New to DVD this week:
NOTFILM
Director:
Ross Lipman
Premiere:
BFI London 2015
Select Festivals:
CPH:DOX, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Dublin, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects series, BAFICI.
About:
The story behind Samuel Beckett’s only film project, FILM.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, March 7:
OKLAHOMA CITY
Director:
Barak Goodman
Premiere:
Sundance 2017
About:
A look back at the events which led to the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, March 7:
WE ARE X
Director:
Stephen Kijak
Premiere:
Sundance 2016
Select Festivals:
SXSW, Vancouver, Seattle, BFI London, Shanghai, Guanajuato, IDFA
About:
A profile of Japanese super band X Japan and its charismatic frontman, Yoshiki X.
My pre-Sundance profile of the doc may be found here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Recommendations, Releases, Sundance
Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, March 7:
THE C WORD
Director:
Meghan O’Hara
Premiere:
Hamptons 2015
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Cleveland, Martha’s Vineyard, Napa Valley, Traverse City, Newport
About:
A personal battle with cancer prompts a reconsideration of the way Western society approaches the disease.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
The 19th edition of Prague’s One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival kicks off today, Monday, March 6 and runs through Wednesday, March 15. Over 100 new and recent documentary features will screen at the event, with some highlights noted below:
Among the titles in the Czech Competition are: Zuzana Piussi’s CZECH ALLAH, on Czech society’s response to Islam and the migrant crisis; Tomáš Kudrna’s IDA’S IDEA, about a woman’s Roma children’s choir; and Eva Tomanová’s I WON’T SELL MY SOUL, which explores the controversy of child surrogacy in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, the International Competition includes such films as: Alexandre Dereims’ WE ARE HUMANITY (pictured), about the struggles of the indigenous people of a remote Indian Ocean island; Petr Lom’s BURMA STORYBOOK, on a Burmese dissident poet; and Marc Silver’s TO END A WAR, a candid look at the hardfought Colombian peace process. And the Right to Know competition features work like: Mina Keshavarz’s BRAVING THE WAVES, about an entrepreneurial Iranian woman as she faces off against local authorities; Roser Corella’s GRAB AND RUN, which explores the Kyrgyz custom of bride kidnapping; and Elina Hirvonen’s BOILING POINT, on the rise of fascistic nationalists in modern Finland.
The festival’s many noncompetitive strands explore the migrant crisis in Dreams of Europe, with films like Pia Lenz’s I’M OKAY, which looks at two foreign youth trying to adjust to life in Germany; normalcy and difference in Who is Normal Here?, in docs including Maria Teresa Larraín’s SHADOW GIRL, following the filmmaker back to her native Chile as she loses her eyesight; the role of family, in Family Happiness, through Jasna Krajinovic’s THE EMPTY ROOM, about the family of a radicalized Belgian Muslim; society and environment, in So-Called Civilzation, with films like Fredrik Oskarsson’s NUCLEAR NEIGHBOUR, which follows a young mother’s transformation into an anti-nuclear power activist; urban space, in Faces of the City, through Anders Eklund’s GAMING THE REAL WORLD, which explores a Swedish city’s use of Minecraft to encourage participatory urban planning; media in the Power of the Media; with Hans Busstra’s CYBERJIHAD, exploring virtual world techniques used by terrorist groups; and social upheaval in Journeys to Freedom, including Alistair Cole’s COLOURS OF THE ALPHABET, which looks at the problems resulting from schooling not being done in students’ native language.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Film Festivals, Overviews, Releases
Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, March 6:
THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO YO MA & THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE
Director:
Morgan Neville
Premiere:
Toronto 2015
Select Festivals:
Berlin, True/False, San Francisco, Montclair, DocAviv, Los Angeles, Sydney, Provincetown, Biografilm
About:
A profile of the acclaimed cellist and the collective of international musicians he founded to explore crosscultural creativity.
I previously wrote about the doc here.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Now available on the New York Times as part of their Op-Docs:
LONG LIVE BENJAMIN
Directors:
Jimm Lasser and Biff Butler
Premiere:
DOC NYC 2016
Select Festivals:
IDFA
About:
A poignant and funny six-part docuseries about a man and his monkey.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC, saying:
While visiting his wife’s homeland of Venezuela in 1997, noted portrait artist Allen Hirsch unexpectedly fell in love. The object of his affection? A deathly ill, orphaned newborn Capuchin monkey named Benjamin. Nursing Benjamin back to health and sneaking him into New York City, Allen would find his life – and his sense of self – forever changed by his adopted simian son.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres today, Friday, March 3:
KINGS, QUEENS, & IN-BETWEENS
Director:
Gabrielle Burton
Premiere:
Cleveland 2016
Select Festivals:
Southern Circuit, Buffalo, Newark, LGBT fests in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Bern
About:
Drag performers in Columbus OH explain gender, sex, sexuality, and drag.
Burton’s earnest project aims to assemble as varied a range of performers as possible to explore the spectrum of gender performance. While her subjects are overwhelmingly white, they do notably reflect a diversity of gender identity and performative perspective, and include drag queens, drag kings, trans men, trans women, genderqueers, bio men, and bio women. While all well and good, the problem is that the film otherwise retreads themes that have been explored countless times before in other docs, presented in a barebones survey. Subjects introduce themselves and their performance personae, and then proceed to explain familiar concepts to an apparently completely unschooled imagined audience who may as well be attending an LGBT/drag 101 course for the first time. In between a parade of talking heads footage in which the performers explicate the differences between gender, sex, sexuality, and drag, the film offers snippets from their unsurprising routines. While making the subject matter accessible is laudable, the project’s main audience is likely to be from within the LGBT community rather than from without, and would generally have somewhat of a clear sense of these concepts already. The most intriguing element here, the regional specificity of their Columbus location and the way that drag can create a sense of community, is unfortunately left under-explored.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to the World Channel’s Reel South series this Sunday, March 5:
SHAKE ‘EM ON DOWN: THE BLUES ACCORDING TO FRED MCDOWELL
Directors:
Joe York
Select Festivals:
Southern Circuit, Oxford, Raindance
About:
The story of a legendary Mississippi bluesman.
McDowell, who was best known as Mississippi Fred McDowell, emerged in the late 1950s/early 1960s as part of the blues revival that saw a newfound appreciation for American music, particularly African-American musicians in the American South. While McDowell supported himself as a sharecropper, he had performed locally in Mississippi, but it wasn’t until noted ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and British folk singer Shirley Collins discovered his work in 1959 that the musician was able to reach a larger audience through album recordings and festival and other live performances. York’s loving profile details McDowell’s origins, as well as his standing as a pioneer of a distinctive Mississippi sound known as the north hill country blues style, showcasing his talent through choice archival performance footage and with particularly compelling commentary from Bonnie Raitt, who was mentored by the musician before his death in 1972.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
New to VOD this week:
A NEW HIGH
Directors:
Samuel Miron and Stephen Scott Scarpulla
Premiere:
Los Angeles 2015
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Seattle, Salem, Twin Cities, Illuminate
About:
A group of Seattle addicts attempt to climb Mt Rainier to conquer their demons.
Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission provides counseling and shelter for men and women in need, including individuals struggling with addiction. One of its recovery programs, led by Mike Johnson, a former Army Ranger, trains participants in mountain climbing over a year, with a select few qualifying for the biggest challenge: attempting the summit Mt Rainier. Miron and Scarpulla follow Mike and several of his charges as they challenge themselves, working under the simple idea that developing the strength to take on a mountain also gives them the tools to face their addiction head on and stay clean and sober. Not all of them make it through the program, whether because of relapse or physical limitations, but they find themselves changed by the experience, as captured with candor and immediacy in this engaging chronicle.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
