Category Archives: Documentary

New to DVD this week: JUST ABOUT FAMOUS

Jason Kovacsev and Matt Mamula’s look at celebrity impersonators debuted at Cleveland in 2014. It also screened at Oxford, Knoxville, and Orlando.

An expansion of an earlier short by the same name, Kovacsev and Mamula’s film explores the world of professional celebrity impersonators, from presidential portrayers of Barack Obama, George W Bush, and Bill Clinton, to performers like Elvis, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. In addition to profiling several individuals trying to eke out a living based on often tenuous resemblances to others, the film follows them to the Sunburst Convention, an annual gathering in Florida where their “talents” are provided a spotlight, with the hopes of booking additional gigs. The filmmakers bring a generally light feel to the proceedings, and somewhat admirably refrain from highlighting the desperation that’s evident in some of the performers, but the result is an unfocused and unmemorable survey that never delves deep enough to make the viewer care too much about their subjects.

Coming to CMT tonight and also now available on DVD: CHICKEN PEOPLE

Nicole Lucas Haimes look at the world of competitive poultry breeders made its bow at SXSW earlier this year. Other fests have included AFI Docs, Nashville, Sidewalk, Seattle, Indie Memphis, and Atlantic.

Haimes’ film begins at the annual Ohio National, the premier poultry show in the world, where viewers are introduced to main characters Brian Knox, Shari McCollough, and Brian Caraker. While sequences peppered throughout briefly survey additional breeders, these three carry the bulk of the film and provide its emotional heft. Knox, a racing engineer, is a good-natured perfectionist who’s been unable to figure out romantic relationships; McCollough is a mother of five and recovering alcoholic; and Caraker is a Branson MO musical theatre performer who was bullied in school. They are each sympathetic figures, revealing just enough personal details to engage an audience who might otherwise not be riveted by the details of the poultry competition or of selective chicken breeding techniques. While the film seems also to want to trade on the quirky aspects of their avocation, it never quite pushes this to the extreme that it likely could, resulting in a likeable but not altogether unforgettable subcultural portrait.

New to DVD this week: TESLA

David Grubin’s history of the forward-thinking inventor had its premiere on American Experience last month.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, November 22: THE HOLLYWOOD SHORTIES

Ryan Steven Green’s chronicle of a the first little people basketball team debuted at SXSW earlier this year. Other fests have included Sidewalk, Chagrin Doc, Carmel, BendFilm, Hell’s Half Mile, and San Francisco DocFest.

The titular pioneering team was an outlet for little people in the acting community – long relegated to minor roles or hidden behind unusual costumes – to take center stage as entertainers and athletes. With roots in the 1950s, the Shorties grew in popularity over time, hitting their peak in the 1980s, appearing regularly in exhibition events that blended gameplay with clownish antics. These competing interests eventually led to their demise, as related here. Green has a family connection to the team, and brings a respectful and often engaging approach to telling their story, but errs in an excess of narration and irritating music.

Coming to the World Channel’s Doc World this Sunday, November 20: THE PRIZE OF THE POLE

Staffan Julén’s re-examination of the complicated relationship between an Arctic explorer and the Inuit people he lived among debuted at Odense Doc fest in 2006. Its festival circuit also included Hot Docs, Planete Doc Review, DocAviv, and CPH:DOX, among other events.

Julén’s film retells the story of Robert E Peary, who long claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole in 1909. Earlier in his career, in 1897, Peary was engaged by the American Museum of Natural History to set up an exhibit of Eskimo life, using, as was the custom of the period, an actual Inuit family as “living fossils.” The journey of the six Inuits he brought to NYC is re-traced in the present-day by Inuit hunter Hivshu, who shares his alternate name, Robert E Peary II – he is the great-grandson of the explorer, who sired children with an Inuit wife despite already having a family back in the US. Hivshu’s own exploration re-opens difficult truths about attitudes towards so-called “primitive” people among not only the general public but professionals in the museum world and in academia. While a bit clunky in its exposition, the film is a worthwhile project for its reminder of the legacy of colonialism on cultural anthropology and on the people it impacted.