Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to CNN tomorrow, Wednesday, January 1:
LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE

Directors:
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman

World Premiere:
Tribeca 2019

Select Festivals:
Provincetown, AFI Docs, Atlantic

About:
A look back at the celebrated pop artist’s career.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

New to DVD/VOD this week:
JIM ALLISON: BREAKTHROUGH

Director:
Bill Haney

World Premiere:
SXSW 2019

Select Festivals:
Seattle, IFF Boston, Woods Hole, Full Frame, DocLands, , Minneapolis-St Paul, Sedona

About:
A Texan scientist doggedly pursues immunotherapy as a potential way to cure some cancers.

Bill Haney’s film tells the story of Nobel Prize winner Jim Allison and his development of ipilimumab, an immunotherapy drug. Affected early in life by his mother’s death from cancer, he has spent decades working on an effective cure for some kinds of cancer in the controversial field of immunotherapy – essentially treating not the cancer but the body’s immune system as a way for it to fight off the cancer itself. While Allison should make for a compelling subject, not only for his lifelong scientific mission, but for his maverick demeanor, Haney unfortunately takes a very straightforward, old-fashioned biographical approach that feels promotional and educational TV at the same time. Where the film could have shined is in its profile of Sharon Belvin, a woman who benefited from his research, but her story appears in awkwardly intermittent segments that feel like interruptions, robbing them of their impact.

New to DVD/VOD this week:
DRAG KIDS

Director:
Megan Wennberg

World Premiere:
Hot Docs 2019

Select Festivals:
Rotterdam, RIDM, St Louis, NewFest, Inside Out

About:
Four preteen drag performers are brought together for Montreal Pride.

Inspired by the more visible – and sanitized – version of drag popularized by RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE, younger fans have taken to dressing up themselves. Some have generated press and gained social media followings, while others are decidedly under the radar. Director Megan Wennberg profiles four such kids – Stephan and Nemis (both age 9) and Jason and Bracken (both 11) – hailing from Canada, the US, and Spain by way of the UK, and concocts an excuse to have them meet. The kids demonstrate minor points of interest – Bracken is a biological female performing femininity in a field dominated by males, Jason is from the Bible Belt – but, frankly, as performers, they’re only about as good as one would expect a preteen to be. Their parents are far more interesting, demonstrating refreshing support despite criticism. Still, the film struggles to sustain feature length, and is predicated on a manufactured premise – arranging for the disparate subjects to unite for a group performance in Montreal – making this a very surface treatment that sidesteps the more interesting questions raised about the appropriation of queer culture and the attempts to strip it of its radicalness, sexuality, and history.