Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19, sees the launch of the 38th edition of the popular Cleveland International Film Festival, a sprawling and increasingly popular regional cinema event that annually serves the cinephilic tastes of the Ohio city. Showcasing over 350 films from nearly 70 countries through Sunday, March 30, the festival’s lineup includes approximately 70 documentary features, appearing in several sidebars and as part of a variety of competition programs. Highlights from the latter are singled out below: Continue reading
Category Archives: Documentary
Cleveland 2014: Documentary Overview
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
New Directors/New Films 2014: Documentary Overview
The 43rd annual edition of the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films launches tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19, and continues through Sunday, March 30. The Spring cousin of the venerable New York Film Festival, ND/NF is a more tightly curated affair, presenting just under 30 feature length films from innovative and emerging filmmakers. Among these are just six recent works of nonfiction or hybrid nonfiction:
Three of these include recent standouts from Sundance which I’ve previously profiled: Talal Derki’s immersive Syrian civil war chronicle, RETURN TO HOMS, which previously opened IDFA; Hubert Sauper’s South Sudanese neocolonial expedition, WE COME AS FRIENDS (pictured); and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s hybrid essay on musician Nick Cave, 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH, winner of two awards in Park City this January.
I’ve also previously written about another hybrid offering, Roberto Minervini’s slow-burning would-be rural romance, STOP THE POUNDING HEART. Other selections include Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s experimental hybrid, A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS; and Jessica Oreck’s THE VANQUISHING OF THE WITCH BABA YAGA (pictured), which blends fairy tale animation and documentary storytelling in a parable of life in Eastern Europe.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Indiewire @ Hulu Docs: Rockstar Edition
SXSW may be over, but there are plenty of rockstar dreams to last the whole year long. My latest curated selections for Hulu’s Documentaries page, focuses on musicians and their aspirations of stardom. Watch these docs now for free!
For more information about the selections, see my Indiewire article.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Indiewire @ Hulu Docs
In Theatres: THE MISSING PICTURE
Coming to theatres this Wednesday, March 19: THE MISSING PICTURE
Rithy Panh’s memoir of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s regime debuted at Cannes last year, winning the Un Certain Regard. It went on to screen at Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Cleveland, Seattle, Jerusalem, and Göteborg, among several others, and was also Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
I previously wrote about the film out of Toronto here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
On Cable: PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK
Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, March 17: PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KATRINA GILBERT
Shari Cookson and Nick Doob’s portrait of a struggling single working mother had a sneak preview at Big Sky last month before making its official debut on HBO.
A collaboration with Maria Shriver’s The Shriver Report, Cookson and Doob’s film aims to draw attention to the plight of the nation’s 42 million women who live in poverty. Rather than conducting a survey of several subjects, the filmmakers have wisely focused in on one compelling figure, Katrina Gilbert, a 30-year-old mother of three and sole breadwinner in her family. Separated from her husband, who moves back to Tennessee during the course of the film to be closer to their children and to find a job, Gilbert works as a nursing assistant at an extended-care facility for $9.49 an hour. Hard working, but barely scraping by, having to go without costly prescriptions in order to take care of more basic necessities for her young children, Gilbert still dreams of bettering her situation through education. Reminiscent in some ways to the recent KIND HEARTED WOMAN, Cookson and Doob’s film is a sympathetic and illuminating portrait of an often under-represented, if not actively misrepresented, segment of America’s working poor.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2014 Overview
The 16th edition of Greece’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival began this past Friday, so I’m a bit late in posting this “preview.” I’ll once again be attending the tail end of the event, which will run through this coming Sunday, March 23, unspooling more than 140 new documentary features, with shorts and retrospective programming adding to that tally, including a tribute to the recently departed Peter Wintonick. What follows is a breakdown, section-by-section, of new and recent films in the lineup that have caught my attention, omitting titles that I’ve covered previously elsewhere. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
On VOD: SOAP LIFE
Now available on VOD: SOAP LIFE
Sako Brockmann’s look at the changing landscape of daytime drama has screened at events like the SoHo and Orlando film festivals. FilmBuff has just made the doc available on iTunes, Amazon Instant, CinemaNow, Vudu, XBOX, Google Play, and PlayStation.
Brockmann’s film unabashedly celebrates the much-derided genre of the soap opera, a once popular staple of daytime programming that has all but vanished in recent decades. Taking a survey approach which best suits the project for the small screen, appropriately enough, Brockmann interviews past and present soap stars and other creatives, and, most importantly, their die-hard fans, who still support the beloved programs that they in some cases have watched for decades by attending fan appreciation events. In contrast to this vibrant but small fanbase, however, the genre’s shifting popularity is sketched out in an engaging history lesson that lays out its rise and fall, even as the doc notes the qualities that were able, for a time, to hook audiences until the changes wrought by shifting viewing and working habits, among other factors.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
On VOD: THE DEFECTOR
Coming to VOD tomorrow, Friday, March 14: THE DEFECTOR: ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA
Ann Shin’s chronicle of several North Koreans’ harrowing journey to freedom debuted at IDFA in 2012. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, Thessaloniki Doc, Sheffield, Al Jazeera Doc, Documentary Edge, IFF Boston, Sebastopol Doc, and One World, among others. Syndicado now makes the film available on iTunes, Vubiquity, Amazon, xBox, and Vudu in the US, as well as iTunes in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
I included the doc in my IDFA coverage here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
In Theatres: EXPOSED
Coming to NYC’s IFC Center this Friday, March 14: EXPOSED
Beth B’s exploration of modern burlesque had its world premiere at Berlin last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, DOK.fest Munich, Planete + Doc, Transylvania, Sydney, Moscow, Revelation, Melbourne, and Pornfilmfest Berlin, among others.
I previously described the film in the DOC NYC program, saying:
The World Famous *BOB*, Dirty Martini, Tigger!, Mat Fraser, Julie Atlas Muz, Bunny Love, Bambi the Mermaid, James Habacker and Rose Wood use satire and their own bodies to send up conventional notions of body image, gender, and sexuality in their modern burlesque performances. New York underground filmmaking legend Beth B enters their subversive world, both on stage and behind-the-scenes, in this entertainingly provocative portrait of NYC artists gleefully breaking taboos as they entertain.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
In Theatres: TEENAGE
Coming to theatres this Friday, March 14: TEENAGE
Matt Wolf’s meditation on the emergence of the teenager debuted at Tribeca last year. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, AFI Docs, Melbourne, Traverse City, Sidewalk, BFI London, DMZ Docs, Hot Springs, CPH:DOX, Denver, Portland, and Big Sky, among others.
I included the doc in my Tribeca coverage here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
