I just returned from the mother(and father)land last night, having spent five days in Greece for the 15th anniversary Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. It was my second year attending the event for Indiewire, and my article is now up here, covering the awards, the Docs in Progress section, and several of the Greek films – THE GROCER, pictured, represents all three. I plan on posting here later this week with thoughts on additional films screened.
Category Archives: Recommendations
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2013 in Brief, Part One
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, In Brief, Recommendations
On DVD: STEP UP TO THE PLATE
Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, September 26: STEP UP TO THE PLATE
Paul Lacoste’s look at the relationship between a father and son pair of chefs premiered at last year’s Berlin. Other screenings included Seattle, Silverdocs, and San Francisco, among others, followed by a limited theatrical release this past Fall.
I wrote about the doc out of Silverdocs here.
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On TV: GIRL MODEL
Coming to POV this Sunday, March 24: GIRL MODEL
Ashley Sabin and David Redmon’s exposé of the international modeling world made its world premiere at Toronto in 2011. Its fest circuit has included Camden, CPH: DOX, IDFA, SXSW, Cleveland, Full Frame, DOXA, and the Southern Circuit, among others, as well as a limited theatrical release.
I previously wrote about the film out of Toronto here.
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Cinéma du Reél 2013 Overview
Paris’ documentary festival, Cinéma du Réel, opens tomorrow, Thursday, March 21, and runs through Sunday, March 31. Since 1979, the event has promoted non-fiction film at the famed Le Centre Pompidou and other locations around Paris. This year’s edition includes nearly forty new feature length documentaries, plus scores of shorts, retrospective screenings, panels, installations, and other special events. Although I’m not attending, the following offers some highlights from this year’s program: Continue reading
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SXSW 2013: Docs in Brief, Part Three: Other Sections
My coverage of non-fiction films from the just completed SXSW wraps up with this look at a few films each from four of the non-competitive sections of the festival, Visions, Special Events, SXGlobal, and 24 Beats Per Second – I previously wrote about Competition and Documentary Spotlight titles. Once again, I didn’t have the opportunity to see all the films in these sections that I was hoping to, and would single out a few that were also on my list – THE GREAT HIP HOP HOAX, THE PUNK SINGER, and BAYOU MAHARAJAH – that I’d like to catch elsewhere. Continue reading
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On DVD: SOUL FOOD JUNKIES
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, March 19: SOUL FOOD JUNKIES
Byron Hurt’s look at African American food and health premiered at Miami’s American Black Film Festival last Summer. It’s gone on to screen at Urbanworld and at numerous community screenings via ITVS, in addition to its broadcast premiere this past January.
I previously wrote about the film here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
On Cable: AMERICAN WINTER
Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, March 18: AMERICAN WINTER
Harry Gantz and Joe Gantz’s exploration of the personal side of the economic crisis made its world premiere last month at the Portland International Film Festival, where it took home the documentary audience award.
The film offers a survey of a range of different families in the Portland area as they struggle to make ends meet in the face of the Great Recession. The bridge between the eight families is the city’s nonprofit social services referral organization, 211info, which assists those in need with a variety of essential support, from locating housing to getting cancelled electricity service restored. Demonstrating quite profoundly the shrinking of the safety net that traditionally forestalled mass poverty and homelessness, these subjects contend with the lasting impact of the bursting of the housing bubble, the stagnation of US job growth, and the ineffectiveness of the healthcare system, all dealing a devastating blow to the stability of the middle class. The Gantzes’ film makes its point that everyone is affected by profiling subjects of different racial backgrounds, levels of unemployment or underemployment, and educational backgrounds, and it’s a testament to just how difficult their situations are that these families open their homes to the filmmakers’ cameras in what are clearly extremely stressful times. While this acknowledgement is welcome, the film overdoes it – with more than a dozen characters featured, it’s hard for the viewer to build up a sufficient rapport with one family before the Gantzes shift over to a second and then a third and a fourth in short order. While effective enough to be worthwhile in its present form, a deeper investment in fewer subjects could have raised this beyond the surface of a survey treatment into a overall more affecting portrait.
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New Directors/New Films 2013: Documentary Overview
This Wednesday, March 20, kicks off the 42nd annual New Directors/New Films. A co-presentation of the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the event runs through Sunday, March 31, and presents a very selective showcase of the work of international and US emerging filmmakers. Screening just over forty films – features and shorts combined – the series has a track record of championing the early work of now well-established filmmakers, from Pedro Almodovar to Spike Lee.
Six feature docs are included in this year’s lineup, as well as one hybrid project. I’ve previously written about Sarah Polley’s exceptional non-fiction debut, STORIES WE TELL, and about Joshua Oppenheimer’s divisive but must-see THE ACT OF KILLING. I’ll be covering ND/NF’s closing night film, Penny Lane’s engrossing look at the Nixon administration, OUR NIXON (pictured), in my third SXSW post tomorrow.
I haven’t yet seen the remaining doc offerings, but hope to have a chance to do so before the end of the series: Lyubov Arkus’ ANTON’S RIGHT HERE (pictured), a personal chronicle of the filmmaker’s relationship with a severely autistic teenager; Libbie D Cohn and JP Sniadecki’s PEOPLE’S PARK, which draws the viewer through the various goings on at a public park in China through a single tracking shot; and Eryk Rocha’s JARDS, a cinematic duet between the filmmaker and his subject, acclaimed Brazilian singer/songwriter Jards Macalé. Finally, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s THE SHINE OF DAY continues the pair’s string of hybrid documentary/dramas with an unconventional study of two performers.
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SXSW 2013: Docs in Brief, Part Two: Documentary Spotlight
Continuing my roundup of SXSW documentary (I wrote about Competition films last week here), today’s post looks at the festival’s non-competitive Documentary Spotlight section. Of the nineteen films in this category, I sadly only got to see seven. I’m especially sad to have missed I AM DIVINE, BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, TINY: A STORY ABOUT LIVING SMALL, REWIND THIS!, THE NETWORK, MEDORA, and this section’s Audience Award winner, AN UNREAL DREAM, but I’ll hopefully get to catch up with those elsewhere on the circuit soon. I’ll cover the remaining sections in a post tomorrow. Continue reading
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, In Brief, Recommendations
Special Screening: MRS GOUNDO’S DAUGHTER
Coming to NYC’s MIST Harlem Cinemas today, Friday, March 15 and this Sunday, March 17: MRS GOUNDO’S DAUGHTER
Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater’s story of a mother’s struggle to protect her child premiered at Silverdocs in 2009. Its festival circuit included such events as Human Rights Watch, Urbanworld, Sarasota, Sebastopol Doc, Montreal Black, Bermuda, and Addis Ababa, and it previously screened as part of AfroPoP in 2011.
Attie and Goldwater’s film follows Mrs Goundo, a Muslim woman from Mali, who is living in Philadelphia with her husband and children. After she gives birth to a daughter, she seeks political asylum, fearful that a return to her village will see her child suffer from the same genital cutting that she experienced in her youth. As Mrs Goundo navigates asylum bureaucracy with the help of a fellow Malian translator, the film explores the genital cutting tradition, or excising, and how religion has been used to justify the practice, bolstered by social pressure. Intercut with Mrs Goundo’s story are those of other Malian women who are speaking out against the practice, and, most heart-wrenching, the spectacle of a mass excision ceremony back in Mali, as scores of girls, some newborn, others older but still pre-adolescent, are rounded up en masse to endure the pain and trauma of being cut – a fate that no doubt would await the documentary’s titular subject if not for her mother’s efforts in this sad, but still hopeful, film.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations
