Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction next Thursday, April 21: THESE AMAZING SHADOWS
Earlier this year, prior to its premiere at Sundance, I wrote about this documentary on the National Film Registry here.
There will be a Q&A with directors Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton after the screening.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s IFC Center tomorrow, Friday, April 15: ARMADILLO
My praise for Janus Metz’s complex, harrowing portrait of a platoon of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan may be found in my roundup from last year’s Toronto here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*’s director Chris Bell is working on a new doc exploring the drive to groom the next generation of athletes, beginning at younger and younger ages.
Using ESPN reporter Tom Farrey’s book, GAME ON: THE ALL-AMERICAN RACE TO MAKE CHAMPIONS OF OUR CHILDREN, as inspiration, Bell’s film, which has used the tag line “Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Younger,” looks at the way our culture has led parents to push their kids to become the next professional athlete, despite the odds against them – often putting their safety at risk through the use of steroids, and generally costing them their childhood. On the other end of the spectrum from these super-fit kids, Bell also promises to address the growing childhood obesity epidemic, and how to strike a healthier balance between the two extremes.
Filed under Documentary, Film, In the Works
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, April 12: I’M DANGEROUS WITH LOVE
My thoughts on Michel Negroponte’s provocative profile of a former addict turned experimental rehab mentor can be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Last week, I was happy to travel back to Texas for the second time in two months to serve on the Target Documentary Feature Competition Jury for the 5th annual Dallas International Film Festival. Rare for most festivals, it was a two-person jury, with Rhino Films head Stephen Nemeth (producer of DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, FLOW, FUEL, CLIMATE REFUGEES) as my co-juror. Luckily, our opinions largely lined up, making jury deliberation a painless affair, and resulting in a special jury prize for Joseph Mantegna’s NORMAN MAILER: THE AMERICAN and the grand jury prize for Anne Buford’s ELEVATE (pictured).
As I’ve done recently for other festivals I’ve attended, what follows are my brief thoughts about the seven films in the competition. I should note that these are my personal views and are not meant to represent my fellow juror’s opinions.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, In Brief
Coming to DVD next Tuesday, April 12: MARWENCOL
Regular readers of this blog already know how big of a fan I am of Jeff Malmberg’s portrait of Mark Hogancamp and the titular 1/6th scale WWII era Belgian village that has come to life in his backyard. Take a look at my thoughts here. Pick this one up – you’ll be glad you did.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Opening in NYC for an exclusive one-week run at the Maysles Cinema tomorrow, April 8: KATI WITH AN I
Robert Greene’s compelling and intimate look at a few days in a teenage girl’s life premiered at the last year’s True/False Film Festival and later screened at the inaugural DOC NYC. It went on to be very appropriately nominated as one of the Best Films Not Playing at a Theatre Near You in the 2010 Gotham Awards. I wrote about the film in my coverage of True/False for indieWIRE, saying:
In many ways both a universal and a singular portrait of an adolescent woman’s life, director Greene deftly reveals a handful of ordinary yet pivotal days at the end of his half-sister’s high school senior year. While on the surface, there doesn’t immediately appear to be much that distinguishes Kati from your typical teenager, that’s partially the point – she stands in as an everywoman, or everygirl, as she begins, naively at times, to make the transition from late childhood to early adulthood, not fully foreseeing the consequences of her decisions.
Join director Robert Greene for a Q&A after tomorrow’s screening, and producers Susan Bedusa, Douglas Tirola, and Sean Price Williams for a Q&A after the Monday, April 11 screening.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Matt Wolf, the director of the acclaimed WILD COMBINATION, explores the historical and cultural development of the concept of teenager in his new film in development, TEENAGE.
Wolf’s film is based on Jon Savage’s 2007 book, TEENAGE: THE CREATION OF YOUTH CULTURE 1875-1945, which, as indicated by its title, traces the origins of the teenager far before the typically cited post-World War II period. In the mix are flappers and swing kids, sub-debs and Hitler youth, bright young things and juvenile delinquents, as revealed through teenagers’ own self-expression in diaries and through remarkable archival footage combined with artful recreations. The project has already received support from the PUMA.Creative Catalyst Award, Tribeca Film Institute, Cinereach, Jerome Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and LEF Foundation, which speaks to the promise it already shows in this unfinished form.
Filed under Documentary, Film, In the Works
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday April 5: AMERICAN JIHADIST
This profile of the controversial militant American Muslim Isa Abdullah Ali by director Mark Claywell premiered at Slamdance 2010, where it claimed the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary. It’s played more than a dozen additional festivals since then.
Ali, an African-American Muslim born Clevin Raphael Holt, grew up in Washington, DC’s ghettos, exposed to violence and racial inequality on a daily basis in what he describes as a “warzone.” His experiences in the US Army made him a Black nationalist and later a convert to Islam. He fought in Lebanon and Bosnia for years to help his fellow Muslim brothers and sisters. Though labeled a “known terrorist” by the US Defense Department, he’s never been charged with a crime and flies from his home and family in Bosnia to the US several times a year without trouble. He makes for a fascinating, if often frustrating subject – his intensity makes him hard to relate to, and he never quite seems to be completely genuine. AMERICAN JIHADIST offers a potent insider look at the complex conditions and background that might predispose an individual to militancy in the name of religion.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres this Wednesday, April 6: BLANK CITY
Celine Danhier’s debut film had a special work-in-progress screening at Tribeca in 2009 before its official world premiere at Berlin in 2010. It went on to play more than twenty festivals, including Hot Docs, Edinburgh, Melbourne, AFI, and the Viennale.
The film explores New York City’s underground “No Wave Cinema” and “Cinema of Transgression” of the 1970s-80s, focused largely in the East Village – then an often dangerous, drug-ridden neighborhood popular with artists due to low rents. Danhier showcases the largely still-unseen films of the period, which were characterized by virtually zero budgets and a decidedly non-traditional DIY aesthetic and production model, and interviews a dizzying number of key figures from the period, including directors Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman, Amos Poe, Beth B, and Nick Zedd, with additional commentary from notables like Deborah Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore, Steve Buscemi, Richard Kern, and John Waters. While BLANK CITY might oversimplify the diversity of the different filmmakers in an attempt to more neatly fit them into a consideration of the overall movement, it still has value in providing present day audiences with access to a whole generation of filmmaking that never received much attention upon its scrappy self-release. It serves as a time capsule of sorts, especially in showing what toll NYC’s economic bankruptcy had on the East Village and how artists responded to it, turning adversity into a source of inspiration through self-reliance.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
