Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to NYC’s JCC Manhattan CineMatters series tonight, Wednesday, April 6: EVA HESSE

Marcie Begleiter’s portrait of the pioneering postwar artist made its debut, fittingly enough, at the Whitney Museum of American Art last May. Other screenings have included Denver’s Women + Film series, the Washington Jewish Film Festival, and the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Though her career was cut short by a brain tumor that claimed her life at the age of 34 after little more than a decade, Eva Hesse is now recognized as one of the most significant artists to emerge in the postwar period, and amongst the earliest post-minimalists. Transitioning from the rigid structure demanded of minimalism, Hesse’s inventive, difficult to classify work broke the frame, combining painting with sculpture, while also evoking traditionally gendered processes like weaving and threading to create something altogether unique which flipped dismissive conceptions of “women’s work” on their head. Begleiter draws extensively from the artist’s personal journals and correspondence with, among others, mentor and confidante Sol LeWitt, to imbue the film with Hesse’s voice, while her contemporaries, including Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Dan Graham, and Richard Serra, reflect on her life and work through interviews, revealing, at the same time, a palpable sense of the male-dominated 1960s New York art scene and its uncharacteristic embrace of female artists like Hesse.

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5: CHILDREN OF THE ARCTIC

Nick Brandestini’s coming-of-age portrait of Alaskan teens debuted at Zurich in 2014. Its festival circuit has also included Santa Barbara, Big Sky, Cinequest, Salem, Guam, Anchorage, Available Light, and Oxford, among other events.

In Barrow AK, the northernmost community in the US, four Inupiat and one transplanted Eskimo feel the pull of both traditional Native ways and of modernity as they transition from teenagers to young adults. High school seniors Flora and Josiah make plans to marry and temporarily relocate to Fairbanks to attend university but find themselves drawn back to smalltown Barrow and family ties. Samuel, Josiah’s younger brother, learns traditional hunting and whaling skills from their grandfather, but worries about the latter’s increasing senility. Ace excels in school, but finds himself torn between community expectations and his own desires for self-improvement. Finally, transplant Maaya tries to connect with her Native roots and to remove the stigma of discussing the prevalence of suicide in the community. Brandestini has crafted a work of strong, if reserved, portraiture that reveals how these young people navigate the delicate balance between the different worlds they inhabit, while also facing the impact of climate change on Barrow’s traditional ways.

Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5: MONSIEUR LE PRESIDENT

Victoria Campbell’s profile of Haiti post-earthquake made its world premiere at DOC NYC in 2014. It went on to screen at the Martha’s Vineyard and Hot Springs Doc fests.

I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
Volunteering in Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, Victoria Campbell encounters Gaston, a charming voodoo priest who shows leadership during the emergency, and later manages to open a small, much-needed medical clinic with the support of a foreign funder. He becomes a local hero, a symbol of ingenuity in defiance of the failure of conventional relief efforts. Over three years, he also becomes the filmmaker’s close friend – until an unexpected development causes Victoria to re-examine her entire experience in Haiti.