Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to DVD next Tuesday, March 12: THE FLAT

Arnon Goldfinger’s investigation of unexpected ties between his Jewish grandparents and Nazi Germany made its debut at the 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival. It came stateside at last year’s Tribeca, followed by berths at notable fests around the world including Traverse City, Documentary Edge, San Francisco Jewish, and Krakow.

I previously wrote about the film out of Tribeca here.

Coming to VOD next Tuesday, March 12: TPB AFK: THE PIRATE BAY – AWAY FROM KEYBOARD

Simon Klose’s intimate look at the three men behind the popular firesharing site had its world premiere at Berlin last month. It comes stateside later this week at SXSW, but has already been made available for free on YouTube and for download at its website. FilmBuff releases the film on all VOD platforms next week.

Klose’s film focuses on Gottfrid, Peter, and Fredrik, three young men facing off in Swedish court against the gaming and film industries’ claims of massive copyright infringement. With the Pirate Bay handling more than half of the torrenting done worldwide, it’s never a question that their site’s users are engaging in peer-to-peer sharing, but the three men are adamant that they just provide a forum for an exchange of ideas and information. When questioned on the stand, they each adopt a dismissive, if not actively antagonist, attitude, steadfast in their belief that they’ve done nothing wrong. Outside of the courtroom, they briefly discuss past, unsuccessful, efforts to shut them down, nerdily mock the technical mistakes the prosecutors make between bits and bytes, and show off the secret site of the Pirate Bay’s new servers. Neither the initial verdict, nor the result of the appeal, should be a surprise to any viewer with even a passing familiarity with the site, and Klose recognizes that. As signaled by the film’s title – an acronym for the men’s offline antics (preferable to the outdated IRL, since they view online time as real life) – Klose’s film can be seen as more of a portrait of these men, somewhat over their heads, but not overly concerned, and not really an indepth consideration of the questions of Internet freedom vs copyright as one might expect. While the underlying philosophy of openness and sharing is present – even down to the end credits instructing viewers to share the film – it’s presented in the most basic terms, and unlikely to sway opponents. Still, viewers sympathetic to this basic tenet should be expected to appreciate this glimpse behind-the-scenes – less as a sobering cautionary tale, and more like an absurdist collision of old and new ideas, with these three ordinary guys caught in the middle.

Coming to theatres this Friday, March 8: DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’: EVERYMAN’S JOURNEY

Ramona S Diaz’s look at an unknown Filipino’s first year on tour with an iconic US rock band had its world premiere at Tribeca last year. Other stops on the festival circuit have included San Francisco, Silverdocs, Dubai, Göteborg, and Palm Springs, picking up the audience award at the latter.

I included the doc in my Tribeca roundup here.

Coming to NYC’s Film Forum tomorrow, Wednesday, March 6: GUT RENOVATION

Su Friedrich’s personal experience of Williamsburg’s gentrification premiered, appropriately enough, at last year’s Brooklyn Film Festival, where it shared an audience award. It also screened at last month’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Friedrich’s body of work has frequently turned to the personal and the political, and her latest is no different. A resident of Williamsburg since the late 1980s, occupying a large former factory space that’s technically zoned for commercial use but whose landlord has knowingly allowed modifications for residential habitation, Friedrich is thoroughly tied to her neighborhood. As a result of shady rezoning plans, the doors opened to rampant redevelopment in the mid 2000s, which threaten to force out Friedrich, her girlfriend, and the various artists in her building and the small but still vital businesses in the area. Facing an uncertain future, she can’t do much else but bear witness to the destruction taking place around her by picking up her camera. A recurring visual in the film is a map of the neighborhood that Friedrich fills in, as she provides an indignant but increasingly pessimistic count of all the new condos being built, replacing long-standing buildings. This mixture of anger and resignation plays out throughout the film, from guerrilla style recordings of ridiculously over the top condo open house parties and gentrifiers’ designer dogs to a particularly compelling episode involving a seemingly indestructible boulder that brings the destruction of an old-time garage to a standstill for a time. Though it’s never in doubt that gentrification will continue, there’s something affecting about Friedrich’s impassioned and at times wryly funny rage against it, resulting in a sort of elegy to her disappearing neighborhood that should resonate in Brooklyn and beyond.

Coming to NYC’s IFC Center this Friday, March 8: DOWNEAST

David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s look at the efforts of an outsider to open a seafood processing plant in rural Maine made its world premiere at Tribeca last year. Its extensive festival circuit has included slots at Hot Docs, Silverdocs, Provincetown, Sidewalk, Camden, RIDM, DOK.Leipzig, CPH:DOX, and Big Sky, among others. Camden also organized a Maine theatrical screening tour this past January and February.

I previously included the film in my Tribeca roundup here.