Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to PBS this Friday, August 30:
BIG FAMILY: THE STORY OF BLUEGRASS MUSIC

Directors:
Matt Grimm and Nick Helton

World Premiere:
Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum (July 2019)

About:
An exhaustive look at the history and legacy of bluegrass music.

Often dismissed and viewed through a stereotypical lens, bluegrass has a surprisingly wider and more inclusive reach than might be expected. Filmmakers Matt Grimm and Nick Helton offer a wide-ranging survey of this quintessentially American genre, which developed in the 1940s through a fusion of traditional English, Scottish, and Irish music with African-American blues and jazz, and is named after its acknowledged pioneer, Bill Monroe, and his Blue Grass Boys band. The filmmakers adopt PBS’s typical talking heads- and narration-heavy approach, leading from Monroe’s story to the growing popularity of bluegrass not only regionally, but across the US and overseas, with particularly large fanbases in Japan and the Czech Republic. Weighing in are legends in the genre, historians, music fans, and the next generation of performers, supplemented with ample performance footage. Its informational and conventional approach isn’t likely to net a large number of converts, but for already existing bluegrass fans, the doc will serve its celebratory purpose.

Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, August 27:
TASTELESS

Directors:
Jeff Cerulli and Matt Ritter

World Premiere:
White Light City Film Festival 2018

Select Festivals:
Indy, Big Muddy, Tampa Bay Underground

About:
A look at the evolution of comedy through the lens of a controversial joke book series.

In the 1980s, TRULY TASTELESS JOKES, a series of controversial paperbacks became unexpected bestsellers. Full of puerile, crude humor, these humor books lived up to their name, presenting off-color comedy with no limits, with jokes targeting pretty much everyone – women, men, babies, the disabled, gays, and different religious and ethnic groups. Credited at publication to “Blanche Knott,” the books were authored by a young woman named Ashton Applewhite, who, at the time was struggling to make ends meet in an entry-level book publishing position. Here, Applewhite, now a feminist activist, looks back on the origins and surprise popularity of the series, while several comedians reminisce on their impact and discuss how the boundaries of “acceptable” humor have changed since the TASTELESS books’ emergence. While occasionally funny, the film covers fairly well-worn territory in its consideration of outrage culture, and is limited by a mid-length running time and talking heads-heavy visual approach, only occasionally spruced up with some animation.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, August 23:
FIDDLER: A MIRACLE OF MIRACLES

Director:
Max Lewkowicz

World Premiere:
Toronto Jewish Film Festival 2019

Select Festivals:
Jewish fests in San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Miami, Atlanta, and Denver

About:
A wide-ranging look at the origins and enduring legacy of the musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

Since its debut in 1964, the Broadway musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF became first a sensation and then a classic, notably, if the end of director Max Lewkowicz’s tribute to the show can be trusted as not mere hyperbole, having been performed somewhere around the world each day since then. This doc gathers creators, cast and crew from the original run as well as subsequent stagings, in addition to individuals connected to the 1971 film adaptation, and cultural critics for good measure, creating an expansive close reading of the show, detailing its inspirations, parsing each song, and relating the whole to sociohistorical developments including feminism and civil rights, as well as, of course, the Jewish experience. While musical theatre fans and Jewish audiences are the natural audiences for Lewkowicz’s fim, this broader contextualization helps make the argument for a wider and more diverse viewership, and informs the show’s perennial appeal. The latter is demonstrated through brief looks at stagings in places like Thailand and Japan, as well as the story of a controversial 1970 African-American and Latinx high school version. Although the doc’s survey approach makes it feel on the longer side, the film should still connect with an appreciative audience.