Category Archives: Releases

Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 17: ANTARCTIC EDGE: 70° SOUTH

Dena Seidel’s look at the work of climate change researchers had its world premiere at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival last month. It will also screen at the upcoming International Wildlife and Minneapolis film fests.

The latest in a growing group of environmental docs set in polar environments, Seidel’s film follows a team of scientists as they investigate the impact of climate change in Antarctica, spending months at sea to study a wide range of subjects, all ultimately connected to increased carbon levels and the warming of the oceans. These include the dramatic loss of sea ice, and its impact on penguin habitat, with a resultant decline in their population; the effects on krill and other smaller organisms that serve as the primary food for larger animals; and the tracking of various species to determine changes in development, feeding ranges, and behavior. Researchers note the dangers posed by icebergs, tempestuous seas, and equipment failure, as well as the personal sacrifices they make to collect the data they hope will ensure the future. Though attempting to inject some personality via brief profiles of a few scientists, Seidel’s film, made through Rutgers University, remains primarily educational rather than artful as it illustrates the important work being done to make sense of the mess we’ve made of the environment.

Coming to PBS’s Latino/a focused Voces series tomorrow, Friday, April 17: CHILDREN OF GIANT

Hector Galán’s look at the impact on Latinos of the 1956 epic GIANT had its world premiere at San Antonio’s CineFestival earlier this year. Since then, the doc has screened in Marfa TX and at a number of community screenings in advance of its PBS debut tomorrow.

Sixty years ago, the small West Texas town of Marfa played host to some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, as George Stevens filmed his adaptation of GIANT. Based on Edna Ferber’s contentious novel, the film embraced its themes of gender inequality and racial and class divisions between Mexican- and Anglo-Americans, heady topics for a studio picture starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. Galán returns to Marfa, speaking to residents who were cast as extras and surviving actors like Earl Holliman and Elsa Cardenas, to reveal behind-the-scenes details of the production’s takeover of the town, and how its controversial themes affected not only Marfa’s residents, but Latino/a audiences around the world. While the film errs too much on the side of the former, indulging in far too many anecdotal reminiscences about run-ins with celebrities and the like, rather than keeping focused on the more interesting focus on race and class, this ostensible focus nevertheless elevates it beyond a simple “making of” featurette.

New to DVD and VOD this week: POPULATION BOOM

Werner Boote’s investigation into the truth behind overpopulation fears debuted in Austrian theatres in 2013. Festival screenings include CPH:DOX, One World, Transylvania, Washington DC’s Environmental film fest, and several other environmental festivals around the world.

Just around Halloween 2011, the media briefly turned its attention to an announcement that the world’s population had reached seven billion, a growth of one billion inhabitants in just a dozen years, sparking renewed interest in the long-held fears of an overpopulated Earth short on basic natural resources. As a result, Austrian filmmaker Boote sets out around the globe to question whether these concerns are justified, adopting an on-camera host presence a la Michael Moore. It’s immediately apparent that Boote doesn’t believe in the supposed dangers of overpopulation, but he feigns naiveté in interview after interview to tease out the real culprits that have led to the problems facing the world. While the established arguments would have it that exponential population growth puts a strain on our global capacity for food, energy, and water, Boote and his interview subjects offer the practical reasoning that it’s not simply a question of overpopulation, but of overconsumption – and the people taking more than their fair share are not the poor of the developing world, who typically don’t have easy access to the planet’s limited non-renewable resources, but instead the greedy developed world, and, more specifically, the banks and the petrochemical industries. Overpopulation, in this conception, is merely a convenient but powerful distraction to shift the blame for a lack of resources from the 1% haves who are swallowing them up to the 99% have-nots who are struggling to make due without. While a simple argument, it’s compelling, but Boote’s tired filmmaking approach, which includes an especially irksome repeated image of the director pretending to read a paper while standing in the middle of traffic in various world cities, as well as extended, non-dynamic sit down interviews, robs the film of the impact it might have had in more capable hands.

New to DVD this week: MANNY

Ryan Moore and Leon Gast’s portrait of a Filipino boxing champion premiered at SXSW last year. It has also screened at Toronto’s Reel Asian and Little Rock, among other fests.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens tonight, Monday, April 13: THE HOMESTRETCH

Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly’s profile on teen homelessness debuted at Hot Docs last year. Screenings followed at AFI Docs, Citizen Jane, Indie Memphis, Human Rights Watch, and Hot Springs, among others.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, April 13: LIVING WITH LINCOLN

Peter Kunhardt and Brian Oakes’ look at one family’s role in preserving a presidential legacy makes its debut as part of the cable network’s popular nonfiction programming.

The family in question is Kunhardt’s own, making this a personal exploration of five generations of familial duty to “the collection,” a largely photo-based archive of all things Abraham Lincoln that was begun by the director’s great-grandfather, Frederick Hill Meserve. Born the same year the Civil War ended, Meserve started amassing his collection to illustrate his father’s war diaries, and soon found himself in possession of the definitive photographic record of the 16th US President, iconic images that would go on to serve as the basis of our popular conception of his likeness on Mt Rushmore, the $5 bill, and the penny. But Kunhardt, who narrates the film, discusses Meserve’s role as the originator of the collection, his focus is largely on Meserve’s primary collaborator, his daughter Dorothy, Peter Kunhardt’s grandmother. Dorothy, a children’s book author and illustrator best known for PAT THE BUNNY, emerges as a fascinating figure full of ideas and aspirations but also possessed of stifling self-doubt that long delayed her book about Lincoln’s assassination. Interwoven with her story is that of Lincoln and his own relationship with his family, as revealed through the historical collection. While the juxtapositions are sometimes a bit clunky and perhaps indulge in some overly speculative psychologizing, Kunhardt’s film still succeeds in conveying the deep significance – and costs – of this generational duty on the Meserve-Kunhardt family.