Category Archives: Film

Coming to PBS this Sunday, August 25: THE CAMPAIGN

Christie Herring’s behind-the-scenes look back at California’s No-on-8 campaign had its world premiere at Frameline earlier this Summer. It went on to screen at gay fests in Denver, North Carolina, and Houston, before launching its national public television broadcast. The ITVS produced doc will be shown on PBS stations in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Knoxville, Idaho, and Kalamazoo.

Herring’s film focuses on the 2008 battle in the state of California to allow voters to restrict marriage to heterosexual pairs. The infamous ballot initiative, Proposition 8, was a response to the California Supreme Court’s ruling that a previous ban on same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. As supporters of Prop 8 used fear tactics and religious arguments to mobilize voters, Herring turned the spotlight on San Francisco’s No-on-8 campaign headquarters, following the work of campaign organizers and on-the-ground volunteers working to prevent discrimination from being written into the California constitution. To provide further context, highlights of modern gay history – from Mattachine to the wave of gay marriage bans in the wake of the 1998 Hawaiian state constitutional amendment – run periodically throughout the film. As the Prop 8 campaign polls swing for and against same sex marriage, the doc profiles several of the volunteers and their often poignant responses to the tenor of the campaign and its likely impact on their lives. In the film’s closing scenes, Herring importantly notes the renewal of activism that was catalyzed in the wake of the decision, leading to the most recent development as the Supreme Court put an end to Prop 8 and DOMA. Screening during the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for civil rights, the PBS broadcasts of the doc underscore that any discriminatory laws are unjust laws, regardless of race or sexuality, and that change is only possible when enough people stand up for equality.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, August 20: NO PLACE ON EARTH

Janet Tobias’ stranger than fiction story of Jewish cave-dwelling survivors of Nazi persecution debuted at Toronto last year. It went on to screen at the Hamptons, IDFA, Martha’s Vineyard, Sarasota, Sidewalk, Miami, and several Jewish film festivals, among others.

I previously wrote about the doc out of Toronto here.

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.