Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to NYC’s Rooftop Films this Tuesday, July 2: WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL

Ben Nabors’ portrait of a young Malawian man whose life changes after he builds a windmill debuted at SXSW earlier this year, picking up the grand jury prize. It has since gone on to Hot Docs, SF DocFest, Sydney, BAMcinemaFest, and the upcoming Jerusalem Film Festival.

I previously wrote about the doc out of SXSW here.

Coming to WORLD Channel’s Global Voices series this Sunday, June 30: NIÑOS DE LA MEMORIA

María Teresa Rodríguez’s search for El Salvador’s disappeared children made its debut at Ambulante last year. It has screened at numerous universities, as well as at festivals like DOXA, San Diego Latino, Cine+Mas SF, Punta del Este, and Uruguay’s International Festival of Cinema and Human Rights. After its broadcast, the doc will be available for a limited time on WORLD’s website.

The twelve-year Salvadoran Civil War between the military government and leftist guerrillas saw systematic slaughtering of civilians, as well as the seizure of surviving children by soldiers. While some were taken in by military families, others lost their identities in orphanages or through irregular international adoptions during the chaotic time. These disappeared and unaccounted for children of the 1980s, now three decades removed from their biological families, are the focus of Rodríguez’s often moving film, which follows three individuals affected by the conflict: Margarita, a human rights investigator who uses survivor testimony and DNA sampling to try to locate and identify the missing, including her own siblings; Salvador, an older farmer whose family was brutally murdered, save for one lost daughter; and Jamie, who was adopted by an unsuspecting Jewish American family, but hopes to find some connection to lost relatives during her first return trip to El Salvador. There are sadly no miraculous reunions on display here, underscoring the ongoing challenges these subjects, and thousands more, face in reconciling the damage done to their society. A change of political leadership, however, offers some hope that, even thirty years later, progress – and justice – may still be possible.

Coming to HBO tomorrow, Thursday, June 27: THE OUT LIST

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ cross-section of LGBT life in the US has held sneak previews in New York, Salt Lake City, Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, but makes its official national debut via HBO.

Continuing the set up of Greenfield-Sanders’ previous popular projects, THE BLACK LIST and THE LATINO LIST, which have gone on to spawn sequels, his latest project is effective in its simplicity: beautifully photographed interview subjects, representing both celebrities and everyday folks, directly address the camera about some facet of their lives as it intersects with the LGBT experience. Lady Bunny talks about the freedom of drag, Jake Shears embraces a sense of being an outsider, Larry Kramer reflects on the power of channeled anger in AIDS activism, and Ellen, Neil Patrick Harris, and Cynthia Nixon each address the impact of coming out on their careers. While these more familiar faces help make the project more viable, the non-celebrity participants offer often poignant examples about how their own visibility has helped validate other LGBT people – such as writer Janet Mock inspiring other trans women, sheriff Lupe Valdez being elected in traditionally conservative Republican Dallas, or Afghani-American teacher Wazina Zondon providing a role model for her students. Not surprisingly, and timed to be released the week of the Supreme Court’s decision, many of the interview subjects reference marriage equality, from Dustin Lance Black’s emotional response to the passage of Prop 8, to Suze Orman’s frustration at unfair estate taxes on same-sex surviving spouses, to Christine Quinn’s no-nonsense insistence on the importance of the word “marriage.” By the nature of the project’s survey approach, this can’t go into great depth on any one topic, and can’t hope to be representative of the entire spectrum of the LGBT community, but as a present-day overview of its leading concerns, and a celebration of identity, it serves its purpose well.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Wednesday, June 26: HOW TO MAKE MONEY SELLING DRUGS

Matthew Cooke’s subversive look at the lucrative world of drugs debuted at Toronto last year. Its festival circuit also included Tribeca, Tromso, and Newport Beach, among others. Already available on VOD, it opens at the IFC Center and expands to additional theatres this weekend.

I previously wrote about the doc out of Toronto here.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, June 25: THE LAST WHITE KNIGHT

Paul Saltzman’s surprising re-encounter with a Klansman who assaulted him decades before made its debut at Toronto last year. Since then, it has screened at Cleveland, Vancouver, and at several Jewish film fests, including San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Maine.

I included the doc in my Toronto coverage here.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, June 25, and to PBS’s America ReFramed on WORLD Channel this Sunday, June 30: FOLLOW THE LEADER

Jonathan Goodman Levitt’s coming-of-age portrait of three politically-engaged teenage boys had its debut at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this past year. It went on to screen as part of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, the PaleyDocFest, and the recently completed Northside Film, where it picked up a jury award. Cinedigm will be releasing the film on iTunes and other platforms, while Tugg makes it available for theatrical screenings.

At the start of Levitt’s doc, sixteen-year-olds DJ, Nick, and Ben all self-identified, more or less, as conservatives, but over the course of the three-year project, their political leanings diverge from any monolithic conception of that term. All are involved in student government, and all have dreams of becoming President, in some cases attending political leadership camp or volunteering for local election campaigns. Displaying the qualities of typical teenage know-it-alls, supremely confident in and opinionated about their beliefs, part of the joy in the film is watching as the more open-minded of them – Nick and DJ – mature and acknowledge that they may not know all the answers, shifting their positions or refocusing their goals. For his part, DJ, already devout, leads with his faith rather than blindly supporting one political party or ideology, eventually leading him to pursue a different calling entirely. Nick, on the other hand, finds his idealism about the potential in bipartisanship challenged more than once. And then there’s Ben… He’s decidedly the most extreme, and intransigent, in his Republican conservatism, fully aware of the dirty side to politics, but seemingly so ambitious that he’s fine with it – likely making him, in some viewers’ eyes, a great villain of sorts who you can love to dislike (“hate” is too strong a word in this context). Levitt selected three distinctive and personable subjects to follow, and stuck with them long enough to witness their transformation in their key early college years, as each contends with the ramifications of the Obama/McCain election. The result is an absorbing and intriguing look at the next generation of political engagement in a time of intense partisanship.