Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, April 23: THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE

Sarah Burns, David McMahon, and Ken Burns’ exploration of the miscarriage of justice around a horrific crime had its world premiere at Cannes last year. The film’s festival circuit also included Telluride, Toronto, and DOC NYC, among others. In addition to a theatrical and VOD release, the doc was broadcast on PBS last week.

I previously wrote about the film out of Toronto here.

Coming to LA’s Downtown Independent and Chicago’s Facets Cinematheque this Friday, April 19 and to NYC’s Cinema Village on Friday, May 3: UNMADE IN CHINA

Tanner King Barklow and Gil Kofman’s misadventures in Chinese filmmaking made its debut at the Sydney Underground Film Festival, where it took home an award for best doc. It received another award at Edmonton, and has played a handful of other fests since, including St Louis and Sun Valley.

American indie film director Kofman is hired by Chinese producers to adapt and direct one of his screenplays, CASE SENSITIVE, for a Chinese audience. Although he is able to use some of his own team, the majority of the crew is Chinese, and, as he finds out, his backers aren’t exactly hands off. When Barklow learned about the project, he followed along, documenting the making of the film, and, as Kofman notes at the doc’s beginning, its unmaking. Adapting the old adage that films are made three times, in the writing, the shooting, and the editing, Barklow and Kofman bemusedly demonstrate how each of these facets are undermined during their China experience – scripts are rewritten by an overzealous and distrustful translator, without informing the director; equipment is sold by the crew for a quick buck; a passionate DP is fired for being too demanding, against Kofman’s wishes; the director’s edit is recut to produce an indecipherable narrative; and contract agreements are ignored, leading to non-stop work, headaches, and unpaid salaries. Films about the making of films, and especially behind-the-scene docs about disastrous projects, are nothing new – it’s a subgenre in itself – and, in many ways, Barklow and Kofman’s film follows the expected trajectory to provide an audience with the appropriate mixture of gleeful schadenfreude and genuine sympathy. What is different here is the Communist Chinese context and the smart decision to highlight the absurdity of the situation rather than a misplaced sense of righteous outrage. Not enough of CASE SENSITIVE is shown for the viewer to really make an absolute judgement on its artistic merit, but one suspects it was probably never going to be an Oscar contender anyway. Given this, the film isn’t about how the Chinese system ruined a would-be masterpiece, but more about how the corruption unmade the American filmmakers’ expectations of how films should be made. As such, it provides a funny, engaging, and simultaneously insider and outsider look at the compromises placed on creativity and art in a traditionally controlling system that is awkwardly flirting with at least the pretense of more openness.

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens next Monday, April 22: THE ISLAND PRESIDENT

Jon Shenk’s profile of a small island nation’s call to action around climate change premiered at Telluride and Toronto in 2011. It went on to screen at numerous fests, including DOC NYC, Thessaloniki Doc, RiverRun, Planete Doc, CNEX Doc, and Documentary Edge, and also enjoyed a limited theatrical release.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Now available on VOD: TCHOUPITOULAS

The Ross Brothers’ immersive exploration of New Orleans debuted last year at SXSW. It went on to screen at BAMcinemaFest, Silverdocs, and CPH:DOX, and claiming awards at Hot Docs, Ashland, and Dallas. The film is now available on demand and digital via iTunes and through Oscilloscope’s site.

I wrote about the doc out of SXSW here.

Coming to NYC’s IFC Center this Friday, April 19: PORTRAIT OF JASON

Shirley Clarke’s landmark outsider profile made its official premiere at the 5th New York Film Festival in 1967, going on to a theatrical release immediately after. While critics were initially unkind, a response to both the rawness of Clarke’s cinema verité and to her outspoken subject, the documentary went on to be hailed as a classic, pioneering study in black and gay identity. As part of an initiative to re-present Clarke’s films to new audiences, Milestone Films and the Academy Film Archive have restored the doc, bringing their efforts to the Berlinale earlier this year.

The film is stunning in its simplicity, announced from the very beginning of the film, as the audience hears Jason Holliday introduce himself, only to immediately offer up a secondary name, Aaron Payne, his birth name. As video catches up with audio – the film was shot over twelve hours one evening, with the camera needing to be reloaded several times, fading to black or losing focus even as the audio continues – viewers meet the 33-year-old black, gay, self-described hustler who serves as the sole subject of the camera for the film’s entire running time. As signaled by his acknowledgment of the construct of “Jason Holliday,” a name and identity Payne adopted in his time in the mecca of San Francisco, what follows is in many ways also a construct, even a screentest of sorts, as Holliday erupts in a stream-of-consciousness interview/audition, aided by Clarke and her collaborators’ prompting. He covers an astonishing amount of territory, from his abusive family life to his sly manipulation of older white women for profit, frank stories of sexual interests and drug use, and never-to-be-realized, half-serious dreams of putting together a nightclub act. Several times, he’s asked to tell one or another of his standard stories, and Holliday eagerly complies, loving the camera and the chance to be the star of his own film. The effect is mesmerizing, even now in an age when viewers are much more used to documentary or YouTube subjects speaking at length about their lives. Revelatory about race, sexuality, gender, and class, Clarke’s provocative film is an absolute must-see.