Category Archives: Releases

Coming to VOD via Amazon Instant Video today, Friday, February 17:
ART BASTARD

Director:
Victor Kanefsky

Premiere:
Orlando 2015

Select Festivals:
Newport Beach, Manchester, Santa Fe, Julien Dubuque

About:
A portrait of a frustrated, underappreciated artist who considers himself the Anti-Warhol.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Now on VOD via iTunes:
THE MAN WHOSE MIND EXPLODED

Director:
Toby Amies

Premiere:
Sheffield 2013

Select Festivals:
East End, BFI Flare, Brighton, Cambridge, Cork, Revelation

About:
The filmmaker befriends an eccentric gay man who has lost the ability to retain his memory.

Drako Zarharzar is an affable, rotund gay man with a ridiculous, Daliesque moustache, tattoos, and piercings, who is prone to public nudity and always surprised by the filmmaker showing up to interview him, given his memory issues. He has crammed his apartment with all sorts of pornography, creating a floor-to-ceiling mural of penises, remembers some memories at times, and likes to play with his nipples – he has cut holes in his shirt to give him easy access. While Amies’ film is framed by Drako’s apartment being cleaned out after his death, its focus is the relationship between the filmmaker and his subject over the preceding four years. This includes an awkward meeting with Drako’s sister and the recounting of the accident that eventually cost him his memory – but mostly it’s about their friendship, and the challenges his memory posed to making connections with people. Drako is an intriguing subject, but the film, though at times poignant and generally suprisingly upbeat, fails to make the most of his uniqueness, instead emphasizing the same points over and over again. While this may perhaps be intended as an echo of the repetitive experiences Drako goes through due to his anterograde amnesia, it grows somewhat tiresome before too long.

Coming to VOD via iTunes today, Tuesday, February 14:
MARINONI: THE FIRE IN THE FRAME

Director:
Tony Girardin

Premiere:
Hot Docs 2014

Select Festivals:
Global Visions

About:
A portrait of a curmudgeonly racing bike manufacturer.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed tonight, Tuesday, February 14:
A NEW COLOR: THE ART OF BEING EDYTHE BOONE

Director:
Marlene “Mo” Morris

Premiere:
Mill Valley 2015

Select Festivals:
Pan African, Sebastopol Doc, Through Women’s Eyes, Oakland, IFF Boston, SF Jewish, Harlem, Sarasota, San Diego and Nashville Black film festivals

About:
A portrait of an African-American mural artist and activist.

Morris follows Edythe Boone, better known as Edy, over the course of three years, telling the septuagenarian’s story and showcasing her efforts to foster art – and social activism – among diverse communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, her home since relocating her family from Harlem to escape the crack epidemic. As Edy is shown working with children on art projects, she reveals her background, which includes an early upbringing by an Orthodox Jewish family, and contributions to local murals focused on African-American, women, and HIV/AIDS issues, and, to a broader extent, to public art which helps uplift disadvantaged communities. Edy is an appealing, positive subject, but Morris’ storytelling is unfortunately erratic, pingponging between two many themes and too-awkwardly shoehorning a consideration of Black Lives Matters. While Edy’s nephew, Eric Garner, was a victim of excessive police force, the film’s attempt to address this feels too separate from the rest of the project and not sufficiently developed, making it an ill fit for what is otherwise a likeable, if smaller, profile of the inspirational power of art.