Coming to VOD tomorrow, Saturday, June 11: HE NAMED ME MALALA
Davis Guggenheim’s look at the influential activist had its world premiere at Telluride last year. Screenings followed at DOC NYC, Toronto, Tokyo, Mumbai, Adelaide, London, Hamptons, and Athena, among other fests. The film now comes to VOD exclusively via Hulu.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Tonight, Friday, June 10 sees the opening of the 27th New York City edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which uses the power of storytelling to expose and bear witness to human rights issues both internationally and domestically. The event is primarily a nonfiction showcase, with a smaller number of vetted, fact-based fiction features and special panels also included. This year’s lineup offers seventeen documentary features which will screen through Sunday, June 19, including the following highlights:
Several films explore human rights in the United States, such as Michael Collins’ ALMOST SUNRISE (pictured), which follows two veterans as the cross the country by foot as a way to combat the after-effects of war. Other treks are explored in films about crises and migration, including George Kurian’s THE CROSSING, about the flight of Syrian refugees to Europe.
Among the projects addressing issues of accountability and justice are Tatiana Huezo’s consideration of victims of corruption in Mexico, TEMPESTAD (pictured); and Michele Mitchell and Nick Louvel’s look at the struggle to have rape acknowledged as a war crime, THE UNCONDEMNED.
Women’s rights are the subject of a number of offerings, including Maisie Crow’s JACKSON, which looks at the battle being waged against abortion clinics in the South; while films focusing on LGBT rights include Eric Juhola’s GROWING UP COY, about a six-year-old transgender girl whose barring from using her school’s girls’ bathroom leads to a civil rights case.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to ABC beginning tomorrow, Saturday, June 11 for its first episode, then to ESPN for an encore broadcast and the remainder of the series this coming Tuesday, June 14 through Saturday, June 18: OJ: MADE IN AMERICA
Ezra Edelman’s in-depth look at the infamous celebrity athlete-turned-murder suspect made its debut at Sundance earlier this year. It also screened at Hot Docs, Tribeca, and the Freep Film Festival.
I profiled the series before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Sheffield Doc/Fest‘s 23rd edition begins tomorrow, Friday, June 10. The popular six-day event draws filmmakers and industry to South Yorkshire for a lineup featuring over 100 new and recent feature docs, plus retrospective work, shorts, and industry programming. In addition to presenting the UK bows of some of the standout titles that have debuted elsewhere over the past year, the event also showcases notable new titles, such as the highlights noted below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s Bronx Documentary Center as part of their Sports Film Series tonight, Wednesday, June 8: BOUNCE: HOW THE BALL TAUGHT THE WORLD TO PLAY
Jerome Thélia’s meditation on play debuted at SXSW last year. Other screenings included DOC NYC, IFF Boston, Telluride Mountainfilm, Portland, DocUtah, Napa Valley, St Louis, and Bergen, among other events.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In this wide-ranging and buoyant essay film, Jerome Thélia explores the universal appeal of play as realized in the ubiquity and versatility of the ball. Observing its popularity across time, language, nation and even species, the film’s intriguing multidisciplinary survey of historians, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and sports commentators reveals the ball’s simple, yet profound impact on behavior, from its enabling of socialization to its role in encouraging problem solving and creativity.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
The Sydney Film Festival begins today, Wednesday, June 8, and runs through Sunday, June 19. Approximately 150 features will unspool during the event, which holds its 63rd edition this year. The following highlights a selection of the nearly 60 new and recent nonfiction features appearing in the festival: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s Rooftop Films tomorrow, Tuesday, June 7 and to theatres this Friday, June 10: THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO YO MA & THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE
Morgan Neville’s look at a diverse collective of world musicians made its bow at Toronto last Fall. Further fest play included Berlin, True/False, San Francisco, Montclair, DocAviv, Los Angeles, and the upcoming Sydney, Provincetown, and Biografilm.
The Oscar-winning Neville finds more unsung musicians to profile in his latest project, although his subjects here had already established themselves in their home countries before the renowned Yo Yo Ma gathered them together to explore the cross-cultural potential of music. While Ma is the instigating force here, and offers viewers a surprising candor about the perpetual restlessness – and perhaps boredom – he’s felt around his default career in music since his days as a child prodigy, his story is but one shared in Neville’s engaging portrait of Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. While the film traces this eclectic group’s origins in a 2000 experiment, it’s grounded more in the recent past, with profiles of a few other members of the band. Wisely foregrounding personalities over performances so that those who are not necessarily enamored with world music have a way in, Neville still manages to showcase enough music to demonstrate the fruits of Ma’s collaborative vision as well as its impact on the participants and audiences.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to DVD and VOD this coming Tuesday, June 7: THE FEAR OF 13
David Sington’s tale of a death row experience made its premiere at BFI London last year. Screenings followed at DOC NYC, True/False, CPH:DOX, and Wisconsin.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In 1982, Nick was sentenced to death for a brutal crime. After more than two decades behind bars, he petitions the court to carry out his sentence and put him to death. Compellingly presented as his confessional, David Sington’s film melds psychological thriller and true crime drama to reveal the shocking truth behind not only Nick’s case, but of the American justice system as a whole.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD this week: T-REX
Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari’s profile of a boxer made its bow at SXSW last year. Its extensive fest run has also included Hot Docs, New Orleans, San Francisco, Traverse City, Camden, Hot Springs Doc, DOK Leipzig, Cucalorus, Athena, and Atlantic, among others. The doc was released earlier this week on Vimeo on Demand.
Cooper and Canepari trace a young fighter’s Olympic dreams as women’s boxing becomes an official part of the Games in 2012. Their subject, Claressa Shields, better known by the titular nickname, has been training since she was eleven, convincing her gruff coach Jason to change his mind about women in the sport. Sixteen when this portrait begins, T-Rex is determined to qualify for the London Games, channeling a difficult upbringing and a seemingly still-rocky current home life in economically-depressed Flint MI into boxing with the hopes of bettering not only her situation, but that of her family. Success and its impact on Shields’ ego brings strain to her relationship with her coach – also an interesting figure – while also unveiling the double standards that are often faced by female athletes. While an often somewhat reserved subject, Shields is likeable – particularly when she lets her guard down with a love interest who also rankles coach Jason – further helping to distinguish this project from the standard Olympic athlete portrait sub-genre.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to NYC’s Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, June 4: ORIENTED
Jake Witzenfeld’s look at the lives of gay Palestinians made its bow at Sheffield last year. It went on to screen at Los Angeles, Cleveland, Nashville, QDoc, Seattle Jewish, Other Israel, Chicago Palestine, Seret London, and Workers Unite, among other fests. The film screens for free as part of the museum’s First Saturdays series.
The three main subjects of Witzenfeld’s observational portrait are friends who live in Tel Aviv: Activist Khader, a Palestinian Israeli citizen who is in a relationship with a Jewish Israeli; Fadi, who questions whether he has the right to call himself a Palestinian, and vows to never date an Israeli – but then falls for a Zionist soldier; and Naeem, who struggles to come out to his family back in their village home. Collectively – and working with others who receive far less screentime here – as Qambuta, they create would-be viral videos exploring queer Palestinian identity. While the video shoots provide Witzenfeld with some creative visuals, this thread feels the least developed – aside from one brief scene where the three men read snarky comments their first video receives, there seems to be no impact at all from this work either on their lives or those of other Palestinian queers. Far more successful are scenes like the opening, which finds Khader relating a story to a group of Jews at a Tel Aviv LGBT center about the West’s misconceptions of sad, persecuted gay Palestinians living in the shadows – his family is wonderfully supportive, as evidenced by a later episode which finds them providing emotional support to Naeem, who fears his own father’s disapproval. While this intimate film makes no pretense of representing the whole of Palestinian gay life, given its deliberately constrained focus on three men, it does offer a refreshing consideration of the intersection of the various identities – sexual, national, and political – that play out within the complex background of the Middle East, even for this cohort’s relatively free and largely secular lives.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
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