Coming to CNN this Sunday, May 17:
SCANDALOUS
Director:
Mark Landsman
World Premiere:
Hamptons 2019
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Austin, Kansas, Denver
About:
An exploration of the influential tabloid, the National Enquirer.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to The WORLD Channel’s America ReFramed tonight, Tuesday, May 12:
JADDOLAND
Director:
Nadia Shihab
World Premiere:
New Orleans 2018
Select Festivals:
DOXA, Dallas, Ashland, CAAMFest, Los Angeles Asian Pacific, Hot Springs Doc, Indie Grits
About:
A personal film about the meaning of place, family, and belonging.
Filmmaker Nadia Shihab and her family were forced into exile from Iraq, eventually dispersing between Toronto, Beirut, Baghdad, and Lubbock. Traveling back to the latter Texan city to visit her mother, Lahib, an artist and teacher, Nadia documents her artistic process, while offering a meditation on the idea of belonging and how it is complicated by the diasporic experience. While Lahib is an intriguing subject, as friends and other family members are drawn in to Nadia’s project, the filmmaker struggles to maintain focus, resulting in a digressive and unevenly paced portrait.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to Netflix tonight, Monday, May 11:
HAVE A GOOD TRIP: ADVENTURES IN PSYCHEDELICS
Director:
Donick Cary
World Premiere:
SXSW 2020 (cancelled)
About:
Celebrities and other notables share their often funny experiences with mind-altering substances.
Despite promising therapeutic studies conducted in the 1950s and early 1960s involving psychedelic drugs like LSD, they were still classified by the federal government as illegal substances. That status, of course, hasn’t stopped people from taking them, or from talking about their trips. Assembling stories from a wide range of famous folks from Sting and Sarah Silverman to Deepak Chopra and Carrie Fisher, filmmaker Donick Cary takes a comedic look at the history, science, and potential of psychedelics, as well as how they have been (mis)represented in popular culture. The result is a light-hearted survey of often very funny celebrity storytelling, illustrated through fun animated sequences, re-enactments, and an extended AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL parody.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Courtesy of PBS
Series Producer:
Renee Tajima-Peña
World Premiere:
PBS broadcast (May 2020)
About:
A sweeping overview of the Asian experience in America.
Presented over two nights and in five episodes, this PBS series takes on the daunting task of exploring more than 150 years of American history through the lens of diverse communities of Asian and South Asian origin. Episode one explores Asian immigration to the US, the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act, legal and cultural fights over race, representation, and education; episode two focuses on the disgraceful treatment of Asian Americans, and specifically people of Japanese descent, during WWII, disguised as tests of American loyalty; episode three examines the contradictions of model minority status in the post-war years, and the dawning of Asian American political activism; episode four looks at the 1960s and 1970s, as a new generation claims the Asian American identity, fighting for ethnic studies programs, spearheading the farmers’ rights movement, and speaking out against the war in Vietnam, while a new wave of refugees make America their home; and episode five speeds through a range of topics, from the murder of Vincent Chin and the Korean/African American tension that erupted in the LA riots to Asian American connections to the dot com boom, the DREAM Act, and post 9/11 hate crimes. While the series is impressive in its breadth, even if it were twice its current length, there would be far much more to cover, and in greater depth. While it’s at its best when it slows down to profile individual stories, its mandate to cover so much terrain too often forces it to be too general, sometimes also awkwardly straining to note parallels with present-day issues. As it stands, ASIAN AMERICANS is fully of a piece with PBS’s typical informational and historical fare, driven by narration and talking heads, and functions as a necessary and useful primer that will hopefully inspire future work that delves deeper into its myriad stories.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD today, Friday, May 8 and to PBS’s Independent Lens this coming Monday, May 11:
REWIND
Director:
Sasha Joseph Neulinger
World Premiere:
Tribeca 2019
Select Festivals:
BFI London, Traverse City, Palm Springs, Denver, Mill Valley, Nashville, Rome, Heartland, Big Sky Doc, Atlanta Jewish
About:
A filmmaker confronts his traumatic past.
When filmmaker Sasha Joseph Neulinger was a boy, his father, Henry, bought a video camera – he missed his own daughter’s birth to do so. From that point forward, Henry would document his family’s life. Eventually, Sasha asked to use the camera himself, and it’s upon this trove of family home movies that he now draws to reveal his troubling past. Gradually, as Sasha interviews his parents, sister, therapist, and, eventually, law enforcement, a picture emerges of a vibrant young boy who suddenly exhibited a complete personality transformation, inexplicable to his parents until Sasha himself alerted them to a suspicion he had about his baby sister and their uncle. What follows devastated the family, unearthed disturbing generational trauma, and exposed deep flaws in how childhood victims of sexual abuse were treated by the judicial system. Sasha’s film is deeply personal – and profoundly upsetting – but at the same time both affecting and therapeutic.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD via Amazon Prime this week:
TRE MAISON DASAN
Director:
Denali Tiller
Premiere:
San Francisco 2018
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Cleveland, IFF Boston, Montclair, AFI Docs, Rhode Island, Heartland, Raindance, Cucalorus, Big Sky Doc, Thessaloniki Doc, NewportFilm
About:
A profile of three young boys whose parents are in prison.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD this week:
AN ENGINEER IMAGINES
Director:
Marcus Robinson
World Premiere:
Irish Film Institute Documentary Festival 2018
Select Festivals:
Newport Beach
About:
A tribute to Irish structural engineer Peter Rice, known for iconic architectural works including the Sydney Opera House and the Pompidou Centre.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
photo by Phillipe Plailly Science Photo Library
Director:
Matt Wolf
World Premiere:
Sundance 2020
About:
The strange but true – and uncannily topical – story of the ill-fated Biosphere 2 project.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to virtual theatrical, benefitting Maysles Cinema, tomorrow, Thursday, May 7:
MOSSVILLE: WHEN GREAT TREES FALL
Director:
Alexander John Glustrom
World Premiere:
Full Frame 2019
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, New Orleans, Hot Springs Doc, Washington DC Environmental, BendFilm, Raindance, Durban, Indie Grits, Montclair, Wild & Scenic, Planet in Focus
About:
An intimate profile of one man’s struggle against environmental racism.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Photo: Topical Press Agency/Getty
Director:
Christopher Bruce
World Premiere:
ITV British TV broadcast (April 2020)
About:
An exploration of the impact of WWII on the British monarch.
When Great Britain entered WWII in September 1939, Princess Elizabeth was only 13 years old. As demonstrated in director Christopher Bruce’s competent hour-long doc, her experiences for the duration served as a literal coming of age that would uniquely prepare her for the throne some 13 years later. Following a brief introduction that lays out the unexpected developments that made Elizabeth the heir presumptive, the film proceeds to highlight her activities during the war, including initially being sent away to the relative safety of the countryside before becoming more involved as a public figure as she matured, volunteering for the war effort by participating in fundraisers, delivering radio addresses, and eventually joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a driver, making her the only current world head of state to have served in the military during WWII. While the project’s brief run time make it difficult to dig particularly deep, it benefits enormously from rare archival footage, most likely little seen by general audiences.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
