what (not) to doc

New to VOD this week:
PUSHKAR PURAN

Director:
Kamal Swaroop

Premiere:
Montreal World 2017

Select Festivals:
Mumbai, DOK Leipzig, Taiwan Doc, Edinburgh, Doclisboa

About:
Several days at a massive Hindu festival.

Cult filmmaker Swaroop’s film is an experimental immersion into the festivities around the Hindu holy city of Pushkar. His camera weaves around various activities, from observers making offerings or cleansing in sacred waters to people dancing, animals being paraded around, and tourists observing the festivities. All the while, a voiceover rattles off Hindu cosmology to accompany the occasionally arresting visuals. Offering virtually no context for viewers unfamiliar with either the city’s importance or whatever larger meaning the poetic meditation is meant to evoke, this remains a messy and not altogether particularly interesting project for outsiders.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, April 26:
IF THE DANCER DANCES

Director:
Maia Wechsler

Premiere:
Dance on Camera 2018

Select Festivals:
Ashland, Raindance

About:
A leading choreographer restages one of Merce Cunningham’s iconic works.

The legendary modern dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham died in 2009, at the age of 90. Determined not to let Cunningham’s work fade away, Stephen Petronio sets out to reintroduce his 1968 piece, RainForest, to new audiences. To that end, Petronio gathers together three members of Cunningham’s company to assist his dancers in restaging the work, and, in so doing, keeping Cunningham’s legacy alive. Wechsler’s film, produced with Lise Friedman, herself a former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, excels when it focuses on the dance itself rather than on reflections on Cunningham, and is better suited to observe the artistic process and its impact on the dancers, past and present, than on the intentions of its late originator.

New to DVD this week:
LIGHT IN THE WATER

Director:
Lis Bartlett

Premiere:
Logo TV (July 2018)

About:
The story of a pioneering LGBT swim team.

I previously wrote about the doc here.