Category Archives: Film

Coming to theatres this Friday, April 1: CIRCO

Aaron Schock’s feature documentary debut, a portrait of four generations of a Mexican circus family, had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year, as well as screenings at True/False, London, Silverdocs, Morelia, and the Hamptons, where it picked up the award for Best Documentary. First Run Features is now bringing the film to NYC’s IFC Center, with the LA release next Friday, April 8.

At the heart of CIRCO is Tino, the ringmaster of Circo Mexico, a small circus run by his parents that travels to rural towns and villages for a day or two at a time. Though Ivonne, Tino’s wife, ran away from home to marry into the circus family, she is close to the end of her rope, watching their children exhaustively work and train for the circus at the expense of their education and their childhood. Tino doesn’t want to disappoint his parents, especially his father, who is carrying on the circus tradition of his own parents – a career that all of his siblings are also involved in with separate small circuses. As Circo Mexico increasingly suffers financially from Mexico’s economic difficulties and from the debt it has had to absorb to keep operating, the conflict between Tino and Ivonne threatens to come to a head and tear their family, and the circus apart. Reminiscent in certain respects to Doug Pray’s SURFWISE, which also detailed the legacy of an unorthodox family upbringing, Schock’s documentary similarly crafts a captivating, specific yet universal portrait of family dynamics, where the tension between individualism and familial responsibility and tradition is palpable and poignant.

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, March 29: COOL IT

I posted my take on two-time Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner Ondi Timoner’s collaboration with controversial climate change author Bjorn Lomborg before the film’s theatrical release. Read it here.

Coming to DVD next Tuesday, March 29: COLONY

Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell’s unusual and beautiful portrait of beekeepers dealing with the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder is both directors’ feature documentary debut, and had its world premiere in Toronto’s 2009 slate.

Colony Collapse Disorder is the term that’s been applied to an ongoing and still not fully explained crisis in which entire beehives or bee colonies simply vanish. Some of the immediate consequences for the apiarists who depend on the honeybee are succinctly stated in COLONY’s tagline: “No Bees. No Honey. No Work. No Money.” Beyond the direct financial strain this puts on Gunn and McDonnell’s subjects David Mendes and Lance and Victor Seppi, there is the far larger impact the disappearance of the honeybee has – on a global scale, they pollinate many of the world’s crops. Without them, we could add “No Food. No Life.” to the film’s tagline. Because of this potential severity, CCD has been a very popular subject for documentary filmmakers – I’ve seen at least half a dozen feature docs on the issue. COLONY continues to impress as one of the strongest, if not the strongest. The film features stunning photography, a clarity of storytelling, and intriguing characters – especially in the form of the struggling Seppis, devout Christians who almost seem displaced in time from some simpler era, being forced to deal with the collapse of their livelihood.

Coming to DVD this Tuesday, March 29: TEENAGE PAPARAZZO

ENTOURAGE star Adrien Grenier turns the camera on a young paparazzo in his provocative Sundance 2010 documentary – I wrote about the film upon its HBO debut this fall here.