Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Friday, August 26: THE CASE OF THE THREE SIDED DREAM

Adam Kahan’s profile of experimental jazz multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk debuted at SXSW in 2014. It went on to screen at New Orleans, IDFA, Big Sky, Full Frame, Salem, Atlanta’s Pan African, Florida, and jazz fests in New York and Burlington, among other events.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

New to DVD this week: PAPIROSEN

Gastón Solnicki’s generational portrait of his family debuted at Locarno in 2011. Other screenings have included Thessaloniki Doc, Rotterdam, BAFICI, Edinburgh, Jerusalem, San Sebastian, Jeonju, and the New York and San Francisco Jewish fests.

Solnicki captures four generations of his argumentative Argentine-Jewish family over more than fifty years. While most of the footage is his own, stemming from about ten years of recording, the director also mixes in Super 8 shot by other family members that goes back much further. Presented in an often jumbled manner, moving back and forth through time, the cacophony can overwhelm at times. Still, Solnicki’s intimate profile also forces the viewer into the role of silent witness, privy to the tortured imprint the Holocaust has left on his entire clan, from those who made the initial journey from Poland to Argentina in the 1940s, to their offspring who grew up feeling the consequences of this exodus: anger, sadness, and seemingly perpetual dissatisfaction.

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, August 23: TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL

Jeffrey Schwarz’s look at the screen icon’s secrets made its bow at SXSW last year. Its fest circuit included Cleveland, Seattle, Maryland, Provincetown, Revelation, and LGBT fests all over the world.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to DVD and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, August 23: THE OTHER SIDE

Roberto Minervini’s hybridized look at life on Louisiana’s margins debuted at Cannes last year. It went on to screen at Toronto, Karlovy Vary, Biografilm, Bergen, Rio, Palm Springs, True/False, Goteborg, Docs Against Gravity, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real.

I previously wrote about the film here.

Coming to NYC’s Anthology Film Archives today, Friday, August 19: LAMPEDUSA IN WINTER

Jakob Brossmann’s portrait of an Italian island’s Sisyphean struggle with the international refugee crisis had its world premiere at Locarno last year. Since then it has screened at IDFA, Sydney, New Zealand, Stockholm, Watch Docs, BelDocs, DOXA, DocPoint, CPH:DOX, and Ischia, among other events.

Located on Europe’s outer edge, the small island of Lampedusa has long been the destination for African refugees seeking an escape from poverty, persecution, and conflict. In the face of the ongoing refugee crisis, residents have seen a constant stream of desperate people crossing the Mediterranean, often needing to be rescued by the Lampedusian coast guard – or, tragically, losing their lives at sea. Brossmann chronicles two winters on the island, painting a portrait of the community as it contends with its unenviable position at the center of the refugee crisis and the pressures this brings to bear on daily life. In this observational study, various figures emerge – the local radio station’s acerbic DJ, the town’s embattled mayor, a concerned woman who tries to help refugees stuck in processing limbo, museum curators who comb though the detritus of a refugee ship graveyard for items to display, and factions of fisherman who protest inadequate ferry services to the mainland. This is a quiet, but impactful, microcosmic look at the greatest humanitarian crisis of the present day, as experienced by those who have no choice but to respond.

New to DVD this week: I AM JFK JR

Derik Murray’s candid portrait of America’s “crown prince” made its debut on Spike earlier this month. It was followed the next day with a VOD release.

The latest in Murray’s line of I AM profiles of late celebrities, previously having covered the likes of Chris Farley, Evel Knievel, and Steve McQueen, hews close to his established formula. He gathers those close to his subject – in this case friends rather than any of the private Kennedy clan – to reveal his personality, ambitions, and achievements, helped to a great extent by existing archival footage. With a charismatic, attractive figure who was covered by the media in all facets of his life starting at his very birth, the director has a lot with which to work. Still, the implication of a tell-all personal confessional that is attached to the title seems ill at ease with someone like JFK Jr, particularly as the film addresses the weight of the world’s attention – and expectations – given his influential family. Leaving that quibble aside, Murray treats Kennedy with respect, demonstrating pointedly his desire to become his own man, out from under the shadow cast by his father and JFK’s Camelot. With interviewees here offering speculation about the political career the district attorney and GEORGE magazine founder might have had, however, the sense of a life cut short and potential unrealized linger over the proceedings, giving viewers much food for thought.

New to DVD this week: THE BOYS OF ’36

Margaret Grossi’s tale of rowing Olympians premiered on PBS’s American Experience earlier this month.

I previously wrote about the film here.