Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, August 20: FREE ANGELA & ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS
Shola Lynch’s look at Angela Davis’ time as a fugitive debuted last year at Toronto. It went on to screen at London, Pan African, Montclair, Melbourne, Tempo Doc, Durban, Martha’s Vineyard, and Full Frame, and enjoyed a limited theatrical release.
I previously wrote about the doc out of Toronto here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Bronx Documentary Center tomorrow, Saturday, August 17: P-STAR RISING
Gabriel Noble’s portrait of a hip hop prodigy and her father debuted at Tribeca in 2009. It went on to an extensive festival run, including Hot Docs, Sheffield, Sarasota, Stockholm, Bergen, Zurich, Chicago Latino, and Heartland, among others.
In the early 1980s, a prison term cost Jesse Díaz his dreams of success at the dawn of hip hop. Decades later, broke, unemployed, and living in temporary housing, he struggles to support his family as a single father. Recognizing his youngest daughter’s musical talent, he aims to turn the precocious Priscilla into hip hop artist P-Star, “the youngest girl on the scene” – and the answer to his deferred dreams of stardom and wealth. Noble films the Díaz family over four years, capturing the fits and starts of P-Star’s career, its impact on her neglected older sister and on her own childhood, the fallout of their mother’s crack addiction, and strains between Jesse’s demands as a manager and his responsibilities as a father. The result is a surprisingly candid look at family dynamics in the face of ambition borne out of a mix of a father’s desperation, compensation, and love.
Note: The screening will include a Q&A with Gabriel Noble and the film’s protagonist, Priscilla Star Díaz.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Unearthing the largely forgotten story of the world’s first female film director.
At the dawn of the film industry, Alice Guy was a secretary at France’s Gaumont, but her pioneering forays into filmmaking soon led to her taking on the role of head of production for the fledgling film company. Beyond being recognized as the first woman to direct a film, she is also considered, by some accounts, to be the originator of narrative storytelling in the nascent medium. After more than a decade with Gaumont, including relocating to oversee production for the company’s US office, Guy married, and with her husband formed the Solax Company in Flushing NY, where she took the role of artistic director, once again breaking new ground as the first woman to run her own film studio. In over two decades, she was responsible for an estimated 1000 films, and though she continued to lecture on cinema after the advent of the talkies, Guy-Blaché was relegated to the footnotes of cinema history for decades. While film scholars have attempted to correct this oversight in recent years, she still remains virtually unknown. Learning of her story, director Pamela Green and co-director Jarik van Sluijs set out to change that, reintroducing her to today’s filmmakers and film audiences. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, In the Works
Coming to PBS’ POV next Monday, August 19: THE LAW IN THESE PARTS
Ra’Anan Alexandrowicz’s examination of Israeli military law in the occupied territories made its debut at Jerusalem in 2011, where it won best documentary. It repeated the win for its stateside bow made at Sundance, claiming the documentary world cinema grand jury prize. Its festival circuit also included Hot Docs, Full Frame, Human Rights Watch, and several Jewish film festivals, including Boston, San Francisco, and Atlanta, among others.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to theatres in NY & LA tomorrow, Friday, August 16 and to VOD starting this Saturday, August 17: SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY
Steve Brown and Jessie Deeter’s look at the preparations behind the massive annual desert gathering bowed at SXSW earlier this year. It went on to screen at Seattle, Ashland, and SF Doc. In addition to its theatrical release, FilmBuff is releasing the doc on various platforms.
Brown and Deeter focus on two distinct sets of characters to provide viewers with a vicarious experience of the countercultural event that’s taken place in one form or another since 1986 – Burning Man’s various organizers and founders, and three attendees planning art projects or events for their time in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The former group provides a mix of history, philosophy, and welcome logistical insight into what it takes to provide a safe environment for 50,000 revelers who are tasked with building up and then removing an entire alternative city in the space of one week, while the latter subjects are meant to demonstrate the event’s fundamental principle of participation vs voyeurism. Surprisingly, even though some of the operational details are perhaps focused on overmuch (the film captures a particularly challenging year when a lottery system for coveted tickets led to much resentment among regular attendees), the founders remain far more engaging than the three attendees, whose activities – shopping for crazy thrift store outfits! experiencing transcendental bliss! – have been featured in far too many other attempts to capture the puzzling appeal of Burning Man for the uninitiated. While Brown and Deeter’s well-lensed film does convey the sense of community the founders want the event to impart, where it gets let down is in overemphasizing how much this supposedly matters in some deeper way, when, ultimately, it seems clear that, for most attendees, it’s primarily a big, crazy, hedonistic party. There’s nothing wrong with that, or with admitting it, rather than trying to couch it in some grander – and unconvincing – ideology about how life-changing it supposedly is for the revelers.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to VH1 as part of the music channel’s VH1 Rock Docs series this Saturday, August 17: SOUND CITY
Dave Grohl’s tribute to the titular recording studio had its world premiere at Sundance earlier this year. The film was made available immediately after the festival via direct download and special one-night theatrical engagements around North America, and later came to DVD. It further connects with music fans via VH1 Rock Docs, appearing on both VH1 and VH1 Classic.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
The 12th edition of Kosovo’s Dokufest kicks off this Saturday, August 17, and continues through Sunday, August 25. Held in the historic city of Prizren, the event is well-regarded within the international documentary community, notable not only for its programming but also for its larger mission to foster film culture in the once war-torn region that for more than a decade counted no cinemas within the city. The festival’s lineup of more than 75 documentary features largely consists of selections of some of the best international nonfiction featured in other fests over the past year, included in multiple competitions, including human rights and environmental categories, as well as several out of competition thematic sections.
Because I’ve covered the majority of these films out of other festivals, my focus of interest here rests primarily on Dokufest’s Balkan Dox competition, showcasing more than a dozen films from the region. Among the intriguing, and less familiar, titles here are: Kaltrina Krasniqi’s SEX (pictured), an investigation into the religious controversy set off by a recent Kosovan magazine’s sex-focused edition; Jurij Meden’s KARL MARX AMONG US, described as “agitprop in eight chapters;” Petra Seliškar’s MAMA EUROPA, a personal look at life along various European borders; and Can Candan’s MY CHILD, which profiles the parents of LGBT people in conservative Turkey.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
The Sarajevo Film Festival begins its nineteenth edition this Friday, August 16, and runs through Saturday, August 24. The festival is famed for launching in 1995, in the midst of the Bosnian War, while the city was under siege for what ended up being nearly four years. It has long since established itself as the largest film event in the Balkans, drawing notable international attention – and celebrity guests – each year, while also showcasing films from the region, especially shorts. Of its nearly 100 feature presentations this year, more than twenty are nonfiction, centered in its official documentary competition, but also sprinkled throughout other fest sections. The following offers a selection of newer notable titles that caught my eye.
The official doc competition includes eight features and several shorts. Among the former are Juri Rechinsky’s provocative SICKFUCKPEOPLE, following two Ukrainian streetkids facing the very worst of humanity; Diana Groó’s REGINA, the story of the world’s first female rabbi; Marta Popivoda’s YUGOSLAVIA, HOW IDEOLOGY MOVED OUR COLLECTIVE BODY (pictured), an exploration of state ideology through mass public spectacle; and Mladen Kovačević’s UNPLUGGED, a look at the unusual musical art of leaf-playing.
Nonfiction appearing in other sections includes: Bryan Little’s THE AFRICAN CYPHER (pictured), a survey of South African street dance culture; Hinde Boujemaa’s IT WAS BETTER TOMORROW, which follows a poor Tunisian woman in the aftermath of the revolution; Khaled Jarrar’s INFILTRATORS, an immersion into the experiences of Palestinians trying to make their way through the West Bank; and Kaveh Bakhtiari’s STOP-OVER, an insider’s look at migrants in Greece, in limbo as they try to secure passage to other countries.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to HBO2 tonight, Wednesday, August 14: AMERICANS IN BED
Pippa Robinson’s quirky and poignant peek into couples’ bedrooms made its debut earlier this week as the closing film of HBO’s popular Summer Docs series.
Robinson’s doc is a US-specific adaptation of THE BRITISH IN BED, which provided humor and pathos as it explored the relationships of eight diverse British couples, interviewed from the comfort of their own beds. This version, produced for HBO, follows the same format, offering a refreshing look at a cross-section of modern relationships in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of marriage – and, notably, divorce. Functioning as a sort of couples counselor or confessor, Robinson elicits details both amusing – how middle-aged couple Joe and Patty regularly find their sex life interrupted by either children or their pet dog – and uncomfortable – what happened when Fatima found evidence of Kevin sexting with another woman. While it would be impossible to fully represent the diversity of a country’s romantic relationships in a single documentary, with couples ranging from young Muslim newlyweds to two who’ve been together for seven decades – and including lesbian, gay, straight, and even polyamorous pairs – Robinson has a fairly rich landscape to mine, making for a candid, and often quite charming, examination of our need for love and companionship – for better or for worse.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
One of my favorite docs of the year, CUTIE AND THE BOXER, is coming to theatres this weekend. Inspired by this accomplished portrait of a long-standing marriage between artists, my latest curated selections for Hulu’s Documentaries spotlights other docs on artists and art. Watch these now for free!
For more information about the selections, see my Indiewire article.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Indiewire @ Hulu Docs
what (not) to doc 