Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, April 16:
I AM EVIDENCE

Directors:
Trish Adlesic and Geeta Gandbhir

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
Nantucket, Traverse City, AFI Docs, Provincetown, Hawaii, St Louis, UN Association, Globe Docs, Hamptons, Milwaukee,

About:
An alarming look at institutional failures in prosecuting sexual assault cases.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, April 16:
WHAT LIES UPSTREAM

Director:
Cullen Hoback

Premiere:
Slamdance 2017

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Seattle, AFI Docs, Traverse City, Dallas, Sonoma, Ashland

About:
The filmmaker investigates the coverup behind drinking water contamination in West Virginia.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to theateres today, Friday, April 13:
NANA

Director:
Serena Dykman

Premiere:
St Louis 2016

Select Festivals:
Fargo, Harlem, Miami Jewish, Rocky Mountain Women’s

About:
The filmmaker revisits her grandmother’s enduring mission to share her story as a Holocaust survivor.

The film’s titular subject is Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, an outspoken, disarmingly funny Polish woman who emerged from the horrors of Auschwitz as the sole survivor of her family, and who died when the filmmaker was only eleven. She appears here primarily through a collection of interviews and public appearances where she relates her experiences of the Holocaust, the anti-Semitism that welcomed her upon liberation, and her lifelong survivor’s guilt. Having approached this project as a way to better learn about her grandmother, Dykman ends up employing the crutch of many a first-time filmmaker and takes an unnecessarily meta approach, attempting to make her film also about her own journey – in making the doc, and in following in Michalowski-Dyamant’s footsteps both literally – retracing her steps – and figuratively – viewing her filmmaking as a different way of continuing to speak out about the Holocaust. This split focus results in a clunkiness that, rather than supplementing the older woman’s story, unfortunately serves as a distraction.

New to DVD and VOD this week:
MABEL, MABEL, TIGER TRAINER

Director:
Leslie Zemeckis

Premiere:
Santa Barbara 2017

Select Festivals:
Beverly Hills, SF DocFest

About:
A biography of Mabel Stark, one of the trailblazing female performers of the circus world.

Mabel Stark survived an impoverished and abusive upbringing to join the circus in 1911. There her romantic involvement with a big cat trainer led to training tigers herself, a role for which women were said not to be suited. Her determination allowed her to attain celebrity within the circus world in the decades before WWII, and notoriety for how many times she was mauled by her tigers only to return to continue her act. Stark spent much of her later life in Jungleland, where the TARZAN movies were filmed, until a new owner booted her out, and trouble befell her beloved animals, precipitating her death in 1968. Interwoven with Zemeckis’ affectionate, but too-conventional and uncinematic recounting of Stark’s colorful life are several interviews with retired female circus big cat trainers/performers, who offer slightly more contemporary variations on Mabel’s experiences, but ultimately serve as an unnecessary distraction from her story.