Documentaries · India · Labor · Uncategorized
While complaints about the industry’s orchestration of emotions and personality were commonplace, some workers also celebrated the prerogative of assembling new identities (58). Moreover, their exposure to Western cultural habits[…]
Documentaries · Ethnographic · Indigenous
As a hunter, Nanook does more than simply violently kill animals. He is depicted as a master of his environment, forcing it (and the animals he hunts) to conform to[…]
Documentaries · Native Americans · War
Thankfully, Lusztig resists the temptation to make old film segments salacious. There are no blooming mushroom clouds, no charred devastation. Richand is a movie about a small town with a[…]
Documentaries · Drama · Family
The fourth wall is broken in the first moments of filming, and the opening scene sets up the dynamic between the filmmaker and the filmed. From there on out, Fredriksson[…]
Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics
I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Muslims
Stranger at the Gate is sharp, and benefits from a tense and credible narrative. It’s constructed like a bomb – a heavy orb with a lit fuse, carefully and reassuringly[…]
Covid-19 · Digital · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Pandemic · Societal Trends · TV & Streaming · Videos
YouTube is a global idea farm, not unlike Big Agriculture: welcome, user, to your pre-fab silo, built “just for you” by YouTube’s secret algorithm. That algorithm loads about 70% of[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Education
The Unmaking of a College is a stealthy Hampshire College recruitment/endowment film, but it’s easier to breathe through the subtle sales pitch because the story is true and the message[…]
Documentaries · Film Technology & History · Videos
Herein lies the greater paradox. The attributes that underpinned Blockbuster’s success, and undermined those of others, enabled the creative awakenings of countless people. The Last Blockbuster’s interviewees comment on special[…]
African American · Documentaries · Place
The film could be described as “meditative,” but with an important twist: while the directors and Lashay guide the audience through a thoughtful and introspective process – making sense of[…]
Documentaries · Historical & Epic · War
The pair have little in common, but each goes against the grain of how this form is typically used, sacrificing everything else in the pursuit of an important story that[…]
Commentary · Crime · Documentaries · New Media
“We are not so much a society where nobody knows anybody as we are a society where only media celebrities are considered to have actual existence.” –[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Essays
I think that this delicate line between reality, and fact, and truth needs to be more clearly defined. We have to redefine reality.1 – Werner Herzog There are dignified stupidities.[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · TV & Streaming
The film’s childhood-centric poignancy is underscored by the depravity of today’s kindergarteners having to be concerned more with the logistics of hardened desks or evacuation drills thanks in part to[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
“I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with Barbie.” – Gloria Steinem * * * Gloria Steinem isn’t alone. Lisa Simpson hates Barbie. Feminist writer Roxanne Gay wishes Barbie had never[…]
Covering topics as banal as the production of plastics and as profound as cultural appropriation, these films aren’t workaday projects so much as serious visual essays that extend Resnais’ preoccupation[…]
The notion of the body as entry to the soul becomes a fallacy: penetration is not a portal to another person’s psyche – just as Sagawa’s cannibalism of Hartevelt could[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words makes clear that her life was messy and episodic, but she earned great love from her directors, co-stars, and family. Don’t wait for Mommie[…]
Documentaries · Religion & Spirituality
Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2016) can be read as a brilliant subversion of the colonising role that the camera plays in appropriating native cultures in favour of Western[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Documentaries
Jeffrey Toobin, whose 2008 New Yorker article inspired this film, describes Roger Stone as “a malevolent Forrest Gump.” Stone is more than okay with that. He’s happy for people to[…]
