Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed this coming Tuesday, March 15: DIVIDE IN CONCORD
Kris Kaczor’s chronicle of a grandmother activist taking on wastefulness had its world premiere at Hot Docs in 2014. The doc went on to screen at Nantucket, DOC NYC, Martha’s Vineyard, Traverse City, Portland, Big Sky, Cleveland, and several environmental fests, among other events.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Coming to theatres today, Friday, March 11: BOOM BUST BOOM
Terry Jones, Bill Jones, and Ben Timlett’s crash course in world economics has been screening extensively in university and professional settings since last March.
MONTY PYTHON alumnus Terry Jones serves not only as one of this entertaining project’s directors, but also its cheeky host, a guide through economic history and human behavior that seeks to explain why we seem destined to repeat cycles of booms and busts when we really should know better. A surfeit of talking heads is invigorated through an expansive – or, perhaps for some viewers, excessive – use of animation, puppetry, graphics, and even a song or two. Rather than stick to the most recent financial crisis exclusively, the film demonstrates the importance of looking back in time to the various other instances where greed and arrogance led to devastating crashes, from Dutch tulip mania in 1627 to the stock market crash of 1929. The lessons learned from these historical episodes underscore a primary thesis – that economists, and the institutions that train them, have willfully turned a blind eye to history and to humanity’s tendency to irrational economic behavior, embracing a neoclassical model that has left them ill-prepared to recognize the impending dangers of the next bust until it happens once again.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
The 18th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival begins tomorrow, Friday, March 11, and will present approximately 140 new and recent nonfiction features by the time it ends on Sunday, March 20. The following overview offers some highlights in many of the thematic sections of the event: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 11: CITY OF GOLD
Laura Gabbert’s profile of a restaurant critic and his love for Los Angeles made its debut at Sundance last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, SXSW, Melbourne, Napa Valley, Vancouver, Traverse City, deadCENTER, Provincetown, Newport Beach, AFI Docs, New Zealand, and Montclair, among other fests.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
SXSW returns this Friday, March 11, with approximately 140 features screening as part of the event’s film program, running through Saturday, March 19. Among these are nearly 60 documentaries, a slight reduction from last year’s record 68, appearing throughout many of the festival’s sections, highlighted below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to theatres today, Wednesday, March 9: HERE COME THE VIDEOFREEX
Jenny Raskin and Jon Nealon’s history of video trailblazers premiered at Full Frame last year. It went on to screen at BAMcinemaFest, Woods Hole, FilmColumbia, DOK Leipzig, St Louis, Rotterdam, Big Sky, and Cinequest, among other events.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Following last week’s announcement of the bulk of this year’s programming, the Tribeca Film Festival today revealed the films in its Spotlight, Midnight, Special Events, Special Screenings, and Works In Progress sections, bringing the total of feature documentaries to be presented at this year’s festival to 48, plus two works-in-progress – making up approximately half of the festival’s total lineup. Nonfiction titles unveiled today are noted below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, March 8: THE MASK YOU LIVE IN
Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s exploration of the impact of gender stereotypes debuted at Sundance last year. Other fest appearances include Cinequest, Minneapolis-St Paul, Napa Valley, Las Vegas, St Johns International Women’s, and Berkshire.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to NYC’s JCC Manhattan CineMatters series tonight, Tuesday, March 8: LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER!
Gayle Kirschenbaum’s exploration of her fraught relationship with her mother debuted at Sarasota last year. Other screenings included DocAviv, Woods Hole, Rhode Island, Woodstock, Orlando, Mumbai, and Jewish fests in Toronto, Nashville, Atlanta, Palm Beach, Miami and Baton Rouge.
Kirschenbaum continues to mine the personal terrain that was the subject of her previous film, MY NOSE, a short that focused on her mother Mildred’s obsession with her daughter’s appearance. Expanding from this premise to take a wider look at their mother/daughter relationship, Kirschenbaum’s new film is, essentially, filmmaking as therapy, for all the good – and bad – that this entails. From Kirschenbaum’s standpoint, she has suffered from years of humiliation, criticism, and downright abuse from the hypercritical Mildred, while the mother points to her daughter’s lifelong defiance and inability to let go of minor things. While the filmmaker eventually convinces herself to look past her mother’s prickliness to consider what made her that way, this doesn’t ameliorate the awkwardness of the proceedings for the viewer. Focused on such a fundamental relationship as that between a child and a parent, audiences can certainly relate to some extent, but it’s like being invited to a friend’s home for dinner only to silently witness the evening erupt into a never-ending family fight, with no escape in sight.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tomorrow, Tuesday, March 8: NEWMAN
Jon Fox’s profile of a man who could have changed the world debuted at the Hamptons last Fall. Other fests have included DOC NYC, where it received a special jury mention, and Irvine.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In 1979, Joseph Newman, a self-educated inventor in the backwoods of Mississippi, claimed to develop a motor that defied the laws of physics. Mainstream news stations, and even an appearance on THE TONIGHT SHOW, spread the revolutionary potential of his magnetic perpetual motion machine, which could end our dependence on oil and gas. Instead, as detailed in Jon Fox’s stranger-than-fiction debut, the maverick faced a decades-long, and increasingly paranoid, battle against the US Patent Office and the scientific establishment.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
what (not) to doc 