actor profiles
animation
book reviews
director profiles
documentaries
experimental &
avant garde
exploitation
film festivals
film noir
film reviews
gay & lesbian
hong kong films
horror
interviews
japanese cinema
music & musicals
silent film
tranny cinema
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Documentaries
in issue 64
"Just Another Man": On James Toback's Tyson — "Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn't pull his punches."
in issue 63
What Is Cheaper Than Nothing at All? Czech Dream, Culture Jamming, and Consumerism — "I jam because I am without ID."
Liverpool Lullaby: On Terence Davies' Of Time and the City — "Through cinema the past is regained."
in issue 62
Out of Oblivion: Chris Marker and Cinematic Memories of Israel in Dan Geva's Description of a Memory — "It is an opportunity to film people and events that could be recalled at any time to affirm, lament, or challenge a moment in time in this troubled region."
in issue 61
When I Knew — When did you know you were gay? That's the simple premise of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's engaging Cinemax documentary
Married in America 2 — Tracking nine couples from wedding to married life when the celebrations end and the problems begin
Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula — An endearing, often moving portrait of a group of men for whom hula has been a kind of salvation
For the Bible Tells Me So — Director Daniel Karslake showcases five average, churchgoing American families, all raised on boilerplate "God hates fags" propaganda.
in issue 60
What's Up, Docs? Nonstandard Operating Procedures in Recent Documentaries, and Interviews with Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray — "Why didn't you just stick to the truth?"
in issue 59
Innocence Lost or Regained? The Clear-Eyed Vision of Jesus Camp — "Real things happening to real people"
in issue 58
The Passion of the Auteurist: On Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient — "It's not enough to like this movie"
Made in China: Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky on Their Travels Across Manufactured Landscapes — "We've created a world that buffers us from nature."
in issue 57
Stay Well, or Else . . .: Michael Moore's Sicko — "What these Americans have could happen to us. And this is frightening."
Closing the Closet: QDoc: The 2007 Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival — "We couldn't figure out how to divide the cat . . ."
in issue 56
Treed by the Family: On 51 Birch Street — For boomers, "the idea that Mom and Dad are flawed human beings with complicated histories and real feelings can be hard to accept."
On the Border of the Thermian Gulf: The Ninth Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival — "The documentaries that most stood out have a near fictional flair, blurring the border between reality and fable."
in issue 55
Spirit in the Dark: Barbara Kopple on Filming the Group That Wouldn't Shut Up & Sing — "Just put your sneakers on and go. Go on the journey."
in issue 54
Cultural Equity: On the Documentary Lomax the Songhunter — "Every smallest branch of the human family at one time or another has carved its dreams out of the rock on which it has lived." (Alan Lomax)
in issue 53
The Image-Makers, at Dusk: On the Documentary Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography — "Glassman uncovers networks of influence and inference, whole microhistories around the camera . . . "
Eco-Apocalypse and the Powerpoint Film: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth — "The film is a kind of subtle argumentation by analogy, whose success rests on the viewer's desire to identify with Gore."
in issue 52
Surreal Women: Leonor Fini and Kay Sage Documentaries — "All there is to do now is scream."
Great Scott! Herzog Profiles God's Angry Man — On the madness of Dr. Gene
Speaking Out: Pioneering Doc Word Is Out Turns 29 — Assimilate this
in issue 51
Buried Alive: On Frederick Wiseman's Juvenile Court — "The great legal scholar Lenny Bruce once observed that in the halls of justice the only justice is in the halls . . ."
in issue 50
Riefenstahl's Heights and Wiseman's Follies: Allegories of Flesh in Olympia and Titicut Follies — The body beautiful meets the body besieged
in issue 49
Ready to Rumba? Dance Fever Doc Mad Hot Ballroom Busts a Groove — The kids are all right
The Rage from Nowhere? Arthur Dong's Licensed to Kill Interviews Murderers of Gays — "I'm bad, but I'm locked up."
Rebel Girls: Six Documentaries by Kim Longinotto — On Dream Girls, The Day I Will Never Forget, Divorce Iranian Style, Shinjuku Boys, Gaea Girls, and Runaway
in issue 48
In the Realm of the Real: The 3rd Chicago International Documentary — Film Festival — "The governments will be forgotten but the masterpieces will remain."
in issue 47
Shocking Times: Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue on DVD — While the counterculture turns on, Miles plugs in — with startling results
in issue 46
Defending the Deviates: Evelyn Hooker Documentary — Changing Our Minds on Video — "It had something to do with my sexual intercourse"
Going Mental: The Travesties of Tarnation — "He'd fuck himself if he could"
in issue 45
Do the Wrong Thing: Confronting The Corporation
Corporations, go to the head of the line; everyone else, wait
A Succession of Presents: Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train — "Pay attention to that man behind the curtain
Jack-Ass II: Downsizing Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me — Spurlock's no Sherlock
Ai-yi-yi, Robots! Survival Research Laboratories: Ten Years of Robotic Mayhem on DVD — A Cruel and Rebellious Plot to Pervert the Minds of Viewers to Unholy Uses
in issue 43
A Memoir of Circumstance and Substance: My Architect — A son looks at a father and sees much more in this super doc
"Being There": No Maps for These Territories on DVD — "I was just doing my job."
in issue 42
Cinerama Adventure — "See it without glasses!"
in issue 41
Put the Camera on Us! Documentaries at the 2003 SFILGFF — Reality cinema celebrates homos of this year and yesteryear
His Brother's Keeper: Steve James' Stevie — The ills of this wounded Everyman may be beyond healing
Trembling Before G-d, or Die Volkschmiere — Who will judge the judges trembling before sex? The atheists!
in issue 40
Bowling a Strike for Columbine — Michael Moore hits the screen with both barrels blasting
in issue 39
Fidel — Estela Bravo's documentary offers an affectionate, in-depth portrait of the enduring world leader who stood up to the U.S.
in issue 37
San Francisco Int'l Lesbian & Gay Film Festival: The Docs! — As usual, reality trumps the alternatives
The Revolution Starts with Glitter! The Cockettes — The legendary campsters of the counterculture take a bow in this diverting documentary
in issue 34
Occupied Territory: Sylvie Groulx’s In the Shadow of Hollywood — America’s cultural colonizing is scored in a French-Canadian documentary you’ll probably never see
Mondo Tranny: Monika Treut’s Gendernauts — This love letter to San Francisco’s tranny community is a little too loving
Rave On: Five Indie Music Docs on Four DVDs — Jello Biafra meet ‘90s D.I.Y. meet Patti Smith meet Rave Kulture meet…
Beauty and the Beast: The Architecture of Doom on DVD and VHS — The artistic underpinnings of Nazi terror
Fear of Darkness: Light Keeps Me Company on VHS — Bergman’s cinematographer found more solace on the set than in real life
in issue 33
Something to Come Out To: Queer Docs Triumph at the 2001 SFILGFF — A bumper crop of docs scale the heights and trawl the depths of queer culture
Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes — Livin’ large with the Hung One
Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back on DVD — The dude with the ’tude
Stephen Sondheim’s Company on DVD — Life is shit: Let's put on a show!
Louis Prima: The Wildest! on DVD — The illustrious history of the king of the hepcats (and the queen of deadpan)
Feedback from the Global Village — From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China offers three documentaries on DVD for the price of one; Genghis Blues is too shaggy for words
in issue 32
Yugoslavia in Focus: Observations From the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival — Archival footage, dramatizations, and dark satire capture the dire end-of-century events in the former Yugoslavia
San Francisco’s 2001 International Human Rights Watch Festival — Celebrating activism and exposing some of the more chaotic corners of world politics
Too Haute to Handle: Jazz on a Summer’s Day on DVD — The best jazz documentary just got better
in issue 31
The Jaundiced Eye — Nonny de la Pena's grimly effective documentary looks at the near-ruination of a family when a father and son are falsely convicted of molesting the son's five-year-old boy
Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment — The "moment" is both defined and celebrated in this exceptional documentary
in issue 30
Long Night's Journey into Day — Post-apartheid South Africa's rituals of admission and absolution
Fetishes — Literal commodity fetishism in the far fringes of New York’s S&M scene
in issue 29
Sex: The Annabel Chong Story — Liberated porn queen or psychological wreck? You be the judge
The Sex Pistols in The Filth and the Fury — Julian Temple’s engaging documentary about everybody’s favorite spitting, puking punk band
Documentaries in the 2000 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival — Tammy Faye Bakker, bitter rent boys, and South Africa’s liberated queens are part of this year’s queer reality parade
in issue 28
Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street — Going down in San Francisco’s street-kid smack underground
Richard Dindo
The eminent Swiss documentarian looks at saints and sinners of history — without telling you which are which
in issue 26
The Source — A look at all things Beat
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl — Hitler’s hired hand and master filmmaker Riefenstahl is both wonderful and horrible in Ray Muller’s 1993 documentary
in issue 25
Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin — If you think Benchley, Woollcott, et al. are wits, you're half right
Documentaries in the 1999 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival — Gendernauts, military drag queens, communist queers — and, oh yes, John Waters distinguish this year's docs
in issue 24
Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance — Flashing needles and literal crowns of thorn mark the work — and the body — of performance artist Ron Athey
Contested Flesh: Paulina — Land rights and body rights clash in this striking docudrama about a woman wronged
Pierre et Gilles: Love Stories — The love in this film about the two lost boys of Eurotrash art is mostly self-love
in issue 23
Frank Capra's American Dream — This beloved film artist was driven as much by self-doubt as by his belief in the power of the "little man"
I Am Cuba — The early '60s political epic shows that art and agitprop can happily coexist.
Unmade Beds — This very effective quasi-documentary looks at the mostly miserable lives of a quartet of aging New York singles
in issue 21
Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized Tour — Susan Stern's entertaining documentary takes a jaundiced look at the history and vast influence of the disturbing doll
in issue 20
Love's Debris — Werner Schroeter's film on love, death, and opera
in issue 19
Gay U.S.A. — Queer activism circa 1977 showed a diverse optimistic community moving ever closer to unity — before the body blow of AIDS
in issue 18
Afro Promo — Curator Jenni Olson looks at the history of marginalized groups through one of the most ephemeral cultural forms, the movie trailer. Her latest compilation of coming attractions focuses on blacks in mainstream and low-budget Hollywood films from 1946 to 1976
in issue 17
Gay Cuba — A refreshing look at Cuba's gay community
The Queen — This grimy, exciting artifact from the '60s shows how important beauty contests were to the queens who ruthlessly — and kind of sadly — mimicked their straight counterparts
Synthetic Pleasures — After seeing this film that features everything from body and mind modifications to cryogenics to the fresh hell of cyberspace, you may want to go eat some dirt
in issue 16
Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business — Carmen Miranda's story is far more complex and heart-wrenching than one would expect
From the Journals of Jean Seberg — Writer-director Mark Rappaport has devised an ingenious strategy for examining Jean Seberg's life and career. He hired Mary Beth Hurt to play the actress as if she didn't commit suicide in 1979 but lives on — like all actors — through the magic of film, reincarnated as a sort of performance artist, film historian, and cultural commentator.
in issue 14
Dialogues with Madwomen — A complex, moving portrait of women in whom depression, schizophrenia, and multiple personalities coexist with powerful, sometimes inspired levels of creativity.
