Coming to JCC Manhattan CineMatters series tomorrow, Tuesday, April 12: THE ARMOR OF LIGHT
Abigail Disney’s look at the intersection of pro-life and gun rights beliefs made its world premiere at Tribeca last year. The doc went on to screen at Traverse City, AFI Docs, Hamptons, Galway, Montclair, Milwaukee, St Louis, Heartland, Oxford, and SF Jewish fests, among other events.
I previously wrote about the film here.
Filed under Documentary, Film
Coming to theatres and to VOD today, Friday, April 8: HAVANA MOTOR CLUB
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt’s look at an underground car race in Cuba debuted at Tribeca last year. Screenings followed at New Orleans, Mill Valley, Milwaukee, Heartland, and Havana, among other events. In addition to a limited theatrical release, the doc also comes to iTunes.
Although the Cuban government long ago outlawed car racing as a dangerous and elitist activity, a scrappy group of enthusiasts have slyly defied official bans, holding underground drag races with their refitted vintage 1950s vehicles, a very visible, anachronistic reminder of the long-held sanctions that were still in place when Perlmutt began this project. The director identifies several subjects – perhaps one or two too many to allow for deeper individuation – who are hopeful about the possibility of participating in the first state-sanctioned race since 1959. When a Papal visit forces the race to be suspended for safety reasons, these men once again find their dreams stuck in limbo. Beyond its specific appeal to those already enamored with car culture, Perlmutt’s film offers broader audiences a unique look at Cuba and its relationship with the outside world, particularly its complicated connection to the US, through the dreams of its hopeful racers as they try to legitimize a beloved, long-illicit, activity.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 8: BE HERE NOW: THE ANDY WHITFIELD STORY
Lilibet Foster’s chronicle of the SPARTACUS star’s cancer fight made its bow at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year, where it claimed the documentary audience award. Other screenings have included Hot Springs Doc, Santa Barbara, and Documentary Edge, among other events.
When Andy Whitfield was cast as the lead in the Starz television series SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND, the handsome Welsh engineer turned actor had finally achieved a career dream. Although the critically acclaimed show was renewed, the production was delayed when Whitfield was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. With his supportive wife, Vashti, and their two young children at his side, the amiable actor was determined to recover, and invited Foster, an Academy Award-nominated documentarian, to chronicle the process, hoping it could help other families facing the same diagnosis. While her film can’t escape all of the conventions of disease-focused documentaries, Foster provides an intimate, sympathetic, and surprisingly personable view of the Wakefields as they try to hold on to their positivity while seeking treatments both traditional and alternative. If the somewhat overlong film perhaps indulges in Whitfield’s celebrity a bit too much – in particular the embrace by his fandom of the titular family motto, which crops up here as a popular tattoo adopted in support or, later, in memory of the actor – it nevertheless succeeds in conveying a clear sense of a loving couple, and family, not willing to succumb to fear or anger when faced with mortality.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to HBO tomorrow, Saturday, April 9: NOTHING LEFT UNSAID: GLORIA VANDERBILT & ANDERSON COOPER
Liz Garbus’ profile of a famed socialite, via her equally famous journalist son, had its world premiere at Sundance at the beginning of the year. Additional berths have included the Miami and Martha’s Vineyard fests as well as part of year-round special programming at Newport and Nantucket.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 8: LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER!
Gayle Kirschenbaum’s personal reckoning with mother/daughter relationships premiered at Sarasota last year. It has gone on to screen at DocAviv, Woods Hole, Rhode Island, Woodstock, Orlando, Mumbai, and Jewish fests in Toronto, Nashville, Atlanta, Palm Beach, Miami and Baton Rouge.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s nonfiction and hybrid showcase, Art of the Real returns for the third year starting tomorrow, Friday, April 8 and runs through Thursday, April 21. In addition to presenting twenty new features, this year’s series offers two programs of short films as well as a five-program retrospective of the work of experimental filmmaker Bruce Baillie. Two films open Art of the Real – the world premiere of Ben Rivers’ WHAT MEANS SOMETHING (pictured), a quiet portrait of artist Rose Wylie; and Roberto Minervini’s THE OTHER SIDE, a look at outsiders’ lives in the Louisiana bayou – while Jumana Manna’s ethnomusicological portrait of Palestine, A MAGICAL SUBSTANCE FLOWS INTO ME, brings the series to a close.
Additional programming includes the US premiere of José Luis Guerín’s ACADEMY OF THE MUSES, a romantic comedy crossed with a philosophical meditation on love and art, partly based on reality; Federico Lodoli and Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli’s FRAGMENT 53, an exploration of extremism through the confessions of perpetrators in Liberia’s civil war; Andrea Bussmann and Nicolás Pereda’s TALES OF TWO WHO DREAMT, in which a real Roma family seeking asylum in Canada inspires self-mythologizing stories; and Thom Andersen’s THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD (pictured), a Deleuzian jaunt through film history.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Tomorrow, Friday, April 8, sees the launch of The Maysles & Co, a near-comprehensive series at NYC’s Film Forum celebrating the work of the acclaimed Albert and David Maysles and their team of collaborators. Spanning twenty-five features and more than a dozen shorts, the series, which runs through Thursday, April 21, offers audiences the chance to see not only acclaimed classics like GREY GARDENS (1976) and SALESMAN (1969), but more recent work, including IRIS (2014), and especially rarely screened Out-takes, Commercials, Rarities and Portraits & Early Work (1955-1966), among several other highlights.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Overviews, Recommendations
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro will host the 21st edition of Brazil’s It’s All True International Documentary Film Festival, which opens tomorrow, Thursday, April 7 in the former with Berlin winner FIRE AT SEA, Gianfranco Rosi’s meditation on the refugee crisis; and in the latter on Saturday, April 9 with THE AMAZING ARTRICKS OF THE GYPSY CLOUD, Paola Vieira and Claudio Lobato’s profile of a 1970s Rio art collective. Before the festival wraps on Sunday, April 17, the event will present over forty new and recent feature docs, as well as shorts and retrospective programming. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s JCC Manhattan CineMatters series tonight, Wednesday, April 6: EVA HESSE
Marcie Begleiter’s portrait of the pioneering postwar artist made its debut, fittingly enough, at the Whitney Museum of American Art last May. Other screenings have included Denver’s Women + Film series, the Washington Jewish Film Festival, and the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Though her career was cut short by a brain tumor that claimed her life at the age of 34 after little more than a decade, Eva Hesse is now recognized as one of the most significant artists to emerge in the postwar period, and amongst the earliest post-minimalists. Transitioning from the rigid structure demanded of minimalism, Hesse’s inventive, difficult to classify work broke the frame, combining painting with sculpture, while also evoking traditionally gendered processes like weaving and threading to create something altogether unique which flipped dismissive conceptions of “women’s work” on their head. Begleiter draws extensively from the artist’s personal journals and correspondence with, among others, mentor and confidante Sol LeWitt, to imbue the film with Hesse’s voice, while her contemporaries, including Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Dan Graham, and Richard Serra, reflect on her life and work through interviews, revealing, at the same time, a palpable sense of the male-dominated 1960s New York art scene and its uncharacteristic embrace of female artists like Hesse.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, April 5: MEET THE HITLERS
Matt Ogens’ exploration of the impact of an infamous name made its world premiere at New Orleans in 2014. Fest screenings followed at Big Sky, Cleveland, Cinequest, Manchester, Rhode Island, and Boston Jewish, among other events.
What’s in a name? Ogens’ film offers a meditation on this question through the examples of disprate people who (mostly) share the Führer’s surname, or a slight variation. While Adolf Hitler’s direct relatives changed their name and swore to never have offspring, Hitler, or Hittler, has lived on in other family trees, causing some shame, others inexplicable pride, and a few no discernible impression at all. In the latter category is teenager Emily, who adds little to the project in her numerous scenes. Also unnecessarily included is artist Jim Roswold, who doesn’t even fit the project’s stated brief, and has been included on the very tenuous ground that his artwork mocks Hitler to take away his power. That said, while the film, like most surveys, could have benefited from fewer profiles, other subjects presented here offer more poignancy, or at least space to consider their reasons for keeping a surname despite its forever-tarnished associations, from a white supremacist who is thwarted in naming his son after Adolph to a British journalist attempting to track down Hitler’s last confirmed living descendant.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
