Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to PBS’s POV tonight, Monday, July 27: TEA TIME

Maite Alberdi’s loving look at a group of longtime friends debuted at SANFIC last year. It went on to screen at IDFA, True/False, Miami, Ambulante, BAFICI, Doc Aviv, Seattle, Sydney, and Sheffield, among others.

Since they graduated from high school, a close group of Chilean women have hosted a small tea party once a month – for the past sixty years. One of these women is Maria Theresa, Alberdi’s grandmother, and the film’s primary guide to the proceedings. These lively meetings have sustained them through radical changes to their nation and to more personal changes to their lives, from marriages and divorces, to births and deaths, with seemingly the only constant being the enduring friendship and love between this tight circle. Shot over the course of several years which saw their own measure of change, as the friends have to confront sickness and aging among their own group, Alberdi’s film offers the viewer a place at the table to listen in to the gossip, recognize each woman’s quirks, and to be charmed by them all while witnessing the elaborate pastry spreads they’ve painstakingly organized.

New to DVD this week: I AM FEMEN

Alain Margot’s profile of the controversial Ukrainian feminist group debuted at Visions du Réel last year. Screenings have followed at CPH:DOX, Locarno, Haifa, Thessaloniki Doc, Stockholm, and Santa Barbara, among others.

Margot’s film is the second Femen documentary to make its way on the international festival circuit and into limited release after Kitty Green’s UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL, which debuted at Venice in 2013. While I have not written here about Green’s film, its take on the “sextremist” group is far more critical, even sinister, postulating that the true leader of the group is actually a man, Viktor Sviatsky, and that the women he recruits aren’t particularly that invested in Femen’s causes and instead are picked to look beautiful topless and generate media attention. Margot’s take is far more straightforward, and doesn’t even hint at any of these allegations, which Femen members substantiated in their promotion of Green’s film, though they note that Viktor was ejected from the group in 2012. Margot’s film begins in 2012 as well, and focuses primarily on one of the founders, artist Oksana Shachko, also featured in Green’s film. Through the course of the doc, Oksana and her fellow activists stage protests around a number of causes, opening with the condemnation of the Ukrainian justice system for failing to punish the rapists/murderers of one of their Femen sisters, and proceeding to animal abuse and support for Pussy Riot, among others. Margot provides some degree of background on Oksana, such as her early interest in religious iconography and desire to join a convent, but mostly concentrates on her activist work, and the sacrifices she’s willing to make in the name of justice. If Margot’s film lacks the surprise of Green’s, it manages to find a compelling figure in Oksana, one who can speak articulately about the intersection of sex, bodies, and politics that motivates Femen’s actions.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, July 21: WHEN WE WERE BOYS

Sarah Goodman’s portrait of adolescence debuted at Hot Docs in 2009. It went on to screen at Beijing and True/False and to be released on DVD. The doc now comes to iTunes.

I previously wrote about the film out of Hot Docs here.

Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, July 20: PACKED IN A TRUNK: THE LOST ART OF EDITH LAKE WILKINSON

Michelle Boyaner’s chronicle of a forgotten American artist had its premiere at Palm Springs at the beginning of the year. Screenings have followed at Provincetown, Frameline, and LGBT fests in Halifax, Kansas City, and Portland, among others.

The forgotten artist at the core of Boyaner’s scrappy doc is Edith Lake Wilkinson, a late 19th/early 20th century painter and printmaker whose career was cut short when she was committed to an asylum in 1924 by an unscrupulous attorney. Just as important to her story is Edith’s great-niece, Emmy-award winning writer/director Jane Anderson, who serves as the audience’s guide here, and whose obsession with Edith’s story has compelled her for four decades. When Jane was just a child, her mother discovered a trunk full of Edith’s canvases in the attic of a relative’s home in the artist’s native West Virginia and was given some of the work. Growing up surrounded by Edith’s paintings, Jane drew creative inspiration from the relative she never met, and, as she learned more about her, found eerie similarities to her own life. Chiefly, like Jane, Edith was a lesbian, with a longtime female companion, Fannie – a fact may have led to Edith’s institutionalization. Seeking to give her great-aunt her due, Jane partners with a gallery in Edith’s beloved Provincetown to stage an exhibition of her work, discovering curious details that cement her formative place in the venerable Cape Cod artist haven’s history. While the film never loses sight of its focus on Edith, Jane emerges as a feisty, genuine, and appealingly goofy presence, emotional and at times giddy at finally realizing her decades’ long mission. If there are some clunky bits – a visit with a psychic to try to fill in some blanks about how Edith ended up in her predicament, an overused folksy score that wears out its welcome quickly – Jane’s welcome presence makes up for it.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, July 17: TWINSTERS

Samantha Futerman and Ryan Miyamoto separated-at-birth tale bowed at SXSW this Spring. It has also screened at LA Asian Pacific and Maine before embarking on its theatrical release around the country.

Just about two and a half years ago, Futerman, a Los Angeles-based actress, was contacted through Facebook by Anais Bordier, a young French woman studying fashion in London who had seen a YouTube video featuring Futerman and was surprised by their uncanny resemblance. Comparing notes, they realized that their shared birthdate and birth place, Busan, Korea, most likely meant that they were twins, separated at birth through international adoption. Futerman began documenting their communication, and her own response to this unlikely situation, as the pair seek out answers and eventually meet in person. Fittingly for a relationship enabled by social media and modern technology, Futerman and Miyamoto’s film is swimming in Skype sessions, texting, and emojis, lending it a light, youthful feel while it draws the viewer into their immediately absorbing new sibling bonding. While there’s a lot of self-indulgence on display here – seemingly endless scenes of the sisters giggling, a too-rigid attempt to let the story play out in the moment when it’s not really necessary – the film nevertheless manages to pull off the feat of resonating on a genuine emotional level. If there is too much false build up of mystery or questioning over the foregone conclusion – they are clearly twins, despite supposed doubts – later scenes uniting the twins and their families, and a trip to Korea, pack more of an authentic punch – and a sweetness – that will connect with audiences whether they have been impacted by adoption or not.