Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to theatres this Friday, January 20:
THEY CALL US MONSTERS

Director:
Ben Lear

Premiere:
Los Angeles Film Festival 2016

Select Festivals:
AFI Docs, Austin, Human Rights Watch, Hot Springs Doc, Antenna Doc, Heartland,

About:
A consideration of juvenile offenders who are tried as adults.

Set within the Compound, a high-security sub-jail within California’s Sylmar Juvenile Prison, Lear’s film focuses on a few inmate participants in a screenwriting workshop program run by Gabriel Cowan. As the three teens collaborate on a script that Cowan will eventually produce, they reveal the disturbing, violent crimes they’ve committed. Meanwhile the California legislature struggles with passing a bill that would decrease tough sentencing for juvenile offenders, citing studies that have shown that the latter don’t fully consider or process the consequences of their actions, and should neither be held to the same standards as adults nor irredeemably condemned for criminal actions. At the same time, their crimes have victims, and these too are heard from here, underscoring the complexity of the issue. While Lear struggles to keep focus on the screenwriting workshop, a conceit which seems to have more importance in the film’s first half then largely fades away, hen excels in capturing his subjects’ personalities, moments which remind the audience of just how young, and, in some ways, still innocent, these troubled boys are.

Coming to theatres this Wednesday, January 18:
STRIKE A POSE

Directors:
Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan

Premiere:
Berlin 2016

Select Festivals:
Tribeca, Hot Docs, Sheffield, DocAviv, BAFICI, Chicago, Biografilm, Jeonju, Krakow, Sydney, Bogota, Helsinki, Rio, Hot Springs Doc, In-Edit, Provincetown, Outfest, Frameline, NewFest, Inside Out, LGBT fests in Austin, Vancouver, Honolulu, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Montreal

About:
Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour dancers revisit their brush with fame, 25 years later.

In 1990, Madonna made headlines with a tour that provocatively combined candid sexuality, queerness, and religious imagery in support of her LIKE A PRAYER album. For those not able to see the show live, the performer indulged their curiosity with Alek Keshishian’s tour doc MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE, the following year, grabbing more headlines with controversial scenes of the singer fellating a water bottle and two of her male dancers kissing – the latter becoming a point of contention in a lawsuit later filed by three of the dancers, just one of the many topics covered in Gould and Zwaan’s project. The filmmakers re-assemble the six surviving male members of the multicultural, mostly gay, troupe – one passed from AIDS complications long ago – to reflect on their participation in the tour and what it accomplished for gay visibility, their ambivalent experiences of celebrity (or being adjacent to celebrity), and its fleetingness and aftermath. The filmmakers struggle a bit in balancing out so many subjects, running into some repetition between their individual interviews and the group’s eventual reunion, but nevertheless proves compelling in its quiet, bitttersweet exploration of the long-lasting impact of their mutual – but background – involvement with fame – in some ways calling to mind 20 FEET FROM STARDOM.

Coming to theatres this Friday, January 20:
STARLESS DREAMS

Director:
Mehrdad Oskouei

Premiere:
Berlin 2016

Select Festivals:
True/False, Full Frame, Hot Docs, Human Rights Watch, Camden, Hot Springs Doc, London, Chicago, Antenna Doc, RIDM

About:
A look at the lives of teenage Iranian girls consigned to a juvenile delinquency center.

Having already profiled young men serving time in a similar facility in a previous films, Oskouei sought access to the experiences of young women, incarcerated for a range of offenses, from robbery and drugs to murder. Finally permitted to film, the filmmaker directly interviews the inmates, his voice heard off-camera, serving as a gentle confessor and allowing them to tell their stories – something that it seems it’s unlikely they’ve been permitted the opportunity to do before. Growing up in poverty, subject to all manner of abuse from family, his subjects in many ways find a refuge and an alternate family, even in this prison environment. Through this simple but impactful film, Oskouei crafts a poignant, empathetic portrait of marginalization.

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17:
SILICON COWBOYS

Director:
Jason Cohen

Premiere:
SXSW 2016

Select Festivals:
Nantucket, Montclair, SF Doc, Sidewalk

About:
A David vs Goliath story about the early days of personal computing.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17:
ZERO DAYS

Director:
Alex Gibney

Premiere:
Berlin 2016

Festivals:
Nantucket, AFI Docs, Sydney, Edinburgh, Biografilm, Jerusalem, New Zealand

Notable Recognition:
The doc has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

About:
A documentary thriller exploring the dangerous reality of cyberwarfare.

I previously wrote about the doc here.