Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to theatres today, Friday, May 18:
THE MOST UNKNOWN

Director:
Ian Cheney

Premiere:
CPH:DOX 2018

Select Festivals:
Seattle

About:
Nine scientists from diverse disciplines explore unanswered questions.

In this roundelay of scientific discovery, one scientist is introduced to a completely different field by second scientist, who then meets a third, and so on, until a circle is formed by the film’s nine participants. Along the way, each has a chance to (too briefly) explain their area of research – geobiology, quantum physics, cognitive psychology, astrobiology, astronomy, etc – and the unknowns which drive their curiosity, often spurring the neophyte into eureka moments of connectivity and understanding. By design, Cheney’s project is a survey, which makes it both a frequently intriguing but also at times frustrating watch – just as quickly as a concept or experiment might capture the viewer’s attention, it gives way in favor of a fresh encounter with the next thinker in the chain. Still, the film reminds us of the fruitfulness and necessity of curiosity, exploration, and not believing one already knows it all.

New to VOD this week:
ON PUTIN’S BLACKLIST

Director:
Boris Ivanov

Premiere:
Vancouver 2017

About:
An investigation of Russia’s foreign adoption ban and what it reveals about the nation’s broader international politics.

Ivanov’s film begins as an exploration of the complicated nature of international adoptions of Russian children, only to note how the ban of this practice ends up disrupting the plans of several families and the potentially bright futures of countless Russian orphans. Ivanov suggests a larger, more insidious, and wholly politically-motivated reason for the ban and how it is reflective of the new Cold War: Putin’s desire to undercut America’s global dominance. In this case, the ban is connected to homophobic rhetoric, anti-gay laws, and the persecution of LGBT people in Russia, and involves countries that recognize same-sex marriage. But the film continues to broaden out further and further, away from the ostensible focus on adoption to draw in by now quite familiar stories of further abuses of power and human decency by the state, including attacks on NGOs, artists like Pussy Riot, and pretty much anyone else who doesn’t tow the xenophobic, jingoistic party line. The result is a very messy, unfocused project that seems to aspire to a political critique but isn’t able to properly juggle the massive topic in a sensible or satisfying manner.

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed today, Tuesday, May 15:
RANDOM ACTS OF LEGACY

Director:
Ali Kazimi

Premiere:
Hot Docs 2016

Select Festivals:
Chicago, Asian American fests in San Diego, Philadelphia, and San Francisco

About:
The discovery of an Asian-American family’s home movies prompts a search for their origins.

Chancing upon a collection of home movies from the 1930s-’50s featuring people of color – an unusual find from an era where virtually all such recorded footage was of affluent white people – director Ali Kazimi was intrigued. As recounted here, he was able to identify the filmmaker as Silas Fung, a Chinese-American based in Chicago, and tracks down surviving family members to learn more, supplemented by unfortunately excessive narration by the filmmaker, as well as commentary by historians. While the latter provides some context about the experience of Asian Americans in pre- and postwar US society and occasional insights that the family members themselves perhaps didn’t articulate in interviews, the filmmaker’s narration is largely unnecessary and lessens the overall impact of the project’s most compelling element: Fung’s films, and how they visually construct a sense of an aspirational upwardly mobile and assimilationist identity for his family.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, May 15:
ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM

Directors:
Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
AFI Docs, Montclair, Traverse City, Indie Memphis, Cucalorus, St Louis, Milwaukee, Napa Valley

About:
An exploration of the manufactured controversy that led to the downfall of a powerful community-based advocacy group.

I previously wrote about the doc here.