Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to theatres and to VOD today, Friday, November 11: DON’T LOOK DOWN

Daniel Gordon’s chronicle of Sir Richard Branson’s death-defying ballooning odysseys debuted at Tribeca this Spring. It also screened at the Newport Film Festival.

In 1987, not too long after Branson launched his upstart Virgin Airlines, he hit upon an out-of-the-box promotional idea: an attempt to beat the record for a cross-Atlantic hot air balloon journey, piloted by himself, a novice, and aided by veteran pilot Per Lindstrom – and, of course, plastering the Virgin logo on the giant balloon itself. A few years later, the savvy promoter attempted to recapture the buzz generated from that first, successful trip by ballooning across the Pacific – things didn’t go quite as smoothly, as recounted here. Despite the viewer knowing that, of course, Branson and Lindstrom survived these adventures, Gordon ably constructs an engaging, urgent retelling that serves up a nice amount of tension regardless, taking full advantage of access to breathtaking footage from the trips, archival materials from the press blitz, and interviews with the principals involved.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, November 11: NATIONAL BIRD

Sonia Kennebeck’s look at the consequences of whistleblowing on the US drone program had its world premiere at Berlin this year. Its festival circuit also included Tribeca, San Francisco, Sheffield, Sydney, Melbourne, Camden, Hamburg, and Zurich, among others.

Kennebeck profiles three individuals directly involved with the military drone program. Daniel, who finds himself the subject of an FBI raid, is an anti-establishment peace activist who has some undisclosed connection to drones. Lisa, a former drone technical expert who helped identify targets, is haunted by the collateral damage of her work, visiting Afghanistan to see the consequences on innocent civilians of so-called surgical precision strikes. Finally, Heather, a former analyst, tasked with deciphering often-unclear drone imagery to determine if someone is a child or a combatant, suffers from PTSD, but must fight to get treatment since she was not in physical combat. Because of the potential of being charged as traitors under the 1917 Espionage Act, Kennebeck’s subjects are often constrained from revealing too much about what they know or even what their roles specifically are, in some ways dulling the potential impact of the film, but in other ways lending it an ominous undertone that suits the subject matter, and sparking necessary questions from the viewer about the human costs of this modern form of combat.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, November 11: THE ANTHROPOLOGIST

Seth Kramer, Daniel A Miller, and Jeremy Newberger’s look at climate change through cultural anthropology had its world premiere at DOC NYC last year. Screenings followed at Cleveland, Dallas, RiverRun, Minneapolis, IFF Boston, Cucalorus, and San Francisco Green, among other fests.

I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
At the core of Kramer, Miller, and Newberger’s film are the parallel stories of two women: Margaret Mead, who popularized cultural anthropology in America; and Susie Crate, an environmental anthropologist currently studying the impact of climate change. Uniquely revealed from their daughters’ perspectives, Mead and Crate demonstrate a fascination with how societies are forced to negotiate the disruption of their traditional ways of life, whether through encounters with the outside world or the unprecedented change wrought by melting permafrost, receding glaciers, and rising tides.