Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 21: JODOROWSKY’S DUNE
Frank Pavich’s gleeful revisitation of the never-realized sci-fi adaptation had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes last year. It has gone on to screen at Toronto, Telluride, AFI Fest, BFI London, CPH:DOX, Fantastic Fest, Tokyo, and Sitges.
I previously wrote about the doc out of Toronto here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
The 36th edition of Cinéma du Reél, Paris’ premier nonfiction event, kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, March 20, and continues through Sunday, March 30. The festival, focused on visual anthropology and social documentary, annually presents about forty new or recent feature documentaries as well as scores of shorts, retrospective programming, installations, and panel programming. The following spotlights new work that has piqued my interest appearing in the event’s three feature competition sections: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to theatres this Friday, March 21: ANITA
Freida Mock’s portrait of Anita Hill and her legacy made its debut at Sundance last year. It went on to screen at Nantucket, Seattle, Human Rights Watch, Pan African, Cleveland, Hot Docs, Napa Valley, and AFI Docs, among others.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to NYC theatres and to VOD today, Tuesday, March 18: PRETTY OLD
Walter Matteson’s look at a senior beauty pageant debuted at Santa Barbara in 2012, where it won best documentary. It went on to screen at Nantucket, Woodstock, Newport Beach, San Diego, Ft Lauderdale, and Boston Jewish, among other events. It is now available via iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, Direct TV, PlayStation, Xbox Video, VUDU and YouTube Movies, as well as for theatrical on-demand engagements via Gathr.
For the past thirty years, women over the age of 58 have come to Fall River MA to compete in the Ms Senior Sweetheart Pageant, singled out by many contestants as their favorite of similar types of events. Over the course of eleven days, thirty women join their peers for competition, but with a large dose of camaraderie, celebrating their age and experience rather than ruing it. Interweaved with backstage and onstage pageant goings on, Matteson profiles four of the engaging competitors in greater depth – who contend with cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other concerns – while also providing insight on the event’s history via its indelible founder, Lenny.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19, sees the launch of the 38th edition of the popular Cleveland International Film Festival, a sprawling and increasingly popular regional cinema event that annually serves the cinephilic tastes of the Ohio city. Showcasing over 350 films from nearly 70 countries through Sunday, March 30, the festival’s lineup includes approximately 70 documentary features, appearing in several sidebars and as part of a variety of competition programs. Highlights from the latter are singled out below: Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
The 43rd annual edition of the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films launches tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19, and continues through Sunday, March 30. The Spring cousin of the venerable New York Film Festival, ND/NF is a more tightly curated affair, presenting just under 30 feature length films from innovative and emerging filmmakers. Among these are just six recent works of nonfiction or hybrid nonfiction:
Three of these include recent standouts from Sundance which I’ve previously profiled: Talal Derki’s immersive Syrian civil war chronicle, RETURN TO HOMS, which previously opened IDFA; Hubert Sauper’s South Sudanese neocolonial expedition, WE COME AS FRIENDS (pictured); and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s hybrid essay on musician Nick Cave, 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH, winner of two awards in Park City this January.
I’ve also previously written about another hybrid offering, Roberto Minervini’s slow-burning would-be rural romance, STOP THE POUNDING HEART. Other selections include Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s experimental hybrid, A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS; and Jessica Oreck’s THE VANQUISHING OF THE WITCH BABA YAGA (pictured), which blends fairy tale animation and documentary storytelling in a parable of life in Eastern Europe.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to theatres this Wednesday, March 19: THE MISSING PICTURE
Rithy Panh’s memoir of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s regime debuted at Cannes last year, winning the Un Certain Regard. It went on to screen at Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Cleveland, Seattle, Jerusalem, and Göteborg, among several others, and was also Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
I previously wrote about the film out of Toronto here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, March 17: PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KATRINA GILBERT
Shari Cookson and Nick Doob’s portrait of a struggling single working mother had a sneak preview at Big Sky last month before making its official debut on HBO.
A collaboration with Maria Shriver’s The Shriver Report, Cookson and Doob’s film aims to draw attention to the plight of the nation’s 42 million women who live in poverty. Rather than conducting a survey of several subjects, the filmmakers have wisely focused in on one compelling figure, Katrina Gilbert, a 30-year-old mother of three and sole breadwinner in her family. Separated from her husband, who moves back to Tennessee during the course of the film to be closer to their children and to find a job, Gilbert works as a nursing assistant at an extended-care facility for $9.49 an hour. Hard working, but barely scraping by, having to go without costly prescriptions in order to take care of more basic necessities for her young children, Gilbert still dreams of bettering her situation through education. Reminiscent in some ways to the recent KIND HEARTED WOMAN, Cookson and Doob’s film is a sympathetic and illuminating portrait of an often under-represented, if not actively misrepresented, segment of America’s working poor.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
The 16th edition of Greece’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival began this past Friday, so I’m a bit late in posting this “preview.” I’ll once again be attending the tail end of the event, which will run through this coming Sunday, March 23, unspooling more than 140 new documentary features, with shorts and retrospective programming adding to that tally, including a tribute to the recently departed Peter Wintonick. What follows is a breakdown, section-by-section, of new and recent films in the lineup that have caught my attention, omitting titles that I’ve covered previously elsewhere. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Recommendations
Coming to NYC’s IFC Center this Friday, March 14: EXPOSED
Beth B’s exploration of modern burlesque had its world premiere at Berlin last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, DOK.fest Munich, Planete + Doc, Transylvania, Sydney, Moscow, Revelation, Melbourne, and Pornfilmfest Berlin, among others.
I previously described the film in the DOC NYC program, saying:
The World Famous *BOB*, Dirty Martini, Tigger!, Mat Fraser, Julie Atlas Muz, Bunny Love, Bambi the Mermaid, James Habacker and Rose Wood use satire and their own bodies to send up conventional notions of body image, gender, and sexuality in their modern burlesque performances. New York underground filmmaking legend Beth B enters their subversive world, both on stage and behind-the-scenes, in this entertainingly provocative portrait of NYC artists gleefully breaking taboos as they entertain.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
