Category Archives: Releases

Coming to DVD this Friday, January 19:
ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE

Directors:
Peter Getzels and Harriet Gordon Getzels

Premiere:
Full Frame 2017

Select Festivals:
DocUtah, Jewish fests in Los Angeles, London, and Washington DC

About:
A survivor of the Holocaust and Communist persecution becomes a pioneer in classical music.

In the Getzels’ portrait, the now-90-year-old Zuzana Ruzickova relates the story of her eventful life, and the central role music has played within it. Growing up Jewish in Czechoslovakia, she survived three concentration camps as a teenager only to return to her homeland under Communist rule, where antisemitism and persecution continued. Despite this, she found both a refuge and a way to excel through music – Ruzickova became the first person to record the complete works of Bach on focused on the harpsichord, re-popularizing he instrument in her country in the process. After the fall of Communism, she worked with her husband to expand musical education in the Czech Republic. While Ruzickova is an impressive figure, the film feels overlong, sometimes detailing elements that are overly familiar and losing its focus on its most distinguishing feature – her music.

Coming to DVD/VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 16:
WHAT LIES UPSTREAM

Director:
Cullen Hoback

Premiere:
Slamdance 2017

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Seattle, AFI Docs, Traverse City, Dallas, Sonoma, Ashland

About:
The filmmaker investigates the coverup behind drinking water contamination in West Virginia.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s American Experience and to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 16:
THE SECRET OF TUXEDO PARK

Director:
Rob Rapley

Premiere:
American Experience (January 2018)

About:
The little-known story of the Wall Street tycoon-turned-scientific benefactor who helped win WWII.

Tuxedo Park, an unassuming village 40 miles north of New York City, served as the site of a cutting edge laboratory during the 1930s and ’40s, overseen by Alfred Loomis. After making his fortune on Wall Street, and cagily avoiding the crash of 1929, the wealthy gentleman scientist opened his mansion, known as Tower House, to pioneering thinkers in science and engineering from home and abroad, defying the isolationism of the time. As war erupted in Europe, and convinced that America inevitably would be drawn into the conflict, Loomis began developing game-changing technology to combat the Axis’ seemingly unstoppable war machine. Working in secret, Loomis and his team would perfect short wave radar technology in his Rad Lab, as revealed in Rapley’s informative, if conventional, biographical profile. While the dramatic introduction of atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would steal radar’s thunder – and the notoriously press-adverse Loomis was content to remain unheralded – the technology he developed was said to have won the war, while the atomic bomb merely ended it.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, January 12:
WHAT LIES UPSTREAM

Director:
Cullen Hoback

Premiere:
Slamdance 2017

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Seattle, AFI Docs, Traverse City, Dallas, Sonoma, Ashland

About:
The filmmaker investigates the coverup behind drinking water contamination in West Virginia.

Hoback, taking a crusading Michael Moore/Josh Fox approach, appears throughout his film as an onscreen guide and narrator – an unnecessarily excessive and at times clumsy device – as he tries to get to the bottom of a spill that took place in early 2014 in Charleston’s Elk River which might never have been revealed save for a distinctive licorice smell in the drinking water. Fingers point to Freedom Industries, but Hoback suspects the chemical company is a convenient fall guy for a much deeper problem. The filmmaker finds compelling figures in local health department head Dr Rahul Gupta, who questions the safety of the contaminated water despite state official reassurances; and in Randy Huffman, head of WV’s Department of Environmental Protection, who is surprisingly open about how the organization primarily serves to help corporate exploitation of resources. Hoback’s digging revels the collusion of corporate interests with the government, evidence of regulatory capture in a broken system that works for industry rather than the public good.