Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Friday, July 27:
FAR FROM THE TREE

Director:
Rachel Dretzin

Premiere:
DOC NYC 2017

Select Festivals:
Montclair, RiverRun, GlobeDocs, Documentary Edge, IFF Boston, Hawaii

About:
A film essay and career retrospective examining society’s preoccupation with materialism.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to Netflix tomorrow, Friday, July 27:
THE BLEEDING EDGE

Director:
Kirby Dick

Premiere:
Tribeca 2018

Select Festivals:
Seattle

About:
An exposé about the largely unregulated, untested medical device industry and the harmful effects of its products on patients.

Dick, joined by his longtime producer Amy Ziering as well as producer Amy Herdy, presents a jaw-dropping look at the dark side of the $400 billion medical device industry. While acknowledging the many benefits technology has brought to medicine, the film focuses on several devices that have had a disastrous impact on their recipients, including birth control device Essure; vaginal mesh, commonly used in gynecological surgery; the hysterectomy-performing da Vinci robot; and cobalt orthopedic replacements. The project is particularly effective in its use of archival and medical films, but otherwise follows the fairly conventional approach that Dick’s films typically take, with patient profiles and expert talking heads dominating. While not likely to have the same incendiary potential of his most recent films, it serves as an effective – and disturbing – awareness-building tool to expose dangerous devices and shady practices enabled by the regulatory capture of the FDA, which works to benefit the medical device industry rather than safeguard the hgelth of patients.

Coming to theatres today, Wednesday, July 25:
93QUEEN

Director:
Paula Eiselt

Premiere:
Hot Docs 2018

Select Festivals:
San Francisco Jewish, Marfa, Charlotte Jewish

About:
A driven woman faces controversy when she sets out to form the first all-female Hasidic EMT corps.

NYC’s Borough Park is home to one of the country’s largest Orthodox Jewish communities. When faced with medical emergencies, they turn to Hatzolah, a volunteer EMS corps made up of members of the community and sensitive to the religious laws that govern them. Hatzolah will not accept female volunteers, however, and that doesn’t sit well with Rachel “Ruchie” Freier and other Hasidic women. Aside from rankling their sense of fairness – there is no religious justification for keeping women out of the service, in their view – their primary concern is with female patients. They feel that women, forbidden by religious laws of modesty from being exposed to or touching any man other than their husband except in emergency cases, should be given a choice to be treated by other women. As a result, Freier and her followers found Ezras Nashim, an all-female EMT alternate. Eiselt’s film chronicles the David vs Goliath (or even Israel vs the rest of the Middle East) struggle for the fledgling group’s very existence, from accusations of a secular feminism plot to disrupt Hasidism to consequences for their families’ reputations. The focus stays largely on Freier, who already bucked tradition by becoming a full-time lawyer at the age of 40 in addition to being a wife and mother of six, as she navigates the cultural and religious minefield of her latest social activism. As a result, the film gives short shrift to other compelling Ezras Nashim members and to the corps as a whole when Eiselt follows Freier’s election campaign to become a civil court judge. While not entirely unrelated, the latter steals some of the thunder from the story of the pioneering EMT corps, whose FDNY radio designation lends the still-appealing project its title.

Coming to PBS’s American Masters today, Monday, July 23 and on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, July 24:
TED WILLIAMS: THE GREATEST HITTER WHO EVER LIVED

Director:
Nick Davis

Premiere:
Montclair 2018

About:
A profile on the life and career of the legendary major league baseball player.

Ted Williams escaped a childhood of neglect on the baseball field, channeling himself single-mindedly to master his swing and make a name for himself. He did so immediately after joining the Boston Red Sox in 1939, breaking batting records within a couple of seasons, and insisting for the rest of his life that he be referred to at any public event by the epithet that doubles as the film’s subtitle. Davis explores Williams’ troubled background, the son of an alcoholic salesman and photographer father and a Mexican-American Salvation Army volunteer mother who typically left her children at home while she tried to save souls in Tijuana. Playing in an era of discrimination, and ashamed of his Mexican heritage, Williams kept this background a secret, though he later spoke out publicly in support of inducting Negro League players in the Baseball Hall of Fame. While hewing close to the PBS strand’s typical approach of talking head interviews with family members, experts, and admirers, mixed with archival footage, Davis’ film offers a compelling look at the outspoken, larger than life athlete, who maintained a contentious relationship with both the press and fans due to his prickly personality and ego during his two decades on the diamond – providing even viewers uninterested in baseball with a reason to watch.

Coming to PBS’s POV today, Monday, July 23:
THE WAR TO BE HER

Director:
Erin Heidenreich

Premiere:
Toronto 2016 (under original title GIRL UNBOUND: THE WAR TO BE HER)

Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Cleveland, Frameline, Outfest, Telluride Mountainfilm, MIX Brasil, Heartland, Milwaukee

About:
A young Pakistani woman defies a Taliban ban on sports.

The film screened as part of DOC NYC, for which our program notes read:
Maria Toorpakai Wazir has spent her young life defying expectations. At age 25, she is an internationally competitive squash player. But in her home country of Pakistan, she remains controversial. In her family’s region of Waziristan, women are forbidden by the Taliban from playing sports. Erin Heidenreich follows Maria over several months as she represents Pakistan on the national team and carves out her own identity, despite threats to her family.

Photo by Ann Ray

Director:
Ian Bonhôte

Co-Director:
Peter Ettedgui

Premiere:
Tribeca 2018

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Seattle, Victoria, Nashville, Dallas, Biografilm, Sydney, Melbourne, Revelation Perth, Frameline, Provincetown

About:
A portrait of late fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

Rising from working class beginnings in London, Lee McQueen made his mark in art school and Savile Row, finding a patron and muse in influential scenester Isabella Blow, who encouraged him to use his more posh sounding middle name “Alexander” when launching his own line. His fierce originality and showmanship garnered international acclaim from the 1990s through his suicide in 2010. Bonhôte and Ettedgui’s exploration of the maverick’s life and career makes great use of footage from his vibrant, confrontational shows, combined with candid interviews with friends and colleagues. The doc’s production design is worthy of their over the top subject, but, even given that, the skull motif animation treatments that serve as section dividers cross the line into distracting fussiness and overstylization. At times, the filmmakers presume too much foreknowledge from viewers about relatively specialized or arcane fashion world details – for example, Blow’s identity and importance to London’s fashion scene is essentially assumed to be self-evident – making this feel a bit too insider. Still, Bonhôte and Ettedgui ably capture McQueen’s prodigious, if troubled, talent and vision.

Coming to VOD via Hulu today, Friday, July 20:
BALLET NOW

Director:
Steven Cantor

Premiere:
Seattle 2018

Select Festivals:
Nantucket

About:
A behind-the-scenes look at the creation of an innovative dance showcase.

Last summer, two dozen dancers from around the world, reflecting diverse styles – ballet, hip hop, and tap – joined together for BalletNOW, a series of performances at the Los Angeles Music Center to demonstrate the range of modern ballet. Its visionary curator: Tiler Peck, principal performer of the New York City Ballet. Director Steven Cantor follows Peck as the first woman to take on this daunting but fulfilling role, recruiting dancers and working with choreographers to create a cohesive program – one that she not only organizes but in which she also performs.