Category Archives: Releases

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens this coming Monday, March 24: ALL OF ME

Alexandra Lescaze’s look at the impact of weight loss on a group of overweight female friends had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year. It went on to screen at Austin and the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, in addition to numerous community and health-based events around the country.

Lescaze explores a once-tight-knit group of friends who bonded over their common size online and at social gatherings for big women and the men who love them. As some women start pursuing surgical options to reduce their weight over health concerns, the group dynamic shifts, with jealousy and vanity leading to rifts. The film focuses on three women in particular: Dawn, who once celebrated her size as a fat fetish model, but whose weight loss has stalled out, leading to problems with her husband; Judy, whose dramatic weight loss is accompanied by a shift to holistic lifestyle; and Zsalynn, the youngest of the three, who has struggled with yo yo dieting even as she is active as a fat acceptance activist. These and the other subjects speak with emotional honesty, serving as powerful examples of the impact society’s sizeism has on us all.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 21: JODOROWSKY’S DUNE

Frank Pavich’s gleeful revisitation of the never-realized sci-fi adaptation had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes last year. It has gone on to screen at Toronto, Telluride, AFI Fest, BFI London, CPH:DOX, Fantastic Fest, Tokyo, and Sitges.

I previously wrote about the doc out of Toronto here.

Coming to NYC theatres and to VOD today, Tuesday, March 18: PRETTY OLD

Walter Matteson’s look at a senior beauty pageant debuted at Santa Barbara in 2012, where it won best documentary. It went on to screen at Nantucket, Woodstock, Newport Beach, San Diego, Ft Lauderdale, and Boston Jewish, among other events. It is now available via iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, Direct TV, PlayStation, Xbox Video, VUDU and YouTube Movies, as well as for theatrical on-demand engagements via Gathr.

For the past thirty years, women over the age of 58 have come to Fall River MA to compete in the Ms Senior Sweetheart Pageant, singled out by many contestants as their favorite of similar types of events. Over the course of eleven days, thirty women join their peers for competition, but with a large dose of camaraderie, celebrating their age and experience rather than ruing it. Interweaved with backstage and onstage pageant goings on, Matteson profiles four of the engaging competitors in greater depth – who contend with cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other concerns – while also providing insight on the event’s history via its indelible founder, Lenny.

Coming to theatres this Wednesday, March 19: THE MISSING PICTURE

Rithy Panh’s memoir of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s regime debuted at Cannes last year, winning the Un Certain Regard. It went on to screen at Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Cleveland, Seattle, Jerusalem, and Göteborg, among several others, and was also Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

I previously wrote about the film out of Toronto here.

Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, March 17: PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KATRINA GILBERT

Shari Cookson and Nick Doob’s portrait of a struggling single working mother had a sneak preview at Big Sky last month before making its official debut on HBO.

A collaboration with Maria Shriver’s The Shriver Report, Cookson and Doob’s film aims to draw attention to the plight of the nation’s 42 million women who live in poverty. Rather than conducting a survey of several subjects, the filmmakers have wisely focused in on one compelling figure, Katrina Gilbert, a 30-year-old mother of three and sole breadwinner in her family. Separated from her husband, who moves back to Tennessee during the course of the film to be closer to their children and to find a job, Gilbert works as a nursing assistant at an extended-care facility for $9.49 an hour. Hard working, but barely scraping by, having to go without costly prescriptions in order to take care of more basic necessities for her young children, Gilbert still dreams of bettering her situation through education. Reminiscent in some ways to the recent KIND HEARTED WOMAN, Cookson and Doob’s film is a sympathetic and illuminating portrait of an often under-represented, if not actively misrepresented, segment of America’s working poor.

Coming to NYC’s IFC Center this Friday, March 14: EXPOSED

Beth B’s exploration of modern burlesque had its world premiere at Berlin last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, DOK.fest Munich, Planete + Doc, Transylvania, Sydney, Moscow, Revelation, Melbourne, and Pornfilmfest Berlin, among others.

I previously described the film in the DOC NYC program, saying:
The World Famous *BOB*, Dirty Martini, Tigger!, Mat Fraser, Julie Atlas Muz, Bunny Love, Bambi the Mermaid, James Habacker and Rose Wood use satire and their own bodies to send up conventional notions of body image, gender, and sexuality in their modern burlesque performances. New York underground filmmaking legend Beth B enters their subversive world, both on stage and behind-the-scenes, in this entertainingly provocative portrait of NYC artists gleefully breaking taboos as they entertain.