New to VOD this week:
MIMI AND DONA
Director:
Sophie Sartain
Premiere:
Dallas Videofest 2014
Select Festivals:
Thin Line, Sebastopol Doc, ReelAbilities
About:
A nonagenarian mother and her intellectually-disabled daughter deal with a major transition.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres this Friday, October 6:
DINA
Directors:
Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles
Premiere:
Sundance 2017
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Nantucket, True/False, Full Frame, SF Jewish, Seattle, Sheffield, Sun Valley, Sarasota
About:
A profile an unforgettable woman as she seeks to realize her desires.
My pre-Sundance look at the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to theatres today, Wednesday, October 4:
CHAVELA
Directors:
Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi
Premiere:
Berlin 2017
Select Festivals:
Nantucket, Hot Docs, Sheffield, AFI Docs, Provincetown, Guadalajara, Malaga, Ambulante, BAFICI, Montclair, Seattle, Krakow, Transylvania, Sydney, Galway, Frameline, Outfest, Inside Out, LGBT fests in Milan, Barcelona, Austin, Palm Springs, Chicago
About:
A portrait of an iconic Latin American singer.
I previously wrote about the doc for Nantucket’s program, saying:
Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi pay loving tribute to Chavela Vargas, a figure legendary throughout Latin America for her breathtaking romantic songs, who found more widespread fame by being showcased in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. Adopting masculine attire and performing songs typically reserved for men, she was an iconoclast in a traditionally macho culture, both on stage and off – as evidenced by her passionate love affairs with women like Frida Kahlo and Ava Gardner.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to DVD this week:
MR GAGA
Director:
Tomer Heymann
Premiere:
Jerusalem 2015
Select Festivals:
IDFA, Hot Docs, SXSW, London, New Orleans, Vilnius, Full Frame, DOK Fest Munich, DOXA, Transilvania, Seattle, Tel Aviv, Sheffield, Shanghai, SF Jewish, Miami Jewish, New Zealand, Bergen, Sao Paulo, RIDM
About:
A portrait of acclaimed Israeli dancer/choreographer Ohad Naharin.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
New to VOD this week:
ESCAPES
Director:
Michael Almereyda
Premiere:
BAMcinemaFest 2016
Select Festivals:
Rotterdam, San Francisco (both as WIP)
About:
An unconventional biography of occasional actor and BLADE RUNNER screenwriter Hampton Fancher.
I previously wrote about the doc
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, October 3:
THE SENSITIVES
Director:
Drew Xanthopoulos
Premiere:
Tribeca 2017
Select Festivals:
Camden, Newburyport Doc, New Hampshire, Santa Fe
About:
An intimate portrait of several individuals suffering from inexplicable, debilitating environmental allergies.
Over the course of several years, Xanthopoulos followed three stories about “sensitives,” people suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and environment-related disabilities, perhaps best-remembered from Todd Haynes’ 1995 film SAFE, starring Julianne Moore. Here, the focus is on Joe, a husband and grandfather who wrestles with the idea of relocating to a community protected from environmental triggers; Karen and her grown twin sons Sam and Nathan, who long ago moved to the desert and depend on Karen’s elderly mother for all of their needs; and Susie, who risks her own well-being to advocate for others suffering in isolation. Focused more on humanizing the misunderstood sufferers of chemical and electrical sensitivities, often too readily dismissed as psychologically troubled, Xanthopoulos crafts a beautifully lensed, meditative film.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, October 3:
DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME
Director:
Bill Morrison
Premiere:
Venice 2016
Select Festivals:
New York Film Festival, London, Rotterdam, Göteborg, Thessaloniki Doc, BAFICI, It’s All True, Docs Against Gravity, Seattle, Melbourne, EBS Doc, Sydney
About:
Lost films discovered preserved in the Yukon permafrost are used to tell the story of their origins.
In the remote Canadian town of Dawson City in 1978, a cache of nitrate films were unearthed during the excavation of an old hockey rink for a construction project. The Dawson City Film Find contained more than 500 silent film reels, many long believed lost. From this beginning, Morrison turns back the clock to the foundation of the town amid the Klondike Gold Rush, displacing First Nations people in the process, and creatively uses clips from the discovered films, together with old newsreels and other archival materials, to trace Dawson City’s history up through 1978 – with some curious but fitting diversions about money, industry, and capitalism – explaining in the process how the films ended up in the permafrost. The result is an artful, fascinating excavation of time and place, all through a deep love for film.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, October 3:
THE FARTHEST
Director:
Emer Reynolds
Premiere:
Dublin 2017
Select Festivals:
Tribeca, Edinburgh, Seattle, AFI Docs, Sydney, New Zealand, Telluride Mountainfilm
About:
A comprehensive history of the Voyager mission, from inception to execution to the present day.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Tuesday, October 3 through Thursday, October 5:
MULLY
Director:
Scott Haze
Premiere:
Austin 2015
Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Africa World, Winnipeg, Bentonville, Virginia
About:
A portrait of a Kenyan businessman turned advocate for street children.
Charles Mulli (also apparently spelled Mully), grew up an orphan, abandoned to the streets by his family. He worked his way out of poverty, eventually amassing a fortune in the transportation industry before turning his energies to rescuing orphans and other disadvantaged children as part of his nonprofit, Mully Children’s Family. Haze’s film allows Mulli to tell his story, using an excessive amount of reenactments to illustrate his overly dramatic recitation, as well as an over the top score. Often hagiographical and overtly religious, the film unfortunately feel less like a documentary and more like a promotional tool, detracting from the more interesting elements of the story of an unusual extended family and on the personal costs of charity – most strongly expressed by the more complex reflections of the subject’s biological children, who seem to have felt sacrificed to the demands of their father’s larger charitable mission.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, October 3:
RAT FILM
Director:
Theo Anthony
Premiere:
Locarno 2016
Select Festivals:
Rotterdam, True/False, SXSW, Florida, Maryland, Art of the Real, Docaviv, Doclisboa, Vancouver, Mar del Plata, Torino
About:
A provocative essay about Baltimore’s rodents emerges as a simultaneous cultural anthropology of race and class.
I previously wrote about the film here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
what (not) to doc 