Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tomorrow, Tuesday, February 23: HERE COME THE VIDEOFREEX

Jenny Raskin and Jon Nealon’s chronicle of a pioneering video collective had its debut at Full Frame last year. Screenings followed at BAMcinemaFest, Woods Hole, FilmColumbia, DOK Leipzig, St Louis, Rotterdam, and the upcoming Big Sky and Cinequest fests.

In 1969, the emergence of handheld video cameras promised a revolution in journalism, and the Videofreex heeded the call. As revealed in Raskin and Nealon’s affectionate history, the ragtag assemblage of young would-be reporters began shooting anything and everything, eventually coming to the attention of a young CBS News executive who saw their potential to capture the burgeoning counterculture movement. Outfitting them with an RV and financing, the Videofreex set out across the country to shoot interviews for a pilot, which included Abbie Hoffman in the midst of the Chicago 8 trial, Black Panther Fred Hampton just weeks before his murder, and Woodstock attendees. When the network got cold feet, the collective was forced to go it alone, setting up shop in Soho until financial considerations led to a relocation to upstate New York, where they created a pirate television station that covered decidedly less radical topics. With extensive footage thats equal parts entertaining and thought-provoking, this fascinating film gives these mavericks their long overdue moment in the sun.

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed series tomorrow, Tuesday, February 23: ADAMA

David Felix Sutcliffe’s look at the impact of a terrorism investigation on a teenager’s family made its debut on PBS’s WORLD Channel in 2011. It went on to screen at the LES Film Festival and the Apollo Theater’s WOW Festival.

Sutcliffe made his directorial debut with this project before teaming with acclaimed photojournalist Lyric R Cabral to make the Sundance award-winning (T)ERROR, which makes its broadcast debut tonight on PBS. In this mid-length, Sutcliffe profiles the titular Adama Bah, an African American Muslim teenage girl from Harlem who finds her life thrown in disarray after she is suspected of being an imminent security threat by the FBI at the age of sixteen. Held for six weeks, she is released with no charges filed against her, but during the investigation, the authorities uncover her father’s undocumented status as a Guinean immigrant and arrest him as well. Sutcliffe follows Adama after her release, while she is still monitored by the FBI with an ankle bracelet, and details the reasons for her arrest, stemming from an embrace of Islam and the adoption of the hijab in her teenage years. Demonstrating the devastating fallout of the dual arrests on the young woman and her family, the film remains a cautionary tale in a time of increasing xenophobia, religious intolerance, and fears of domestic terrorism.