Any director whose bio includes being fired from “an animated children’s film for Miramax titled The Great North Pole Elf Strike for portraying Santa’s elves as gay” is my kind of filmmaker. And Juliet Bashore, of the aforementioned dismissal, also has the added distinction of being the force behind the prescient time capsule of the pre-gentrified San Francisco sex industry, Kamikaze Hearts (1986). That “fictionalized documentary” (“hybrid” was a term yet to be coined) depicted the doomed relationship between lovestruck Tigr (also a producer on the film) and the object of her adoration, gender fluid “(nonbinary” was likewise not yet […]

In the world of erotic cinema, veteran indie filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell is a (non-nuclear) household name. An early member of both the feminist porn and ethical porn movements, the director-producer — and curator, writer and teacher — has for over a decade and a half been on a transatlantic mission to spread the sex-positive word. And now the Amsterdam-based expat and founder of Blue Artichoke Films will be Zooming in to this year’s virtual CineKink (May 4-8 with a week of encores to follow) on the afternoon of May 8 to present “From Fantasy To Film: Design Your Own […]

Middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has won two Olympic gold medals and three World Championships in the women’s 800-meter competition. But no amount of endurance training could have prepared this South African Olympian for the long legal battle (a dozen years and counting) sparked by that very first 2009 World Championship victory. While other winning athletes were celebrating in Berlin, this Black woman from the Global South was undergoing “sex testing,” her right to even compete being thrown into question by a sports governing body made up almost wholly of white European men. But optics be damned. In the end, the […]

Jasmín Mara López is a journalist, audio producer, and nonfiction filmmaker whose 2015 audio doc Deadly Divide: Migrant Death on the Border received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism Award. But the Los Angeles and New Orleans-based director-producer, an immigrant rights advocate with family ties to Mexico, is also a victim of trauma herself. And even more tragically, not at the hands of any faceless government bureaucracy but by those who purport to love her the most. It’s a harrowing tale, one López heroically, and with brutal honesty, dives headfirst into in her Hot Docs world-premiering Silent Beauty. The courageously intimate film […]

African Moot marks the Hot Docs return of human rights law specialist/award-winning filmmaker Shameela Seedat, who last took the Special Jury Prize at the fest back in 2018 with Whispering Truth to Power. That doc trailed her nation’s brave anti-corruption crusader Thuli Madonsela, South Africa’s first female Public Protector. And now with this latest Seedat turns her lens to an international topic even closer to home. Created under the auspices of Generation Africa, African Moot refers to the African Human Rights Moot Competition, the largest mock court tournament on the continent. (Generation Africa itself is a project of South Africa’s […]

Per Wikipedia, “The Martha Mitchell effect refers to the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, mental health clinician, or other medical professional labels a patient’s accurate perception of real events as delusional, resulting in misdiagnosis.” Per Sundance, Full Frame, Hot Docs, and ultimately Netflix, The Martha Mitchell Effect is one must-see doc. Running at just under a brisk 40 minutes, Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy’s all-archival short – which recently screened at the virtual Full Frame in the NEW DOCS section and is set to play in the Persister Shorts: Mother’s Day program at the hybrid Hot Docs – spotlights the […]

For a film journo who closely followed last year’s he said (filmmakers)/she said (ISIS “sex slave” subjects) controversy that entangled Hogir Hirori’s Sundance-premiering (followed by film-festival-shunned) Sabaya, the recent CPH:DOX panel  “Beyond Courage: Trauma-Informed Storytelling” was simply a must-see. The discussion, expertly moderated by Gavin Rees, Executive Director of Dart Center Europe (a satellite of Columbia Journalism School’s Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma), was part of the “Claim Your Story!” program, one of three engaging afternoons under CPH:CONFERENCE’s “Business As Unusual” banner. (“Follow the Money!” and “Shaping Success.” were likewise smartly curated by The Catalysts, a multimedia agency that “turns […]

“Men are only good for two things: for nothing, and for money.” So sayeth the titular, straight-talking matriarch at the heart of Laura Herrero Garvín’s La Mami, a gloriously female-centered portrait of the hardworking dancers of Mexico City’s Cabaret Barba Azul. Told entirely from a female POV – with no men in sight to hijack the narrative – the film takes place almost exclusively in the cloakroom/bathroom/dressing room of the legendary nightclub, where Doña Olga (aka “La Mami”) presides. It’s in this safe space that the cabaret world vet, who in the past 45 years has transitioned from party girl […]

In keeping with its 50/50 gender balance pledge, this year’s DOX:AWARD program—CPH:DOX’s international main competition showcasing an all-premiere lineup—featured six male- and six female-directed films from a range of countries. And, as in years past, I agreed to watch and rate them all on a scale of one (not my cup of tea) to four (brilliant!) stars for the Danish film magazine Ekko’s international film critics’ jury grid. It’s an annual duty I’ve come to grudgingly love. On the one hand, I have to watch a dozen films that weren’t necessarily on my must-see list (that I’d carefully whittled down from […]

As its title implies, Paweł Łoziński’s The Balcony Movie, which closes this year’s First Look Festival on March 20, is a film shot entirely from a balcony. Which may sound like the worst elevator pitch of all time until one realizes that the balcony belongs to the acclaimed Polish documentarian behind the lens (who also happens to be the son of also esteemed Polish documentarian Marcel Łoziński). Less concept film than “secular confessional,” as the Warsaw-based director puts it, Łoziński spent over two years (beginning pre-pandemic) filming the many men and women of all ages, not to mention their dogs […]