Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed this coming Tuesday, May 8:
FINDING KUKAN

Director:
Robin Lung

Premiere:
Hawaii 2016

Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, CAAMFest, IFF Boston, Los Angeles Asian Pacific, Seattle, Asian/Asian American fests in Boston, Atlanta, Vancouver, Philadelphia, San Diego, DC

About:
An investigation into the true origins of a lost documentary about China.

I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
KUKAN (1941), one of the first documentaries honored with an Academy Award, was long considered lost. A chronicle of Chinese resistance to Japanese aggression, the project was credited to Rey Scott, an adventurer who had never before made a film. When Hawaiian filmmaker Robin Lung learns that a driving force behind KUKAN was Li Ling-Ai, a Chinese-American Hawaiian woman all but erased from its history, she begins investigating the film and its mysterious production, leading to unanticipated discoveries.

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens this coming Monday, May 7:
NO MAN’S LAND

Director:
David Byars

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
Montclair, Denver, St Louis, Mill Valley, Ashland, Camden

About:
An inside look at the controversial occupation of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge by right-wing militants.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, April 30:
TRUE CONVICTION

Director:
Jamie Meltzer

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
Nantucket, Traverse City, SF DocFest, Hot Springs Doc, St Louis, Cucalorus, Stockholm, Newburyport Doc, Heartland

About:
Three wrongfully convicted men help others after their exoneration.

I previously wrote about the doc for Nantucket’s program, saying:
After serving jail time for more than a decade for a murder he didn’t commit, Christopher Scott was exonerated. Seeking to make sense of his experience, he joins forces with fellow exonerees Steven Phillips and Johnnie Lindsey to start a detective agency. Their mission: to find other wrongfully convicted prisoners, investigate their cases, and prove their innocence. Director Jamie Meltzer follows these determined men as they struggle to make a difference on the outside.

Coming to theatres and to Netflix today, Friday, April 27:
THE RACHEL DIVIDE

Director:
Laura Brownson

Premiere:
Tribeca 2018

About:
An in-depth portrait of Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP leader who engendered controversy over her racial identity.

In 2015, Dolezal, the outspoken president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP found herself in the midst of a media firestorm when journalists learned that she was white, even interviewing her parents who questioned her motives for passing as African American. Dolezal held firm, eventually claiming a “transracial” identity – a designation that only fueled the outrage against her perceived expression of white privilege. Brownson picks up in the aftermath, with Dolezal a pariah, removed from both the NAACP and from her position teaching African American Studies at a local university, and dependent on braiding hair to support her sons while she writes her autobiography. The film delves into her background, the biological daughter of a white couple who felt spiritually called to adopt several African American children – children who claim, as does Rachel, that they were then subject to violence and, for some sexual abuse. This allegation is positioned here as the reason that Dolezal’s background was initially called into question – she was a key party to a legal case by her adoptive sister against members of the family, and the damage done to Dolezal’s credibility effectively ended the possibility of the charges going forward. Despite this disturbing information, Dolezal remains obstinate and self-focused, never acknowledging the reasonable criticisms of cultural appropriation and privilege leveled against her – and their troubling impact on her own children – making this at once a fascinating and frustrating portrait.

Coming to Hulu tomorrow, Friday, April 27:
TINY SHOULDERS: RETHINKING BARBIE

Director:
Andrea Nevins

Premiere:
Tribeca 2018

About:
An exploration of the popular doll’s complicated relationship to body image and feminism.

Since her introduction in 1959, Barbie has been a magnet for controversy. Emerging in a marketplace that only included baby dolls, Barbie’s “adult” body – one with breasts – was a gamble for Mattel, but it paid off, eventually making the company part of the Fortune 500. While the grown-up role-playing that Barbie’s endless varieties of accessories and professions encouraged was in its own way progressive, the doll still came to represent all things negative about gender stereotypes, and, increasingly, was criticized for its unrealistic body shape and size. In recent years, facing declining sales and bad press, Mattel acknowledges it’s time for a change. Nevins’ well-crafted film follows the company’s careful efforts to finally better represent a diversity of body image as they develop and release a new generation of Barbie dolls, at the risk of further criticism and damage to their brand. As the filmmaker profiles several of the women behind the initiative, she skillfully weaves in Barbie’s evolution over time, and her impact on and response to changes in women’s place in society.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Thursday, April 26:
THE BLOOD IS AT THE DOORSTEP

Director:
Erik Ljung

Premiere:
SXSW 2017

Select Festivals:
Human Rights Watch, Traverse, Indie Memphis, Maryland, Salem, Freep

About:
A family struggles in the aftermath of the police shooting of an unarmed African-American man diagnosed with schizophrenia.

After a Starbucks barista called the cops on Dontre Hamilton for loitering in a public park, he was shot 14 times. Police reports further marginalized Hamilton and spread falsehoods about his criminality. Outraged and in grief as they wait for the DA to bring charges against the officer, his family members organize for justice for Dontre and for other black lives lost to police violence. While hampered by a somewhat awkward title, Ljung’s film is a powerful, compelling look at a pressing, sadly still-topical issue, that benefits from a hyper focus on a single family’s efforts to make positive change out of tragedy.