief to be compelling, and their cumulative effect bears diminishing returns, making this of limited interest to all but die-hard surf film fans.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
what (not) to doc 