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
Coming to PBS’s American Masters this Saturday, March 4:
PATSY CLINE
Director:
Barbara J Hall
Premiere:
American Masters (March 2017)
About:
An appreciation of the influential country music singer.
Timed to coincide with Women’s History Month, this hourlong portrait pays tribute to the enduring legacy of Patsy Cline, despite her surprisingly brief career, cut short in an airplane accident in 1963 at the age of 30. Like other profiles in the venerable PBS series, the doc follows a conventional biographical structure, telling the story of how Virginia Patterson Hensley, raised by a single mother in Winchester VA, broke into the music industry as the indelible singer of such standards as “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces,” and “Crazy.” What distinguishes the project – aside from its infectiously appealing subject – is its use of archival material, both fantastic performance footage dating back to some of Cline’s earliest appearances, as well as later interviews with family members and collaborators reflecting on their history together and her lasting impact. These are supplemented with present-day commentary from modern day country performers like Reba McEntire and LeAnn Rimes and others influenced by Cline’s pioneering work as a woman in the traditionally male-dominated country music scene, including screenwriter Callie Khouri and actress Beverly D’Angelo, who portrayed the singer in COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER, a film that helped reinvigorate interest in Cline’s music.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
New to DVD this week:
FIGURES OF SPEECH
Director:
Ari Levinson
Premiere:
Newport Beach 2015
Select Festivals:
Bentonville, Imperial Valley
About:
A look at competitive high school forensics, focusing on the duo interpretation event.
While broader audiences might be familiar with the world of high school debate, other competitive speech events that take place under the same general rubric are lesser known, among them dramatic or humorous interpretation, performed by individuals, or, as is the focus in Levinson’s project, duo interpretation. Duo sees a pair of students perform a short piece of writing, often from a play, under certain constraints – notably an absence of props and a restriction on engaging in eye- or physical contact. Referred to in the doc as “competitive acting,” the event has been an early avenue of artistic expression for a number of now well-known actors or public figures. Levinson follows several duo teams – including quirky twin brothers and high school sweethearts – along the forensic competition circuit, with the goal of qualifying for, and ultimately winning, Nationals. While offering some nostalgic coming-of-age appeal, the film errs in including at least a pair of subjects too many, and in not showcasing quite enough of the teams’ actual interpretations, making for an overlong – and distracting overscored – survey that unfortunately neither fully fleshes out its characters nor the appeal of the forensic event.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 3:
THE FREEDOM TO MARRY
Director:
Eddie Rosenstein
Premiere:
Frameline 2016
Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Hawaii, Savannah, Big Sky Doc, Sebastopol Doc, Jewish fests in SF, Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia, LGBT fests in Houston, Austin, Durham, Atlanta, Melbourne, and Seoul
About:
A behind-the-scenes look at the fight to legalize same-sex unions in America.
I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
After more than three decades of struggle, the same-sex marriage movement concluded one of the most successful civil rights campaigns in the world with a Supreme Court victory in June 2015. At its center was Evan Wolfson, the outspoken founder of advocacy organization Freedom to Marry. Eddie Rosenstein’s inspirational film follows Wolfson and attorney Mary Bonauto as the clock counts down to the Supreme Court decision, while recalling the victories – and setbacks – that set the stage for the landmark case.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 3:
BURLESQUE: HEART OF THE GLITTER TRIBE
Director:
Jon Manning
Premiere:
limited theatrical engagements (February 2017)
About:
A survey of the neo-burlesque scene in Portland OR.
After a long fallow period, burlesque, the once-popular if risqué entertainment known for its focus on the striptease, experienced a revival beginning in the mid-1990s that has continued into the present day, with its presence felt in most larger American cities as well as internationally. Manning focuses his profile on several performers in Portland – among them Zora von Pavonine, Babs Jamboree, Angelique DeVil, Isaiah Esquire, and the Stagedoor Johnnies – none household names like Dita von Teese, but that’s largely the point in this scrappy if conventional doc. These showgirls and showboys appreciate the local spotlight, but they perform for the love of burlesque – as more than one points out, they typically lose money practicing their craft, but they enjoy themselves while doing it. While breaking no new ground, addressing topics familiar from past burlesque-focused docs, and suffering from attempting to cover too many subjects, Manning’s film nevertheless offers a welcome, empowering message of self-acceptance, sex- and body-positivity, and the impact of being part of an intentional community.
Filed under Documentary, Film, Releases
New on VOD this week:
KOKO: THE GORILLA WHO TALKS
Director:
Jonathan Taylor
Premiere:
British TV (2016)
About:
The story of the famed female gorilla who has been taught sign language over the past several decades.
I previously wrote about the doc here,
Filed under Documentary, Film, Recommendations, Releases
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