Category Archives: Releases

Coming to theatres today, Friday, March 8:
ISLAND OF THE HUNGRY GHOSTS

Director:
Gabrielle Brady

Premiere:
Visions du Reel 2018

Select Festivals:
Tribeca, Docaviv, Edinburgh, Guanajuato, New Zealand, Melbourne, Dokufest, Camden, Reykjavik, Adelaide, Athens, Goteborg, DocPoint, ZagrebDox, RIDM, DOK Leipzig, New Zealand, Tallin Black Nights, Docs Against Gravity

About:
An impressionistic portrait of migration and limbo on Australia’s Christmas Island.

Christmas Island is a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, and, as legend has it, is haunted by the titular spirits of the Chinese laborers who were brought there over a century ago to work its phosphate mines. But in Brady’s metaphor-heavy meditation, other, living ghosts now find themselves trapped on the island: asylum seekers. Unlike Christmas Island’s cast of red crabs making their dangerous migratory journey to the ocean, helped to safely cross roadways by conscientious residents, these human migrants are instead confined to a detention center for indefinite periods of time. Help comes in the form of trauma counselor Poh Lin Lee, whose sessions with her detainee are threaded through this project, but Lee herself is growing more and more demoralized by the limbo her patients are forced to endure. Brady doesn’t always successfully integrate the various threads here, preferencing atmosphere and immersion over clarity and engagement at times, but she nevertheless has crafted a thoughtful look at the ongoing crisis of migration in a distinctive way.

Coming to PBS’s Doc World this Sunday, March 10:
¡LAS SANDINISTAS!

Director:
Jenny Murray

Premiere:
SXSW 2018

Select Festivals:
Lima, Southern Circuit, Maryland

About:
The female leaders of the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution look back at their unsung accomplishments.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 8:
BLACK MOTHER

Director:
Khalik Allah

Premiere:
True/False 2018

Select Festivals:
CPH:DOX, Sheffield, New Directors/New Films, Sarasota, Montclair

About:
An essay offering a meditation on Jamaican identity, history, and spirituality.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s WORLD Channel tonight, Monday, March 4:
WARRIOR WOMEN

Directors:
Christina D King and Elizabeth Castle

Premiere:
Hot Docs 2018

Select Festivals:
Traverse City, Seattle, San Francisco Green, Calgary, Margaret Mead, Milwaukee, San Francisco American Indian, Los Angeles SKINS, Guelph, Cucalorus, Athena, Big Sky Doc

About:
A longtime Native American activist reflects on a lifetime of resistance.

Lakota activist Madonna Thunder Hawk, now nearing 80, has been fighting for indigenous rights since the late 1960s. A leader in the American Indian Movement, she participated in Wounded Knee, as well as other actions, while also preparing the next generation of Native Americans through her We Will Remember Survival School, teaching the children of fellow activists and political prisoners. Among her students was her own daughter, Marcy. King and Castle’s film profiles Thunder Hawk, in conversation with her peers as well as Marcy, as they look back on seminal moments in the struggle for Native rights, and, particularly, the pivotal role played by women, while also demonstrating their present-day resolve when facing issues like the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thunder Hawk is an inspiring figure, but the film’s episodic structure and short running time prevents this project from being as fully developed as it could have been.