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
Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, January 7:
MY COUNTRY NO MORE
Directors:
Rita Baghdadi and Jeremiah Hammerling
Premiere:
Big Sky Doc 2018
Select Festivals:
SF DocFest, Docutah, Chagrin Doc, AmDocs
About:
A North Dakota family and their community fight plans to develop an oil refinery in their backyard.
Fracking has become a largely accepted part of life and a boon to North Dakota’s economy since the discovery of a massive oil field in 2006, but it comes with consequences. Baghdadi and Hammerling examines the impact of the oil boom on the small community of Trenton, where local ranchers face the choice between giving up long-held family farms and land, or cashing in for the short-term financial benefits. At the core of the film is Kalie Rider and her family, who emerges as an unlikely leader in the fight to stop the construction of an oil processing plant, spearheaded by North Dakota Processing’s Mel Falcon, who has made headway in rezoning requests and in convincing others in the community to sell their land. While the film struggles at times to enliven what amounts to numerous scenes of public hearings and meetings, the conflict facing Trenton serves as a thoughtful microcosm for larger national questions around energy, economic growth, and land use.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, January 4:
THE VENERABLE W
Director:
Barbet Schroeder
Premiere:
Cannes 2017
Select Festivals:
Locarno, Telluride, New York, London, IDFA, CPH:DOX, Docslisboa, Jihlava, Docs Against Gravity, Jerusalem, Melbourne, New Zealand, Helsinki, Moscow, Vancouver, Rio, Mill Valley, Mar del Plata, Singapore
About:
A portrait of a Buddhist monk who has fomented Islamophobia in Burma.
The third in Schroeder’s so-called “Trilogy of Evil” – following 1974’s GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA: A SELF PORTRAIT and 2007’s TERROR’S ADVOCATE on attorney to terrorists Jacques Vergès – profiles Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk long linked to anti-Muslim movements in Myanmar – so much so that Time referred to him as “The Face of Buddhist Terror” in a 2013 cover story. While claiming to be a peaceful preacher, he publicly denounces the nation’s Muslim population, the Rohingya, and spreads inflammatory messages about Islam and the need to purify the nation – rhetoric that has resulted in violence, as chillingly captured on cell phone and You Tube videos. Schroeder lays out the history of Rohingya persecution in Burma, but largely allows Wirathu to demonstrate his hateful beliefs via interviews and footage of public preaching. Save for the strange contrivance of utilizing a Western actress to serve as a whispery voice of Buddhism being drowned out by Wirathu’s opportunistic fear-mongering, the film’s construction is fairly straightforward – almost too staid – but succeeds in conveying another example of the disturbing rise of nationalist xenophobia and division in the world today.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, January 4:
COMMUNION
Director:
Anna Zamecka
Premiere:
Locarno 2016
Select Festivals:
IDFA, Warsaw, DOK Leipzig, Göteborg, True/False, Sarasota, Docaviv, Yamagata Doc
Notable Recognition:
The doc was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.
About:
A Polish teenager is forced to assume adult responsibilities.
Zamecka’s striking debut draws the viewer into the lives of Ola, a 14-year-old girl and Nikodem, her younger brother, who has autism. Their mother abandoned the family to begin a new one with another man, while their father is an alcoholic, leaving Ola to take on the burden of running the household while also attempting to keep up with her studies. If that wasn’t enough, the overwhelmed teen finds herself leading Nikodem in the frustrating task of studying Scripture for his first communion. While there appears to be some element of hybridized filmmaking here, Zamecka doesn’t explicitly foreground any artifice, resulting instead in a compelling, humanistic observational portrait of a remarkably adaptive young girl whose childhood and innocence is slipping away far too quickly.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, January 1:
DAUGHTERS OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE DALLAS COWBOYS CHEERLEADERS
Director:
Dana Adam Shapiro
Premiere:
SXSW 2018
Select Festivals:
Nantucket, USA, Tallgrass, Sarasota, Lighthouse
About:
An insider’s look at the legendary cheerleading squad.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2:
GENESIS 2.0
Director:
Christian Frei
Co-Director:
Maxim Arbugaev
Premiere:
Sundance 2018
Select Festivals:
Locarno, IDFA, Zurich, Docs Against Gravity, Sarasota
About:
Siberian hunters and international scientists attempt to resurrect the woolly mammoth.
I profiled the doc before Sundance here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
