Category Archives: Film

Coming to theatres this Friday, November 20: DRONE

Tonje Hessen Schei’s look at modern unmanned warfare debuted on European television in April 2014. The feature version has screened extensively at festivals, including IDFA, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, Bergen, Sheffield, True/False, DOXA, Doc Aviv, Docs Against Gravity, Zurich, and It’s All True, among others.

Exploring the use of the titular remote-controlled armed aircraft, Tonje Hessen Schei offers multiple viewpoints on the controversial topic in an intelligently-crafted film. Despite claims of the surgical precision of drone strikes, the film explores their physical and psychological impact on the Pakistani community of Wajiristan, subject to seemingly endless drone warfare. The other side of the combat, from the safety of American control rooms half a world away, is represented by subjects like Brandon Bryant, a former drone pilot who has experienced a crisis of conscience together with PTSD from his experiences, and now speaks out for restrictions on drone usage. So does Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, who describes drone employment more as murder than as warfare, and notes the impossibility of winning a war when each drone strike creates more potential terrorists than it kills.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Wednesday, November 18: DEMOCRATS

Camilla Nielsson’s chronicle of odd-couple politics made its debut at CPH:DOX last year. It went on to screen at Göteborg, Belgrade Docs, Tempo Doc, Tribeca, San Francisco, Doc Aviv, Docs Against Gravity, Sheffield, Melbourne, New Zealand, Zurich, and Hamptons, among other fests.

After decades under Robert Mugabe’s dictatorial rule, Zimbabwe seemed poised for greater freedoms in 2008, when parliamentary elections forced the president to accept plans for a coalition government between his ZANU-PF party and the Movement for Democratic Change opposition party. One consequence was the collaborative drafting of a new constitution, one meant to represent the desires of the people. Nielsson gains exceptional access to this process, tagging along with political rivals Paul Mangwana of ZANU-PF and Douglas Mwonzora of MDC, the two men charged with developing the constitution while engaging in grassroots community listening tours. Mangwana and Mwonzora are well-matched, consummate politicians who recognize that they’re essentially putting on a show, and respond in kind, trying to out do one another and curry favor with the populace whether through well-planned smear campaigns or out-right bribery. The result is a surprising – and sometimes shocking – inside look at the compromises made in the name of politics, one that is also funny, until the viewer recognizes its sad reality for the people of Zimbabwe.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, November 17: BÉLA FLECK: HOW TO WRITE A BANJO CONCERTO

Béla Fleck and Sascha Paladino’s making of a unique musical work debuted at Nashville last year. It also appeared at DOC NYC, the Denver Film Society, and at Bonnaroo, among other special screenings.

I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
Commissioned to create a first-of-its-kind concerto for the banjo and an 80-piece symphony orchestra, virtuoso musician Béla Fleck faces an intensely personal challenge of collaboration and composition. Named after classical composers, can he live up to the legacy of his namesakes? Directed by Fleck and his brother Sascha Paladino, working together again after their previous doc, THROW DOWN YOUR HEART, this intimate film traces his creative process from first note to the premiere concert performance one year later.

Coming to DVD and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, November 17: GRINGO TRAILS

Pegi Vail’s consideration of the impact of tourism debuted at Margaret Mead last year. Other fest appearances have included Washington DC’s Environmental Film Festival, Sebastopol Doc, Yale Environmental, Göttingen Ethnographic, Documentary Edge, and Galway, among others. It now comes to both DVD and VOD.

I previously wrote about the film here.

Coming to PBS tomorrow, Tuesday, November 17: AMERICAN COMANDANTE

Adriana Bosch’s tale of an unlikely participant in the Cuban Revolution makes its debut on American Experience tomorrow.

Bosch reveals the unusual – and only recently declassified – story of William Morgan, an American with a decidedly-checkered past who found a second chance to make a name for himself on an island undergoing revolutionary change. Having shamed his upper-class Toledo family several times over as an Army deserter, ex-convict, circus performer, and petty criminal with mob ties, Morgan set out on a path of reinvention at the dawn of the Cuban Revolution, leaving his life in Miami behind to first smuggle in arms to Cuba and later to join the Second Front, a guerrilla group in the Escambray Mountains. After proving himself, the American attained the rank of comandante, married a local Cuban woman, helped grow the rebel forces, and eventually joined forces with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to end the dictatorial rule of General Batista. Morgan reveled in his new position, attaining further fame in his key role in preventing an insurrection, for which he made powerful enemies and lost his US citizenship. But in his self-mythologizing and idealism, he failed to clue into Castro’s communist leanings until it was too late, ultimately running afoul of the new leader. The content of Morgan’s colorful life makes Bosch’s doc engaging, which otherwise hews close to PBS’s conventional biographical approach.