Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, June 6:
POLITICAL ANIMALS

Director:
Jonah Markowitz

Co-Director:
Tracy Wares

Premiere:
Los Angeles 2016

Select Festivals:
Athena, Napa Valley, Flyway, Vermont, Provincetown, NewFest, LGBT fests in Atlanta, Rochester, Sacramento, Milwaukee, Santa Barbara, Madrid, Uganda, Sydney, Amsterdam, London

About:
A profile of elected California legislators, all lesbians, who helped pave the way for LGBT rights.

Markowitz and Wares turn the spotlight on four pioneering California politicians who served in the CA Assembly, two starting in the mid-1990s, as out lesbian women. While known within the state, they remain unheralded on the larger national stage, but put forth legislation that helped end discrimination and set up an environment more conducive to marriage equality and other LGBT rights. At the center of the portrait is Sheila Kuehl, a former actress turned political firebrand, whose long struggle to pass a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in schools takes up a disproportionate portion of the film. Fellow politicians Carole Migden, Jackie Goldberg, and Christine Kehoe eventually get their own chance to shine, building on earlier victories to push for domestic partnerships and greater protections under the law. While talking heads dominate, the film wisely energizes its otherwise conventional presentation by employing judiciously chosen footage from Assembly debate, demonstrating the quartet’s sensibility and candor even when faced with backward-thinking and at times baldly homophobic rhetoric from opponents.

Coming to VOD via Hulu tomorrow, Saturday, June 3:
DUMB: THE STORY OF BIG BROTHER MAGAZINE

Director:
Patrick O’Dell

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

About:
A love letter to the controversial, crass skateboarding magazine which served as a precursor to MTV’s JACKASS.

Emerging at a time when skateboarding seemed to be at its nadir, Big Brother went for broke, cultivating a young audience with creative design, outrageous humor, taboo content, and a diversity of topics of interest to their target subculture rather than an exclusive focus on skateboarding. Running afoul of community standards due to obscene material in a publication marketed towards children, the mag was eventually purchased by Larry Flynt, but even the notorious publisher couldn’t keep it afloat forever. O’Dell, though a skateboarding insider, tells the magazine’s tale so that it’s equally accessible to outsiders – though numerous scenes of scatological would-be humor will likely test most viewers’ limits. Leaving that aside, the film offers a curious, if uncritical, appreciation of the writing and editorial staff’s rebellious creativity, and also serves as a backdoor history of JACKASS, featuring interviews with Johnny Knoxville and a number of other contributors who crossed over into mainstream success when they adapted the publication’s brash approach for television.