African American · Crime · Documentaries
By ignoring the black lives involved, the new Netflix documentary Amanda Knox (premiering on Netflix on September 30) is not only a very white film, it ends up producing its own miscarriage of[…]
Asian · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Note: This interview was conducted in English during the Hong Kong International Film Festival in Sha Tin, Hong Kong, on 3 April 2016. The author wishes to thank Esther Yau,[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Editor’s note: This is the first of two interviews (next up: Nanni Moretti) our correspondent Amir Ganjavie conducted with directors at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival (Feb. 11-21). Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Silents
Robert Flaherty and Alice Nevalinga (aka Nyla, the smiling one) were romantically involved – or as McLane modestly puts it, “he had an Eskimo female companion.” * * * In[…]
Counterculture · Documentaries · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals
“BOB: Well, you always know who you are. I just don’t know who I’m gonna become.” – Sam Shepard. True Dylan: A One-Act Play as It Really Happened One Afternoon in[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
“It’s time to give her story a better ending,” says Jane Anderson in her documentary Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson, speaking of her great[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Historical & Epic · Reviews
In a recent interview, the English filmmaker Adam Curtis described finding “hidden levels in the BBC archive” where a vast collection of extraneous footage has been accumulating over the last[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · War
Despite the reputation that Alain Resnais has garnered as “cinema’s definitive artist of postwar trauma,” few scholars have undertaken a detailed comparative analysis of his two works that broach this[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Reviews · Writers & Critics
“Jodorowsky capitalizes on the cachet of exclusivity, the wonderful feeling of being one of the elite few who “get it,” and, in treating it like a source of esoteric wisdom,[…]
“Just as Peleshian’s friend put it to Daney some time ago, one could still say that there are indeed some people in the documentary sphere in Russian (and post-Soviet) documentary[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Discussed in this essay: The Battle of AmFar (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2013); Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013); How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012); The Normal[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Portland, Oregon’s notoriety of late has come mainly from being satirized as over-the-top PC (Portlandia), its status as a foodie and craft beer paradise, a haven for runaway teens and activists,[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
“The problem with the media is that they oppose change, and turn people against the revolution,” Khalid tells his dad. His Quixotic character is evident: “I am going to keep[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries
In 1968, famed Black Power poet, playwright, and filmmaker Amiri Baraka, who died on January 9, 2014 at the age of 79, made a documentary in and around Spirit House,[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
When a film screening is greeted first with silence, it is certainly not easy on the director. “It was so scary, everybody was so silent in the theatre we were[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
“For a start, Straub and Huillet’s relationship is far from an image of perfect union. It seems to thrive on a combination of disagreement and respect, a dialectical tussle worthy[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Historical & Epic · Interviews
“We wanted to do a writing of history through a sensual observance of the films. By having those details opened up, we show how the daily life was — not by explaining didactically but rather offering this inner representation.”
Activist & Political · Documentaries
“Following his interest in the cab driver with a taste for the story, not the politics, John incidentally finds out that — shades of today’s NSA controversies — his station managers have been letting the police and the FBI study his footage to aid in their search for subversives. It is also the kind of reporting, it seems, that can get one fired.”
“Part of it is about the right to privacy, and part of it is about telling the story the way she wanted it to be told. But there’s also an underlying argument regarding the existential fact of being an actor, and the related argument of identity being performed rather than essential.”
Activist & Political · Documentaries
Originally published in An environmental idealist stops an illegal oil and gas auction by bidding for parcels he can’t possibly afford. Savaged by an exponentially accelerating climate crisis, a once-proud[…]
