Coming to the IFC Center as part of its What’d We Miss? series today, Friday, March 12:
TIME
Director:
Garrett Bradley
World Premiere:
Sundance 2020
Select Festivals:
New York, London, Hamptons, Miami, Zurich, Camden, Mill Valley
Notable Recognition:
The doc has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards.
About:
A longitudinal portrait of a marriage and a family separated by incarceration.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to Hulu today, Friday, March 12:
KID 90
Director:
Soleil Moon Frye
World Premiere:
Hulu (March 2021)
About:
A personal archive reveals the realities of growing up as a child actor in the 1990s.
Soleil Moon Frye became a household name for kids of a certain age when she was cast as the lead of the sitcom PUNKY BREWSTER in 1984. Like other child actors, she grew up in public, and, like many actresses, began to be viewed primarily as a sex object after she hit puberty. Frye’s response – she documented everything. In an age before the ubiquity of self-documentation and social media, Frye picked up a home video camera, saved phone messages, and kept diaries, in the process capturing a raw and intimate sense of what it was like for her – and her many fellow young actors – to grow up as celebrities. For this project, Frye revisits this footage after two decades in an attempt to determine if her memories match the reality, sharing it with friends and relationships from those days. While her philosophical musings are never quite as profound as they might be intended to be, there’s still poignancy to the project that goes beyond 1990s nostalgia, particularly when Frye touches on friends she lost to suicide, such as Jonathan Brandis; when she reflects on how Hollywood’s objectification led to her decision to have breast reduction surgery as a teen; and when she realizes how she rewrote history to soften the impact of a sexual assault. This and more helps the viewer overlook the more clunky elements of the doc to appreciate the rawness and vulnerability that lies beneath.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to Disney+ today, Friday, March 12:
OWN THE ROOM
Director:
Cristina Costantini, Darren Foster
World Premiere:
Hot Docs 2020 (unscreened)
About:
Five students bring their big ideas to the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards.
Organized by a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship around the world, the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards is a series of competitions open to students (between high school and graduate school) who have already demonstrated their ability to turn a profit with their own businesses. Filmmakers Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster follow five hopefuls who have qualified to pitch their projects at the finals in Macau. Hailing from Nepal, Puerto Rico, Kenya, Greece, and the US by way of Venezuela, this diverse range of entrants have come up with equally varied ideas, some more creative and compelling than others. Hewing somewhat closely to competition doc conventions, the film generates true drama as one competitor risks missing his time slot to pitch after being detained by authorities – tellingly, the only African in the competition. Ultimately, however, the doc proves winning because of its hopefulness and the charisma of its subjects.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to Discovery+ today, Thursday, March 11:
MY BEAUTIFUL STUTTER
Director:
Ryan Gielen
World Premiere:
Indyfest 2019
Select Festivals:
Heartland, Boston Kids, Napa Valley, Rhode Island
About:
A profile of several young people who stutter, focused on an organization founded to provide a safe space and inspire stutterers.
A lifelong stutterer, Taro Alexander founded SAY – Stuttering Association for the Young – as a way to help youth who stutter to gain self-confidence and meet peers to make them feel less alone. Two cornerstones of the organization are an annual gala, where SAY participants sing or speak, at their own time, unrushed; and Camp SAY, which gathers kids who stutter for a transformative couple of weeks. Ryan Gielen’s film focuses on a number of campers, ranging in age from 9-18, including Juliana, a young Latina who has been attending SAY events since 2007 and is now about to graduate high school; Malcolm, a young African American boy who has survived a horrific family tragedy and has a hard time at school; Sarah, who didn’t realize she spoke differently until she faced taunting at school; Emily, who draws support from her sister and mother and is all about self-affirmations; and Will, a tall high school senior who mentors Malcolm. Other subjects briefly resonate as well, demonstrating the safety these kids feel when around others like themselves. At the camp, they speak out at events, are very emotional, do some terrible interpretive dance performances, and act like normal kids, with individual profiles and interviews with parents interspersed to present a more rounded sense of their personalities. While feeling stretched thin at feature length, without a clear enough focus or driving narrative to justify its running time, this earnest film still remains likeable enough to resonate with viewers.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
New to DVD this week:
ROCK CAMP: THE MOVIE
Director:
Doug Blush
Co-Director:
Renee Barron
World Premiere:
Key West 2020
About:
Music fans sign up to rock out with their favorite performers.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to DVD/VOD today, Tuesday, March 9:
THE PALINDROMISTS
Director:
Vince Clemente
World Premiere:
San Francisco DocFest 2020
About:
A profile of wordsmiths competing in the World Palindrome Championship.
While it draws the tiniest fraction of competitors as compared to Will Shortz’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the World Palindrome Championship is the Olympics of wordplay for a small but obsessed group of dedicated palindromists – individuals who write phrases, or even whole poems, that read the same both backward and forward (even if the results often are decidedly grammatically challenged or simply nonsensical). Filmmaker Vince Clemente chronicles the 2017 contest – only its second edition – while also profiling several competitors in the lead-up to the event, along with assorted other palindrome fans like singer Weird Al Yankovic and actor Danica McKellar, as well as some history. Given that the contest itself is not particularly cinematic, primarily consisting of scenes of competitors writing, with some awkward direct-to-camera reaction interviews, these earlier profiles help to capture the participants’ quirky personalities and something of what attracts them to palindromic pursuits. As a whole, however, while inoffensive and appropriately light, the film feels choppy and padded, suggesting that there’s not quite enough here to merit feature treatment.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, March 9:
CROCK OF GOLD: A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN
Director:
Julien Temple
World Premiere:
San Sebastian 2020
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Zurich, Cologne
About:
A profile of the lead singer and songwriter of The Pogues.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to Amazon Prime Video today, Monday, March 8:
UNDERPLAYED
Director:
Stacey Lee
World Premiere:
Tribeca 2020 (unscreened)
Select Festivals:
Toronto, Glasgow, Dublin, Athena
About:
An exploration of gender inequality in the electronic music world.
Electronic dance music, or EDM, has long been wildly popular around the world, attracting millions of fans, particularly at concert and festivals. As demonstrated in Stacey Lee’s illuminating and well-produced film, however, it has been overwhelmingly dominated by straight white men – despite the contributions of women and people of color both historically and in the present day. Focusing primarily on gender inequality, the doc offers significant statistical and anecdotal evidence to show how women have rarely been booked at festivals or recognized on tastemakers’ lists, perpetuating a chauvinistic, self-fulfilling status quo cycle of marginalization. Lee’s project is decidedly survey in approach, which permits her to profile a broad range of female DJs, performers, and pioneers, but at the same time limits her to only providing brief sketches when some figures clamor for more development. Still, the project fulfills its mission as an informative call to action, for the already converted and the uninitiated alike.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD via Britbox tomorrow, Tuesday, March 9:
63 UP
Director:
Michael Apted
World Premiere:
ITV (British TV, June 2019)
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, New York, Telluride, Mill Valley, Vancouver, Heartland
About:
The latest installment of the longest-running documentary project in history.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to select theatres, virtual cinemas, and VOD today, Friday, March 5:
STRAY
Director:
Elizabeth Lo
World Premiere:
Tribeca 2020 (unscreened)
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Hot Docs, London, Bergen, RIDM, Stockholm, San Diego Asian
About:
A dogs’-eye view of Istanbul.
The film screened as part of DOC NYC, for which our program notes read:
In Istanbul, stray dogs are an everyday part of the fabric of the community, belonging to no one and everyone at the same time. Among them are the expressive, independent Zeytin; the friendly Nazar; and the shy puppy, Kartal. But the Turkish city is home to human strays as well, as Zeytin and her friends bond with a trio of young Syrian refugees. Elizabeth Lo’s assured feature debut tracks the canines through the city’s streets, capturing their experiences and generating deep empathy without resorting to simple anthropomorphism.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
what (not) to doc 