Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, January 15:
THE DIPLOMAT
Director:
David Holbrooke
Premiere:
Tribeca 2015
Select Festivals:
San Francisco, Traverse City, Sarajevo, AFI Docs, Mountainfilm, Jerusalem
About:
A tribute to the director’s ambassador father.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to Hulu this week:
FYRE FRAUD
Directors:
Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason
Premiere:
Hulu (January 2019)
About:
A chronicle of the disastrous 2017 music festival that was meant to rival Coachella.
Released just days before the Chris Smith helmed Netflix documentary FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED, Furst and Nason’s rival Hulu project gives its own spin on the debacle that was Fyre Festival. Conceived by Billy McFarland and musician Ja Rule, and heavily promoted to FOMO-averse, cash-flush Millennials by social media influencers, the Great Exuma, Bahamas music fest was sold as a generation-defining event, but instead generated global schadenfreude when reports spread about how ill-prepared organizers were for attendees. While dismissed by many as #whitepeopleproblems, the Fyre Festival disaster led to multiple lawsuits and accusations of fraud with serious jail time. The filmmakers back up from the epic fail everyone knows and loves to focus on McFarland, who is interviewed throughout, laying out his history of dodgy entrepreneurship – what many featured here instead call con jobs – and how he developed and mishandled Fyre. While delivering jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes details of the doomed event, the doc also offers surprising insight into the psychology of deception, the manipulation of perception, and the power of social media and branding.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 15:
THE INSUFFERABLE GROO
Director:
Scott Christopherson
Premiere:
Sheffield 2018
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Sydney Underground, Calgary Underground
About:
A behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a low-budget auteur.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, January 14:
RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE
Directors:
Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler, Jeff Springer
Premiere:
DOC NYC 2017
Select Festivals:
Full Frame, Big Sky Doc, Wild and Scenic, Oxford, Washington DC Environmental, Salem, Indie Grits, Freep, Sarasota, IFF Boston, RiverRun, Doc Edge, SF DocFest, Woods Hole, Sidewalk, DocUtah, Yale Environmental, Tallgrass, Hot Springs Doc
About:
A wide-ranging look at efforts to protect Louisiana from a giant swamp rat.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, January 11:
THE SILENCE OF OTHERS
Directors:
Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar
Premiere:
Berlin 2018
Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Sheffield, AFI Docs, Reyjkavik, Docs Against Gravity, Cairo, Hamptons, Mar del Plata, Los Angeles, Moscow
Notable Recognition:
The doc was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.
About:
Victims and survivors of Franco’s brutal regime take to Argentine courts to seek justice.
The regime of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco was marked by arrests, disappearances, and executions. After his passing in 1975, and the establishment of democracy, policies were put into practice to encourage forgetting the past in order for Spain to move forward. As a result, while political prisoners were freed, the perpetrators of torture and murder were granted amnesty – a decision that has remained controversial ever since. In recent years, as detailed in Carracedo and Bahar’s project, with no legal recourse within Spain, survivors turned to the idea of universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, and filed suit in Argentine courts against Spanish perpetrators. The doc profiles several of the parties to the suit as the wheels of justice very slowly turn. While affecting at times, this conventionally told film includes far too many subjects, robbing it of focus, and, as it details an ongoing, unresolved lawsuit, ultimately feels unfinished.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
New to DVD this week:
TRANSMILITARY
Director:
Gabe Silverman
Co-Director:
Fiona Dawson
Premiere:
SXSW 2018
Select Festivals:
AFI Docs, Florida, Minneapolis-St Paul, Frameline, Outfest
About:
Four transgender members of the US military work to end the ban on their service, only to see Trump try to reinstate it.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, January 11:
THE DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS
Director:
Simon Lereng Wilmont
Premiere:
IDFA 2017
Select Festivals:
CPH:DOX, San Francisco, Reyjkavik, Göteborg, Hong Kong, DOK.fest Munich, Docaviv, It’s All True, Docs Against Gravity, Docpoint, !f Istanbul, Vilnius
Notable Recognition:
The doc was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.
About:
A pre-teen boy lives near the border of the Ukraine/Russian war.
Lereng Wilmont crafts a dual portrait of war and of coming of age through this beautifully realized observational project. For three years, his camera intimately follows Oleg, beginning at the age of ten, as the orphaned boy lives in a small Ukrainian village with his grandmother. Situated close to the war zone, the sounds of war can be heard together with the titular canine calls. As Oleg grows up, his grandmother is less and less able to shield him from the realities of the conflict, including the presence of guns and other weapons of war, leading to a heartbreaking loss of innocence and a corresponding darkening of tone as this well-made film progresses.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to DVD this week:
FAR FROM THE TREE
Director:
Rachel Dretzin
Premiere:
DOC NYC 2017
Select Festivals:
Montclair, RiverRun, GlobeDocs, Documentary Edge, IFF Boston, Hawaii
About:
A film essay and career retrospective examining society’s preoccupation with materialism.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to DVD and VOD this week:
QUEERCORE: HOW TO PUNK A REVOLUTION
Director:
Yony Leyser
Premiere:
Sheffield 2017
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, IDFA, One World, Docs Against Gravity, Vienna, Frameline, Outfest, and LGBT fests in Copenhagen, Belgrade, and Brussels
About:
An entertaining cultural history of the development and influence of the queer punk scene.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In the mid-1980s, Bruce LaBruce and GB Jones, a pair of young Canadians, introduced the world to the burgeoning Toronto queer punk scene through homemade zines and scrappy films. In this pre-Internet era, there was no way of knowing that queercore consisted of just two people. Soon enough, their subversive creation spread beyond their bedrooms to attract actual adherents, spawning a radical underground subculture that challenged both the mainstream gay and homophobic punk scenes.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, January 8:
HILLBILLY
Directors:
Sally Rubin and Ashley York
Premiere:
Nashville 2018
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Los Angeles, Traverse City, SF DocFest, Hot Springs Doc, Heartland, Southern Circuit
About:
A personal exploration of the representation of rural America.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
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