Coming to VOD today, Friday, June 19:
DIANA KENNEDY: NOTHING FANCY
Director:
Elizabeth Carroll
World Premiere:
SXSW 2019
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Hot Docs, San Francisco, Hawaii, Vermont, Tallinn Black Nights, Sedona
About:
A portrait of the nonagenarian British author, an expert in regional Mexican cuisine.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to virtual theatrical today, Friday, June 19:
CREATING A CHARACTER: THE MONI YAKIM LEGACY
Director:
Rauzar Alexander
World Premiere:
DOC NYC 2019
About:
A legendary Juilliard acting teacher gets his time in the spotlight.
The film screened as part of DOC NYC, for which our program notes read:
What do Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, Patti LuPone, and Alex Sharp have in common? They are but a few of the extraordinary actors who have studied under Moni Yakim at Juilliard, America’s greatest performing arts school. With interviews with Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie, and Kevin Kline, this compelling portrait of the master teacher – the sole remaining founder of the school’s legendary Drama Division – takes us inside the drama classes where Moni and his wife Mina pour their love and passion into preparing the next generation of actors for the spotlight.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to virtual theatrical today, Friday, June 19:
RUNNER
Director:
Bill Gallagher
World Premiere:
DocLands 2019
Select Festivals:
Margaret Mead, Big Sky Doc, Woods Hole, Heartland, Hot Springs Doc, Lone Star
About:
A profile in perseverance, following a Sudanese refugee with an Olympic dream.
As a teenager, Guor Mading Maker (formerly Marial) managed to escape the civil war in Sudan, which eventually claimed the lives of most of his siblings, becoming a refugee in the US. When he settled in Concord NH, he was encouraged to join his high school’s track team, and continued to run in college, ultimately qualifying for the 2012 Olympics. Unable to run for the still nascent South Sudan, and unwilling to betray his people by competing under the Sudanese flag, he instead was able to compete under the Olympic flag. When he returned to the Olympics four years later, he proudly represented South Sudan. Director Bill Gallagher benefits from an immensely likeable protagonist, but his film unfortunately suffers from structural issues that often undercut any surprise or drama. Still, Maker’s story is inspiring, and it has won over audiences at festivals over the past year.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to virtual theatrical today, Friday, June 19:
PICTURE OF HIS LIFE
Directors:
Yonatan Nir and Dani Menkin
World Premiere:
Docaviv 2019
Select Festivals:
Doc Edge, Gold Coast, Jewish and Israeli fests in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Virginia, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles, and Chicago
About:
A portrait of a famed underwater photographer’s elusive quest.
Amos Nachoum is an internationally acclaimed wildlife photographer, particularly known for his stunning underwater work. One specific shot has long eluded him, however: capturing an image of a polar bear while swimming alongside it. Filmmakers Yonatan Nir and Dani Menkin follow the 65-year-old Nachoum as he takes a trek to the Canadian Arctic to try to finally realize his dream. The film notes the real dangers of his mission, while also filling in the Israeli photographer’s background, which includes a difficult relationship with his ailing father and lasting trauma from the Yom Kippur War. Nachoum is a relatively quiet protagonist, so this biographical information is useful, if not always as compelling or connected to the polar bear quest as it seems the filmmakers believe it to be. While the stakes never feel quite as large as they are portrayed here, the Arctic expedition is beautifully lensed and achieves a satisfying conclusion.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to Netflix today, Friday, June 19:
DISCLOSURE
Director:
Sam Feder
World Premiere:
Sundance 2020
Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, Tribeca
About:
An exploration of the representation of transgender lives in film and television.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to Apple TV+ tomorrow, Friday, June 19:
DADS
Director:
Bryce Dallas Howard
World Premiere:
Toronto 2019
About:
An exploration and celebration of fatherhood.
There are relatively few documentaries focused exclusively on fathers. While actress Bryce Dallas Howard’s feature directorial debut takes a decidedly lighter and heartwarming approach, by design, it’s far from being the celebrity vanity project that some cynical viewers might too quickly dismiss. While she certainly gets a lot of traction by featuring famous fathers – among them, her own dad, Ron Howard, as well the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Ken Jeong, Neil Patrick Harris, Will Smith, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, and Kenan Thompson, among others – offering heartfelt reflections on fatherhood, her charming film shines when it spotlights several ordinary dads as they contend with the mundane realities of raising kids without the privilege and wealth afforded to their famed counterparts. While not a groundbreaking not particularly deep project, it remains a perfectly likeable one.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to virtual theatrical tomorrow, Friday, June 19:
QUEEN OF LAPA
Directors:
Theodore Collatos and Carolina Monnerat
World Premiere:
Maryland 2019
Select Festivals:
Göteborg, RiverRun, Antenna Doc, NewFest, San Francisco IndieFest, Sidewalk, Rhode Island, Oxford, Philadelphia Latino
About:
A portrait of a legendary Brazilian sex worker activist.
Nearing sixty at the time of filming, unforgettable trans cabaret performer and activist Luana Muniz has been a sex worker since age eleven. More than two decades ago, she created a hostel in the seedy Lapa district of Rio de Janeiro to provide a safe space for other trans sex workers in a society mired by transphobia and corruption. Filmmakers Theodore Collatos and Carolina Monnerat train their camera on the outspoken, larger-than-life Luana, highlighting her no-nonsense relationships with her surrogate daughters, and capturing the atmosphere of the community they’ve created with a relaxed familiarity. The result is a refreshingly nonjudgemental immersion into Luana’s world, made all the more poignant when it’s revealed that the house mother has since passed away.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to virtual theatrical tomorrow, Friday, June 19:
MY DARLING VIVIAN
Director:
Matt Riddlehoover
World Premiere:
SXSW 2020 (online)
About:
A portrait of Johnny Cash’s first wife, long misrepresented in the performer’s mythology.
Johnny Cash struggled to win over his demons of addiction with the selfless love and devotion of his true love, June Carter, following a difficult marriage to the mother of his four daughters – or so goes the Cash legend, as immortalized in the Oscar-winning biopic WALK THE LINE. Director Matt Riddlehoover’s respectful doc aims to serve as a corrective, rehabilitating the image and understanding of Vivian Liberto, Cash’s long-suffering first love and first wife. As signaled by its title, the film foregrounds the deep love between Liberto and Cash, revealed here not only through interviews with their children, but through a trove of letters showing just how besotted The Man in Black was over the Italian beauty he met in 1951 while still an Air Force cadet. At the same time, Riddlehoover details Liberto’s side of the story in the eventual demise of the relationship after he found fame – a mix of neglect compounded by Cash’s troubles with drugs and affair with June Carter, as well as the racist fallout of Liberto being mistaken for being African American by the media. In the ensuing years, Cash and Carter’s worldwide platform allowed them to revise history, which eventually led to Liberto being reframed as a harridan and often erased from the story entirely. While distractingly overscored, this thoughtful profile benefits from absolute candor from the Cash daughters and from a rich archive, helping to illuminate Vivian in all her fullness.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD this week:
MY FATHER THE SPY
Director:
Jaak Kilmi and Gints Grube
World Premiere:
Sheffield 2019
Select Festivals:
Jihlava, Riga, Cinema Verite, EBS International Doc
About:
A woman explores the impact of her father’s life as a Soviet double agent.
Ieva Lešinska-Geibere was born in Soviet Latvia during the Cold War. In 1978, at the age of 20, a rare visit to the US to visit her father irrevocably changed her life. Ieva discovered that her father, who worked for Soviet mission at the United Nations, was not only a KGB spy, but that he was planning to defect. Ieva was offered the choice of joining him, leaving her mother and life in Latvia behind to live under a new identity in the US, or of protecting herself by heading to the Soviet embassy. Now a translator and journalist, Ieva recounts this transformative time in her life, revisiting locations and speaking to former federal agents who played a role, while also trying to make sense of her fraught relationship with her parents as a result of these Cold War spy games. Filmmakers Jaak Kilmi and Gints Grube enliven an already fascinating story with the clever use of stylized photographic re-enactments, adding another layer to Lešinska-Geibere’s unusual tale of secrets and lies.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD this week:
THE POLLINATORS
Director:
Peter Nelson
World Premiere:
Big Sky Doc 2019
Select Festivals:
Vancouver, Newport Beach, San Francisco DocFest, Woodstock, Heartland, Woods Hole, Napa Valley, Virginia, Sedona, Sonoma, IFF Boston, Newburyport Doc, New Haven, San Francisco Green
About:
An exploration of beekeeping and the crises facing the world’s bee population.
The plight of the honeybee has been featured in several documentaries over the past decade, notably in a spate of films exploring the disturbing phenomenon of colony collapse disorder. Filmmaker Peter Nelson turns his focus on a more comprehensive view of the vital role that bees play in our complex, interconnected food system. His starting point is with beekeepers, and specifically with those intrepid apiarists who are hired annually to transport their hives from orchard to orchard to pollinate flowering crops, enabling the production of billions of dollars worth of food. In his somewhat familiar but helpfully informative and often beautifully lensed film, Nelson largely draws from their expertise – together with farmers and scientists – to detail the problems facing not only bees, but the agriculture system as a whole, from the soil-degrading impact of industrial farming and its use of pesticides and fungicides to parasites and viruses and the capture of environmental regulatory agencies by the chemical industry.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
