what (not) to doc

Coming to theatres today, Friday, June 30:
MALI BLUES

Director:
Lutz Gregor

Premiere:
Visions du Reel 2016

Select Festivals:
Toronto, IDFA, Munich, Dubai, Indielisboa, Santa Barbara, Minneapolis St Paul, Warsaw, Stockholm

About:
A world music star returns to her homeland of Mali to perform for the first time in defiance of radical Islamic law.

Like many performers, singer Fatoumata Diawara has been unable to pursue her passion in Mali in recent years because of the spread of sharia law and its ban on secular music and dance. When the situation improves, Diawara and several other musicians return to perform in large concert, the Festival of Niger. Lutz follows them as they prepare, filling in their back stories and exploring their connection to an Islam that is not repressive or violent. Diawara eclipses the other protagonists here, suggesting that Lutz might have been better off focusing his attention on either just her or fewer subjects. While well-produced, the film tends toward full-on concert film territory rather than expanding on the situation facing musicians in Mali – a subject which was also already explored in the earlier THEY WILL HAVE TO KILL US FIRST.

Coming to theatres for one-night-only engagements tonight, Thursday, June 29:
HIRED GUN

Director:
Fran Stine

Premiere:
SXSW 2016

Select Festivals:
Noise Pop, Calgary, Melbourne

About:
20 FEET FROM STARDOM for unsung session musicians.

Stine’s affectionate film profiles about a half dozen “hired guns” – dependable, accomplished professional musicians who are called in to work with A-list performers in the studio or in concerts. Known within the industry but generally not by the general public, they support the likes of Billy Joel, Alice Cooper, Pink, Ozzy Osbourne, Mandy Moore, Hillary Duff, and Metallica. Among the several musicians profiled who pop are Liberty Devitto, a drummer who worked extensively for Billy Joel for three decades until a change in direction left him bitter and without a gig; Rudy Sarzo, who played bass for hair metal bands like Ozzy, Quiet Riot, and Whitesnake; and Jason Hook, who went from being kept on retainer by Hillary Duff to out of a job until he formed the successful Five Finger Death Punch. While tackling similar ground as STARDOM, Stine’s survey lacks a strong driving structure and depends too much on anecdotes to leave as strong impression as that film.

Coming to theatres this Friday, June 30:
THE SKYJACKER’S TALE

Director:
Jamie Kastner

Premiere:
Toronto 2016

Select Festivals:
CPH:DOX, Victoria

About:
A convicted murderer hijacks a passenger plane to escape to Cuba.

Ishmail Muslim Ali and four accomplices were convicted of killing eight people at a Rockefeller family owned country club in the Virgin Islands in 1972. After years in prison, and on the way back from the VI on a failed appeal in 1984, he managed to hijack a plane and reroute it to Cuba, where he has lived a free man ever since, even starting a family. With extradition on the horizon, Ali agrees to give his version of these events to Canadian documentarian Kastner, who, as in his previous work, unfortunately relies on theoretically stylish but actually quite clunky re-enactments and distracting faux period music to tell the bulk of the story. Beyond these aesthetic choices, the director employs a haphazard, unnecessarily convoluted chronological structure, and seems to go out of his way to valorize his antihero without bothering to convince the viewer that Ali was wrongfully convicted.

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed tonight, Tuesday, June 27:
VEGAS BABY

Director:
Amanda Micheli

Premiere:
Tribeca 2016

Select Festivals:
San Francisco, AFI Docs, IFF Boston, Cleveland, Miami

About:
People struggling with infertility participate in a contest held by a fertility clinic.

Las Vegas-based Sher Fertility Clinics, a lucrative private chain pioneered by an entrepreneurial South African specialist, annually holds the I Believe contest, offering free in vitro fertilization services to one lucky winner, as determined initially by popular vote online, and then finally by a panel of fertility specialists. Entrants share their often heartbreaking, desperate stories, and while the judges take these into account, they also must balance their decision based on who might have the best chance of actually conceiving – as they make very clear, their services have no guarantee of success. Even so, with costs potentially reaching into the hundreds of thousands, IVF is often out of reach of most ordinary Americans, making the Sher contest an attractive longshot to many, despite its offputting nature. Micheli quickly profiles several hopefuls before revealing the winners, Ann and Brian Johnson, who suffered the miscarriages of twins as well as a failed adoption. The film follows them, as well as a couple of other cases who continue with fertility treatments on their own, to different results. Micheli does offer a far more sensitive approach than might be expected given the potentially sensationalistic aspects of the contest, but more attention could have been paid to its disturbing ethical and moral implications, and to the larger underlying problems with health care and the economy which are viewed to necessitate it.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, June 27:
HONK!

Directors:
Arnaud Gaillard and Florent Vassault

Premiere:
Marseille Doc 2011

Select Festivals:
Thessaloniki Doc, Doclisboa,

About:
A meditation on the death penalty in America.

French directors Gaillard and Vassault offer a survey of the impact of the death penalty, presenting portraits or episodes with subjects whose lives in some way intersect with death row, from a victim’s family witnessing an execution to a mother of an inmate who honks every time she drives past the prison as a show of solidarity and support. While professionally made and not uninteresting, despite its unappealing title, the project ultimately proves too diffuse to have a strong impact either as a social justice film or to be memorable as an impressionistic slice of Americana.