About: A soulful and heartfelt celebration of 50 years of the funky and fabulous New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the unique culture of the southern city.
Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, July 26: MARX CAN WAIT
Director: Marco Bellocchio
World Premiere: Cannes 2021
Select Festivals: New York, Busan, BFI London, Taipei Golden Horse, Vienna, IDFA, BAFICI
About: In his most achingly personal film to date, the legendary Italian filmmaker uses the occasion of a family reunion to excavate and discuss a traumatic event: the suicide of his twin brother Camillo.
Select Festivals: Margaret Mead, Reykjavik, DOXA, Open City Docs, Nordisk Panorama
About: In Maniitsoq, Greenland, the US aluminum giant Alcoa Corporation has been planning to build a smelting plant for years, and, with it, the nation’s possible first steps towards economic renewal and political sovereignty.
About: An examination of the representation of homosexuality in Golden Age Hollywood cinema.
The film screened at NewFest, for which our program notes read: If you thought you’d seen it all in THE CELLULOID CLOSET, think again! In this latest installment of queer film history, Mark Rappaport, the acclaimed director of ROCK HUDSON’S HOME MOVIES, enlists the talents of FRASIER co-star Dan Butler to take you on an ingenious and highly entertaining journey through the golden years of classic Hollywood cinema, highlighting the continual presence of some extremely queer characters on the silver screen. Through the skillful dissection of film clips, Rappaport offers astute and persuasive readings of particular male star personae, including Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, Cary Grant, Jerry Lewis, and Clifton Webb, to demonstrate how thoroughly ambiguous Hollywood masculinity really was.
Coming to Hulu tomorrow, Tuesday, July 19: AFTERSHOCK
Director: Paula Eiselt, Tonya Lewis Lee
World Premiere: Sundance 2022
Select Festivals: BlackStar, Full Frame, Hot Docs, DC/Dox, SXSW, Martha’s Vineyard African American, BAMcinemaFest, Essence Fest, American Black
About: Following the preventable deaths of their partners due to childbirth complications, two bereaved fathers galvanize activists, birth-workers, and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises of our time – the US maternal health crisis.
Select Festivals: New Orleans, CAAMFest, DOXA, BlackStar, Portland, Los Angeles Asian Pacific, Harlem, Toronto Reel Asian, Martha’s Vineyard, San Diego Asian, Hawaii
About: Native Americans, Japanese-American WWII incarcerees, and environmentalists form an unexpected alliance to defend their land and water from Los Angeles.
Select Festivals: Jihlava, Thessaloniki Doc, FID Marseille, Jerusalem, Indielisboa, Open City Doc
About: A handful of prisoners in WWII camps risked their lives to take clandestine photographs and document the hell the Nazis were hiding from the world. In the vestiges of the camps, director Christophe Cognet retraces the footsteps of these courageous men and women in a quest to unearth the circumstances and the stories behind their photographs.