Coming to NYC’s Pure Nonfiction at IFC Center series tomorrow, Tuesday, April 16:
THIS IS PERSONAL
Director:
Amy Berg
Premiere:
Sundance 2019
Select Festivals:
Athena
About:
A candid look at the work and challenges of modern day feminist activism.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
Photo by Kimmer Olesak
Director:
David Sutherland
Premiere:
San Diego Latino 2019
Select Festivals:
Salem, Garden State, Ft Myers
About:
A Marine Corps vet struggles to reunite her family after her husband is deported to Mexico.
Elizabeth Perez was a ten-year decorated veteran of the US Marines when she met and married her husband, Marcos, in 2009. A year later, when their first child was six months old and she was pregnant with their second, Marcos was detained after a traffic stop and deported back to Mexico. Having been previously deported and having re-entered the US illegally, Marcos was now subject to a minimum ten-year bar before he could even apply for a visa to return, regardless of his marriage to a US citizen or parentage of multiple children. As shown in Sutherland’s sobering chronicle, the entire family suffers gravely by this forced separation. While Elizabeth raises their children alone – whose number grows after Elizabeth visits Marcos in Mexico – and leads a seemingly Sisyphean campaign to bring her husband home, Marcos struggles with depression and loneliness, only able to watch his kids grow up via Skype calls and the rare in-person reunion. With Marcos urged by their lawyer not to attempt to re-enter the US via illegal means, the family tries to rally whatever support they can, partnering with a local Cleveland area Latinx organization, meeting with elected officials on both sides of the political divide, and attempting to use Elizabeth’s past military service to cut through bureaucratic red tape. As Elizabeth faces heartbreaking rejection after rejection, she must ponder giving up and relocating to Mexico with her children to live in exile with Marcos until his ban runs its course, or risk losing her marriage while Marcos misses out on his kids’ entire childhood. Sutherland’s film, while disarmingly intimate, feels epic in scope. Coming at a time of particular politicization of the issue of the US’s broken immigration system and its deleterious impact on families, the film is also notable in its resistance to easy partisanship or demonization of either side, instead using the story of the Perez family to humanize and universalize the immigration issue in the hopes of finding a better way forward.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Film Forum for a special screening this Saturday, April 13:
EL DESENCANTO
Director:
Jaime Chávarri
Premiere:
Madrid’s Palace e Infants (September 1976)
About:
A portrait of a celebrated but troubled literary family which became a Spanish cult classic.
Filmed in 1974, towards the end of the Franco dictatorship, this dysfunctional family portrait was intended by director Jaime Chávarri to be a kind of Spanish GREY GARDENS, focused, like that Maysles classic, on a family with elite connections which had seen better days. In this case, the subjects represented the family of Leopoldo Panero, the so-called poet laureate of the Franco regime. Filmed 12 years after Panero’s death, and pointedly not featuring his likeness in any explicit way, the doc instead features extensive interviews with his widow, Felicidad, and three grown sons, Juan Luis, Leopoldo María, and Michi, as they alternately mythologize and debunk the family’s personal and literary legacy. Though romanticizing her courtship with Panero, Felicidad reflects on how she lost her identity following their marriage, while their dilettante youngest son, Michi, compares the literary merits of his feuding older brothers’ own attempts at writing. Through the film, Juan Luis takes on an exaggerated, performative role – the villain of the piece – but it’s the psychologically troubled Leopoldo María who leaves the strongest impact, savagely attacking both of his parents in the last section in a sort of proto-reality TV mode. Released not long after Franco’s death, after being withdrawn from its scheduled world premiere at San Sebastian, Chávarri’s film became a scandal, the family’s airing of dirty laundry implicating not just Leopoldo Panero but also holding up a mirror to the corruption of General Franco and his regime. Over the years, the film has become a cult classic within Spain, but only now comes stateside due to the efforts of Aaron Shulman, who wrote a book exploring the Paneros’ complex and notorious history, as well as the impact of the doc, THE AGE OF DISENCHANTMENTS: THE EPIC STORY OF SPAIN’S MOST NOTORIOUS LITERARY FAMILY AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR. Although viewers not familiar with Panero or with the Franco regime will no doubt find themselves somewhat confused at the film’s outset, they’ll soon be drawn in by the family dynamics on display, and will be left intrigued to learn more.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
New to VOD this week:
WRESTLE
Director:
Suzannah Herbert
Co-Director:
Lauren Belfer
Premiere:
San Francisco 2018
About:
An intimate look at a Huntsville AL high school wrestling team.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD this week:
BATHTUBS OVER BROADWAY
Director:
Dava Whisenant
Premiere:
Tribeca 2018
Select Festivals:
Nantucket, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, Traverse City, Nashville, Sidewalk, Mill Valley, Vancouver
About:
A comedy writer becomes obsessed with corporate musicals.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Festival:
The 62nd San Francisco International Film Festival
Dates:
April 10-23
About:
Nonfiction makes up approximately half of this beloved Bay Area event’s 85 features. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to PBS tomorrow, Wednesday, April 10:
OZONE HOLE: HOW WE SAVED THE PLANET
Director:
Jamie Lochhead
Premiere:
InScience 2018
About:
A look back at how the world came together to address a potential global catastrophe.
At a time when the US has a climate change denialist in the most powerful office in the land, and when international efforts to reduce carbon emissions regularly fall short, unlikely hope for the world’s future comes from revisiting a past case of environmental peril in this doc. Jamie Lochhead’s doc takes viewers back to the 1980s, when critical mass about the impact of chlorofluorocarbons on Earth’s ozone layer led to the world’s first global treaty to address pollution, the Montreal Protocol. Employing flashy and playful graphics, archival, and score to punch up this otherwise rote PBS special, Lochhead quickly recounts how chemist Thomas Midgley Jr developed CFCs, which soon became commonplace in everyday products, their impact on the atmosphere not recognized for decades, and, even then, subject to dismissal by the powerful chemical industry. The doc recounts the steps taken to alert the public to the potentially life-threatening effects – including using the popularity of ALL IN THE FAMILY to spread the word – and to convince President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (herself a trained chemist) to take steps to ban the offending CFCs. While certain segments of the audience might bristle at the valorization of these two rightwing political figures, their present-day conservative admirers watching now might learn a lesson or two about the similar need to listen to real scientists and act on climate change today.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, April 9:
THE GOSPEL OF EUREKA
Directors:
Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher
Premiere:
SXSW 2018
Select Festivals:
Sheffield, AFI Docs, Nashville, BAMcinemaFest, Provincetown, Indie Grits, Ashland, Frameline, Portland QDoc
About:
A small Arkansas town hosts both a spectacular Passion Play and a gospel drag show.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, April 9:
BISBEE ’17
Director:
Robert Greene
Premiere:
Sundance 2018
Select Festivals:
Nantucket, True/False, CPH:DOX, Visions du Reel, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, BAMcinemaFest, Sydney, Jeonju, Minneapolis/St Paul, Cleveland
About:
An old town on the Arizona-Mexico border collectively confronts the darkest episode in its history.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to NYC’s Pure Nonfiction at IFC Center tomorrow, Tuesday, April 9:
HAIL SATAN?
Director:
Penny Lane
Premiere:
Sundance 2019
Select Festivals:
Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, Full Frame, San Francisco, What The Fest!?, Salem, Boston Underground, Freep, Sidewalk
About:
A provocative exploration of the separation of church and state through the unlikely rise of the Satanic Temple religious movement.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Sundance
what (not) to doc 