Category Archives: Documentary

New to VOD this week:
THE LIBERATORS

Director:
Cassie Hay

Premiere:
SXSW 2016

Select Festivals:
Dallas, St Louis, Flatland

About:
The story of how stolen German cultural treasures worth millions were recovered from a Texan town in the late 1980s.

Hay’s film reveals how Willi Korte, a German who has become a specialist in recovering lost or stolen art, teamed up with New York Times reporter Bill Honan to locate the fabled Quedlinburg Treasures, religious artifacts lost at the end of WWII. Korte’s detective work tracks the items to a small Texan town, Whitewright, and the family of Joe Meador, a WWII soldier who helped himself to the treasures when he discovered them hidden in a cave. Mailing them home piece by piece as the spoils of war, despite strict prohibition from doing so, Meador held on to the treasures for decades, bragged about them to friends, and used them to lure younger men for sex. After he died, his family started to inquire about selling them, and this led to a face off with Korte. The family eventually makes out handsomely despite the illegality of the way they acquired the items, and with questions lingering as to their potential knowledge of the location of still missing pieces. While the film lacks a certain dynamism, both in its over-reliance on talking heads and its wholly retrospective telling, there remains here the hints of an interesting story about the dubious ethics of its central figure that one wished were more fully teased out.

New to DVD this week:
AMERICAN PATRIOT: INSIDE THE ARMED UPRISING AGAINST THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Director:
Rick Rowley

Premiere:
Frontline (May 2017)

About:
An exploration of the origins of the armed occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

While constrained to the hour length and conventional, narration-driven format of its PBS strand, Rowley does an admirable job of concisely providing essential context for the illegal actions taken by Ammon Bundy and his supporters early last year. The film details the initial confrontation between family patriarch Cliven Bundy and federal authorities at Bunkerville NV in 2014, stemming from a longstanding legal battle over the rancher’s refusal to pay fees for grazing privileges on federal land. With the potential threat of armed conflict during the standoff with Bundy, the Bureau of Land Management backed down, resulting in a perceived win for the rancher and the growth of a nascent movement of fellow ranchers and other self-proclaimed “American patriots” disillusioned with the perceived overreach of the federal government. When Cliven’s son, Ammon, the defacto leader of their extreme states rights movement, learned of federal prosecution against the Hammonds of Oregon for arson on federal land, this provided the spark that led to the seizure of Malheur to demand the release of federal lands to individual states. Perhaps most disturbing in Rowley’s film, however, is the revelation that the FBI posed as a documentary film crew to interview Bundy and others to gain access and information – an ethically troubling tactic that will likely further foment distrust of the media.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, July 25:
JEREMIAH TOWER: THE LAST MAGNIFICENT

Director:
Lydia Tenaglia

Premiere:
Tribeca 2016

Select Festivals:
Hamptons, Mill Valley, Denver, Sedona

About:
A look at the life and career of one of the pioneers of New American Cuisine.

As recounted early in Tenaglia’s oddly compelling but uneven film, Jeremiah Tower was once one of the most influential figures in the culinary world – one of the first true celebrity chefs, whose collaboration with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse put modern American cuisine on the world map. After the closure of his own follow-up restaurant, Stars, however, Tower more or less vanished from the food scene. The early parts of Tenaglia’s profile make too much of this, featuring ponderous pronouncements and overstylized footage of Tower’s wandering around Mexico, before delving into his biography. Unfortunately, this is done with an overuse of re-enactments detailing the chef’s poor little rich boy upbringing – a largely solitary existence spent in the dining rooms of luxury cruises and hotels, ignored by his parents. The re-enactments sadly continue into his young adulthood, as Tower and old friends relate how he came to work at Chez Panisse and form a fruitful partnership with Waters, before the inevitable falling out that seems unresolved to this day. Tenaglia’s project gets a much needed jolt when it moves to the relative present day, in 2014, and it’s revealed that Tower will take over the kitchen of NYC’s Tavern on the Green. From here, Tower’s new post – a thankless one, in the eyes of the culinary elite – shifts the approach of the film to its benefit, chronicling the perfectionist’s attempts at a comeback for both the newly re-opened space and himself.