Category Archives: Releases

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens this coming Monday, January 16:
WHAT WAS OURS

Directors:
Mat Hames

Premiere:
Big Sky Doc 2016

Select Festivals:
Tulsa, SF Human Rights, LA Skins, Tribal Film Festival

About:
A small group of Native Americans seek the return of their lost sacred objects.

Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. When Jordan, an aspiring Arapaho museum curator, learns that his people’s sacred objects are in the trust of an outside church, or otherwise were long ago sold off to museums, he seeks reconnection with his tribal history. While some elders fear contact with these objects could bring misfortune, Jordan finds an ally in Arapaho high school student Mikala and, eventually, in Philbert, a Shoshone elder who credits his survival of combat in Vietnam to a sacred talisman. Hames follows this intergenerational, inter-tribal group as it travels to Chicago to rediscover their sacred objects with the goal of opening a museum on the reservation. The film feels repetitious and too languidly paced, but is well shot and affecting in its handling of sensitive themes.

New to DVD and VOD this week:
AN ACT OF LOVE

Director:
Scott Sheppard

Premiere:
Mill Valley 2015

Select Festivals:
Denver, Florida, St Louis, Sedona, Newport Beach, Bentonville, deadCENTER, LGBT fests in Calgary, Mumbai, Hartford, Kansas City, Memphis, Palm Springs, Atlanta, extensive church screening tour

About:
A Methodist minister, defrocked after officiating his son’s same-sex marriage, becomes an inadvertent LGBT rights activist.

After his son Tim came out, Reverend Frank Schaefer was personally forced to confront an issue that splits his denomination to this day. Although the United Methodist Church has rejected LGBT ministers and punished heterosexual ones who have officiated same-sex marriages, Schaefer agreed to oversee his son’s wedding. Eventually, an aggrieved parishioner reported him, and, after Schaefer refused to refrain from future officiations, he was defrocked. In his earnest, straightforward profile, Sheppard recounts Schaefer’s story and the efforts he made to be reinstated while speaking out for LGBT inclusivity in the church. While overscored to a detrimental degree, and offering little new in the already well-covered subgenres of same-sex marriage docs and religion/LGBT docs, Schaefer does emerge as an engaging figure whose message could potentially reach the unconverted.

New to DVD/VOD this week:
YARN

Director:
Una Lorenzen

Co-Directors:
Heather Millard and Thordur Jonsson

Premiere:
Göteborg 2016

Select Festivals:
SXSW, Newport Beach, Iceland’s Skjaldborg Doc fest

About:
Survey of artists working in yarn.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to NYC’s Film Forum today, Wednesday, January 11: EVERYBODY KNOWS… ELIZABETH MURRAY

Director:
Kristi Zea

Premiere:
Tribeca 2016

Select Festivals:
Berkshire, FilmColumbia, Vermont, Santa Fe

About:
An appreciation of the late American artist.

Known for her unusually shaped, fractured, and often humorous canvases, Murray was one of a few women artists to enjoy the same level of success afforded to her male contemporaries. Working in NYC since she moved from Chicago in the late 1960s, Murray became part of the burgeoning bohemian art scene, even as she balanced the demands of motherhood, and produced art through her death in 2007. Zea’s hourlong project serves as brief but effective primer to introduce audiences who may not be familiar with Murray’s work – even given the inclusion of her pieces in the permanent collections of major institutions like the Whitney, Guggenheim, and MoMA – while also offering an opportunity for reflection from the artist’s contemporaries and admirers, from longtime gallerist Paula Cooper to Roberta Smith and Chuck Close, particularly on the struggles to combat sexism within the art world.

Film Forum’s run of the hourlong portrait is accompanied by Alison Klayman’s half-hour doc short on 101-year-old artist Carmen Herrera, THE 100 YEARS SHOW.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, January 10:
THE WEEKEND SAILOR

Directors:
Bernardo Arsuaga

Premiere:
Bilbao’s SAIL in Festival 2016

Select Festivals:
Seattle, DocsMx, SF Ocean, Newport Beach, Guanajuato, Waimea Ocean Film Festival

About:
The story of a Mexican yacht that was the underdog in a round the world race in the 1970s.

Arsuaga focuses on Ramon Carlín and the crew of his Sayula II as the Mexican team competes in the first competitive sailing race around the world, organized by the UK in 1973. Known today as the Volvo Ocean Race, the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race pitted several British yachts against other European entries helmed by professional yachtsmen. Into this mix came underdog supreme Carlín, a weekend sailor with no extensive sailing experience and no idea how to organize a crew for this kind of endeavor. He was made a laughingstock in the media but, as appealingly recounted here, ended up pulling off an upset victory after initially being thought lost at sea, and became national heroes for Mexico as a result. Gathering virtually the entire, familial crew, the film ends up drowning in anecdotes and excessive voice of God, television-style narration delivered by Simon Le Bon. More impressively used is the extensive footage shot on the ship during the circumnavigation, as well as during their time ashore between each leg, which provides a welcome sense of immersion for the viewer, in moments… until Le Bon’s voice unfortunately dispels it.