Category Archives: Overviews

Sheffield Doc/Fest celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, opening next Wednesday, June 12, and running through Sunday, June 16. While I’ve never been able to make it out to the event, I’ve always looked forward to seeing their lineup and have been envious of the stories I’ve heard from attendees of the well-loved fest. As usual, I’ll highlight a number of this year’s offerings below, going by programming strand, and focusing more on newer titles than on those that I’ve already covered at other fests. Continue reading →

Encounters: South African International Documentary Festival kicks off its 15th anniversary edition tonight, Thursday, June 6. The festival runs through Sunday, June 16, with screenings in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Nearly thirty feature docs will screen, starting with local opening night film, Riaan Hendricks’ THE DEVIL’S LAIR, fresh off its Hot Docs debut last month. Continue reading →

After several years of regular monthly screenings, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s environmental documentary series Green Screens gets the fest treatment for a six-day program beginning tomorrow, Friday, May 31 and running through Wednesday, June 5.

Among the thirteen doc features in the program are a few films I’ve previously written about, including Sundance title BLACKFISH (pictured), on the dangers of keeping killer whales in captivity; Hot Docs 2012 special jury prize winner PEACE OUT, on large scale energy projects in Canada’s Peace River region; and SXSW alum XMAS WITHOUT CHINA, on America’s dependence on Chinese industry, including fears about toxic products entering the marketplace.

Among the remaining are a few titles that are familiar from elsewhere on the festival circuit, and some others that are less so, including Hannes Lang’s PEAK, about the artificial means needed to maintain enough snowfall in the Alps for tourism in the face of climate change; Scott Elliott’s INTO THE GYRE, an exploration of plastic pollution in the Atlantic marine ecosystem; Jan Van Den Berg and Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann’s SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD (pictured), tracing the surprising spread of pesticides into the Arctic; Bettina Borgfeld and David Bernet’s RAISING RESISTANCE, a look at small Paraguayan farmers struggling to maintain their land and crops in the face of larger chemically treated neighboring farms; and Edward Brown’s UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS, a consideration of the stark increase in humans’ exposure to chemicals and their impact on our bodies.

The Brooklyn Film Festival returns for its sixteenth edition beginning this Friday, May 31. Running through Sunday, June 9, this year’s fest, led by the theme word “Magnetic,” presents 100 films from 24 countries, including nineteen docs, eight of which are features. Notably, given the organizers connection to festival venue indieScreen, prizes include one-week theatrical releases for the winners of best nonfiction and best fiction feature at the Brooklyn single-screen cinema.

Among the doc contenders are three I’ve previously written about: Inigo Westmeier’s DRAGON GIRLS, about Chinese teenage Kung Fu students; Amy Finkel’s FUREVER, on how people deal with the loss of their animal companions; and Dan Hunt’s MR ANGEL (pictured), a portrait of FTM trans porn star turned activist Buck Angel.

Remaining feature docs include: Belisario Franca’s ETERNAL AMAZON, an examination of if and how the Amazon rainforest can be used sustainably; Sarah Friedland’s THE RINK (pictured), about a Newark roller rink and the different people who use it; Cary McClelland’s WITHOUT SHEPHERDS, a multi-character perspective on modern-day Pakistan; Anne Thoma’s MILES & WAR, a portrait of independent peace mediators in conflict zones; and Barbara Miller’s FORBIDDEN VOICES, profiles of three female bloggers fighting censorship in Cuba, Iran, and China.

The 39th edition of the Seattle International Film Festival began this past Thursday, May 16 and runs through Sunday, June 9, making it among the longest and biggest film festivals in the world. With a huge lineup which mixes a number of world and North American premieres with standouts from films that have recently debuted at other major fests like Toronto, Berlin, Sundance, and SXSW, the event has plenty to offer Seattle cinephiles. This includes a robust nonfiction component, with nearly 70 documentary features as part of its 200 strong feature program, including its high profile Centerpiece gala slot, Sundance alum TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM. This year, I’ve been serving as a documentary programming consultant to the festival, so I’ll be attending for about a week at the end of the month. Highlighted below are a number of new docs to check out from the different sections of the festival: Continue reading →

The 66th edition of the Festival de Cannes begins this Wednesday, May 15, and runs through Sunday, May 26. Independently organized side events, Directors’ Fortnight and International Critics’ Week, begin Thursday and end on Sunday and Friday, respectively. Frankly speaking, Cannes doesn’t embrace nonfiction. Out of the nearly hundred feature films presented this year, only twelve are docs, and, of those, three are retrospective works. Defenders crow about the organizers’ discerning eyes, but I refuse to believe that there are fewer than a dozen new documentaries out there that are strong and worthy of the platform that these events could provide. At the same time, doc makers know that Cannes isn’t really a place that regularly champions nonfiction the way it does fiction, so perhaps they keep the cycle going by not bothering to submit. That said, here’s a brief overview of the ones that will be screened this month:

Four are part of Cannes’ Official Selection. None are part of the Competition, but one is in Un Certain Regard: Rithy Panh’s meditation on the Khmer Rouge, L’IMAGE MANQUANTE (THE MISSING PICTURE). Another is Out of Competition: Documentary master Claude Lanzmann’s LE DERNIER DES INJUSTES (THE LAST OF THE UNJUST) (pictured), a revisitation of the director’s 1975 interviews with the last President of the Jewish Council of Elders in Czechoslovakia’s Theresienstadt ghetto, and a return to the Theresienstadt in 2012 to explore its past. The final two docs are part of the Special Screenings: James Toback’s SEDUCED AND ABANDONED, a meta-doc about veteran filmmakers and actors attending last year’s Cannes and seeking support for their next projects; and Frank Simon’s rarely-seen film from 1971, WEEKEND OF A CHAMPION, in which the film’s producer, Roman Polanski, spends a weekend with Formula 1 racing champion Jackie Stewart – who have an onscreen reunion for a forty-year-later postscript.

Another five titles are part of Cannes’ special Cannes Classics selections. Three are in the utilitarian named “Documentaries” sidebar: Diego Galán’s CON LA PATA QUEBRADA (pictured), on nine decades of women in Spanish cinema; Mark Cousins’ A STORY OF CHILDREN & FILM, an essay film about the interplay of childhood and cinema; and Treva Wurmfeld’s SHEPARD & DARK, which premiered at Toronto last year, but which was produced by Joanne Woodward, subject of this year’s festival poster. Of the fest’s twenty “Restored Prints,” two are docs: Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme’s 1963 LE JOLI MAI (THE LOVELY MONTH OF MAY), which consists of interviews with Parisians just after the end of the Algerian War; and Youri Ozerov, Milos Forman, Mai Zetterling, Claude Lelouch, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, and Kon Ichikawa’s 1973 VISIONS OF EIGHT, an omnibus portrait of the 1972 Munich Olympics, which went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Documentary in 1974.

There are only three films in the parallel events – all in Directors’ Fortnight, none in International Critics’ Week. Frank Pavich’s JODOROWSKY’S DUNE (pictured), a look at the doomed 1974 adaptation of the scifi novel by the renowned Chilean/French director; Marcel Ophuls’ UN VOYAGEUR (AIN’T MISBEHAVIN), the reflections of the director on cinema and his collaborators; and Kaveh Bakhtiari’s L’ESCALE, a personal exploration of the experiences of a group of undocumented Iranians in Athens.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Planete + Doc Film Festival opens this Friday, May 10 in Warsaw, expanding to Wroclaw on Sunday, May 12, and continuing in both cities through Sunday, May 19. One of Poland’s signature cinema events, the festival screens over 100 feature docs, in addition to shorts, panels, masterclasses, music events, and family programming. Ten competitions totaling over 20,000 Euros will be presented, along with awards with names like Chopin’s Nose (music docs), Green Cross (ecology docs), and Magic Hour (mid-lengths) in addition to audience awards and the like. Programming is organized around fifteen thematic sections, which include three retro series on the films of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Canada’s Peter Mettler, and Russia’s Sergei Loznitsa. Here are some of my picks of new or unfamiliar films from the remaining twelve sections: Continue reading →

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 8 sees the launch of the 28th edition of DOK.fest Munich, the second largest doc event in Germany. Running through Wednesday, May 15, the festival includes over a hundred titles, many vying for the more than 35,000 Euros in cash and in-kind prizes, ranging for jury awards for best international, German language, and emerging country films to best Bavarian, student, and music docs. The programming reflects a balance between higher-profile selections that have emerged elsewhere on the festival circuit to a healthy assortment of new or more obscure titles, including an intriguing mix of local productions, as well as a retrospective of Werner Herzog’s work. While I’m not attending, the following section overview represents some of the feature docs I’d check out: Continue reading →

Beginning this Wednesday, May 8, and running through the rest of the month, MoMA presents Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions, a retrospective series of nonfiction and nonfiction-inspired film from China. The work reflects changes to the nation’s documentary aesthetics over the past quarter century, which has come hand-in-hand with rapid modernization in the wake of China’s remarkable economic transition. Series curators Sally Berger and Kevin B Lee have assembled examples from as far back as 1988, pre-Tiananmen Square, to brand new work, spanning state-sanctioned productions to underground, independent work – the majority largely unseen by Western audiences outside of some limited festival exposure. In addition to panels, more than two dozen films make up the series, including several fiction films employing documentary strategies as well as hybrid projects. The following highlights a number of the notable documentary selections: Continue reading →

Vancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival begins this Friday, May 3, and runs through Sunday, May 12. The 12th annual festival presents more than sixty documentary features, in addition to shorts, panels, and special events. Intended to explore the elasticity of nonfiction, the fest aims to expose local audiences to innovative Canadian and international docs. DOXA opens with Canadian doc OCCUPY THE MOVIE, Corey Ogilvie’s overview of the history of the popular movement, which began in Vancouver; presents a “midweek special” centerpiece screening of Ben Lewis’ Sundance-premiering GOOGLE AND THE WORLD BRAIN; and closes with Ryan White’s SXSW alum GOOD OL’ FREDA. Selections from the rest of the lineup follow: Continue reading →