what (not) to doc

New to DVD this week:
ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL

Director:
Pascal Plisson

Premiere:
Champs-Elysées 2013

Select Festivals:
Locarno, COLCOA LA, Athens, Mill Valley, Portland,

About:
Kids from Kenya, Morocco, Argentina, and India walk hours just to go to school.

Plisson’s earnest project aims to educate viewers of the challenges faced by children around the world in seeking basic education. To that end, he follows four tykes on treacherous trips to school which in some cases take four hours, traverse punishing terrain, and run afoul of dangerous wild animals. It’s well-meaning family programming, but this overly slick production is clearly scripted and stretches its concept ridiculously thin, eschewing providing any substantive information – or proper sense of personality – about its subjects in favor of milking as much audience sympathy as possible from the premise.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, May 23:
ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE: TRUTH, DECEPTION, AND THE SPIRIT OF I F STONE

Director:
Fred Peabody

Premiere:
Toronto 2016

Select Festivals:
IDFA, Thessaloniki Doc, CPH:DOX

About:
A consideration of the work of independent journalists, through the lens of the pioneering I F Stone.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to the World Channel’s America ReFramed tomorrow, Tuesday, May 23:
BREATHIN’: THE EDDY ZHENG STORY

Director:
Ben Wang

Premiere:
CAAMFest 2016

Select Festivals:
Asian/Asian Pacific fests in LA, DC, Sacramento, NYC, Austin, San Diego, Boston, and Philadelphia

About:
The story of a Chinese immigrant who entered the US criminal justice system as a juvenile and emerged a leader of prison reform.

Less than four years after arriving in America from China, 16-year-old Eddy Zheng took part in a crime that resulted in charges of armed robbery and kidnapping. Tried as an adult, he became the youngest prisoner at San Quentin, and served over 20 years behind bars. While incarcerated, he embraced the opportunity for rehabilitation and betterment, learning English, completing a college degree, and turning his experience into a cautionary tale about youth violence to share with others. Wang chronicles Zheng’s turn to and away from criminality, his work in prison reform, and his attempts to reconcile with both his family and the victims of his crime. While Zheng is an interesting subject emblematic of rehabilitation and redemption, the film’s structure unfortunately offers little dramatic development, and its running time is too brief to allow the impact of his story to fully resonate.