Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to theatres next Friday, May 4: FIRST POSITION

Bess Kargman’s engrossing look at young ballet dancers premiered at Toronto last fall, where it was the first runner up for the Audience Award. It’s also won awards at Doc NYC, Portland, and the SF Doc Festivals.

I previously wrote about the film out of the Hamptons here.

Now available for rental or purchase on VOD through iTunes and for the educational market on DVD through Cinema Guild: THE CANAL STREET MADAM

Cameron Yates’ portrait of three generations of “working girls” made its premiere in competition at SXSW in 2010 and went on to screen at Hot Docs, the New Orleans Film Festival, the Philadelphia International Film Festival, and Rome, among others.

I was one of the film’s Co-Producers, and previously wrote about it here. I’m excited that the doc is now widely available, and I hope you’ll take a look soon!

Coming to NYC’s Quad Cinema this Wenesday, April 25: INVENTING OUR LIFE: THE KIBBUTZ EXPERIMENT

Toby Perl Freilich’s feature documentary directorial debut on the birth and legacy of the Zionist Kibbutz movement has screened at the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, Haifa, as well as the upcoming Toronto Jewish fest. First Run Features is releasing the film in NYC this week, with LA coming in June.

While general audiences may have some vague understanding of Israel’s kibbutzim as some kind of rural communes, unless they have a grounding in Israel’s history, they may not know how far back in time the movement goes, or their instrumental role in the foundation of the modern Jewish state. Freilich’s film explores the kibbutzim’s fascinating century-long history, as Jews sought out a socialist agrarian existence in Palestine in the early 1900s. By the early 1920s, a new wave arrived, as Russian Jews escaped the pogroms and Jews from around Eastern Europe fled the rising tide of anti-Semitism between the world wars. These early Zionist pioneers laid the groundwork for Israel’s post-WWII statehood, establishing a pivotal infrastructure that could deal with immigration, military, agriculture, and of course new settlements in the fledgling country. Over time, however, the changing political landscape away from labor, and an economic turn that fostered individualism over the collective nearly destroyed the kibbutzim, with younger generations abandoning the principles of non-differential salaries and heading to urban life. The film interviews representatives of multiple generations of kibbutz members – those who have been there all their lives, others who have left, and some who have returned – as many kibbutzim have to face the reality that in order to survive, the community may have to compromise some of its socialist ideals.

Coming to DVD next Tuesday, April 24: OF DOLLS & MURDER

First-time documentary feature director Susan Marks has been screening her film about crime scene dollhouses on the festival circuit since last year, including appearances at Revelation Perth and Camden, as well as upcoming screenings at Minneapolis-St Paul.

Marks’ film, wryly narrated by John Waters (the best possible choice since Vincent Price isn’t available), revisits the infamous “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Deaths” and the story of their creator, Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), a millionaire heiress who distinguished herself as one of the founders of forensic pathology. The Nutshell Studies, miniature, scale-model dollhouse dioramas of often grisly crime scenes, were created by Glessner Lee in the 1930s and ’40s to help train investigators on what to look for and what not to miss at crime scenes. The film explores a number of the dioramas, meticulously based on real cases, as they are analyzed by modern-day forensics specialists for clues to what led to the homicides depicted. Marks handles her morbidly fascinating subject with an expert touch, balancing the sordid true crime elements with the more detached, clinical details that viewers have become accustomed to in the era of TV’s CSI, while the presence of the strange dollhouses evoke both a sense of childhood and the kindred scale-model doc MARWENCOL.

Coming to NYC’s Cinema Village, LA’s Laemmle’s Music Hall and to VOD this Friday, April 20: FIGHTVILLE

The directors of GUNNER PALACE, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, premiered their Mixed Martial Arts profile at SXSW last year. It has gone on to screen at Hot Docs, Woodstock, Doc NYC, IDFA, and Abu Dhabi, among others, and was acquired by Showtime for cable broadcast. In addition to a theatrical run, the doc will be available on VOD via iTunes, XBox, and Vudu, as well as cable providers Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner.

I wrote about the film out of SXSW here.