Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to theatres today, Friday, October 16: ALL THINGS MUST PASS

Colin Hanks’ tribute to Tower Records had its world premiere at SXSW this Spring. It went on to screen at Seattle, AFI Docs, Sacramento, and Greenwich, among other events.

Opening by revealing that the retail giant made over a billion dollars just five years before it filed for bankruptcy, Hanks sets the stage for a rise and fall trajectory that will be of no surprise to anyone old enough to fondly remember a time when you couldn’t buy (or otherwise “find”) new music online. While the film indulges in a largely anecdote-driven history, delivered by Tower Records founder Russ Solomon and a large circle of past store clerks-turned-management, the history revealed here does double duty as that of the larger music industry and its shortsightedness in response to Napster and the digital music revolution. Focusing on the growth, mistakes, and eventual demise of Tower, and, significantly, the group of eccentrics that called the company home for nearly forty years, Hanks humanizes the faceless, corporate industry, and instead offers an intimate, and often quite poignant, reflection of a vastly different, if only relatively recently departed, era.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, October 16: TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL

Jeffrey Schwarz’s exploration of the secret life of a Hollywood heartthrob made its debut at SXSW this Spring. Its extensive fest run has also included Cleveland, Sarasota, Seattle, Maryland, Provincetown, Revelation, and LGBT fests in London, Miami, Boston, San Diego, Toronto, Portland, Torino, San Francisco, Honolulu, Denver, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Dublin, Atlanta, Montreal, and Sydney, among many others.

Tab Hunter – born Arthur Gelien – was the all-American boy next door, a handsome blond, blue-eyed young man who found success in Hollywood in the 1950s. As revealed in his 2006 autobiography, upon which Schwarz’s entertaining portrait is based, he was also gay, but the Warner Bros studio machine worked overtime to bury any rumors as they marketed him to the emerging teen audience, making him the subject of countless fan magazine articles and grooming a pop singing sideline career. As he tried to balance clandestine relationships with the likes of Anthony Perkins with the demands of the film industry, Hunter grew restless with the generic roles the studio offered. He eventually decided to strike out on his own, but was unable to shake off his highly-polished image, and his acting career lay mostly dormant until John Waters cast him in POLYESTER. Schwarz benefits greatly from Hunter’s full participation here, demonstrating a genuine affability rather than any rancor over lost opportunities or faded dreams. His sexuality remains primarily a private matter rather than a political cause, but he seems perfectly content with his life now, partnered with film producer Allan Glaser, and out of the limelight.

Coming to theatres and to VOD today, Wednesday, October 14: A BALLERINA’S TALE

Nelson George’s portrait of a groundbreaking dancer made its bow at Tribeca this Spring. It has since screened at Rio, Milwaukee, Urbanworld, Bentonville, Vancouver, and the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, among other events.

In its 75-year history, the American Ballet Theatre had never had an African-American female principal dancer – until Misty Copeland. George follows Copeland as she reckons with the physical stresses placed on dancer’s bodies, sustaining a potentially career-ending injury during her landmark turn in THE FIREBIRD that left her unable to dance for seven months. As the film reveals, she defied predictions and returned to ABT to continue to dance, but, just as importantly, her success in breaking substantial racial barriers catapulted Copeland into the public eye. This larger cultural context is more the point of George’s film rather than offering a straightforward biography of a talented dancer, noting, for example, that her turn as Firebird drew a substantial African-American audience to the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time in recent memory. While the film could have gone into Copeland’s family issues, or expanded on the very briefly mentioned eating disorder episode early in her time at ABT, what resonates more is how she came to be mentored into her larger role by other pioneering African American women, stepping outside of the personal and into her broader significance within the art form itself. Similarly, George’s film is noteworthy more for its subject and her impact than for any bravura filmmaking on display.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, October 13: NO CONTROL

Jessica Solce’s topical look at gun control debuted at DOC NYC last year. It has also screened at the Denver Film Society. The doc now comes to VOD, including iTunes, via The Orchard.

I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
A provocative exploration of the contentious issue of gun control, Jessica Solce’s film profiles two men at opposite ends of the debate: The outspoken Cody Wilson, a radical libertarian anarchist who made headlines by designing “the Liberator,” the first open-source 3D-printable gun; and artist Greg Bokor, who develops an interactive installation consisting of an immense pencil drawing of an AR-15 assault rifle, incomplete until it’s erased by spectators with erasers handstamped with the names of shooting victims.