Authors — Lauren Wissot
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“I Wanted Men to Engage with the Subject of Sexual Violence….”: Nancy Schwartzman on Roll Red Roll
Since Nancy Schwartzman’s filmography includes the short docs The Line, which explores sexual boundaries and consent, and xoxosms, a love story revolving around teens and tech, it’s obvious that the rape of a teenage girl by members of Ohio’s celebrated Steubenville High School football team back in 2012 would grab this director-producer-media-strategist’s attention. After all, the assault had been documented through Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and even cell phone recordings by the assailants, and it was subsequently brought to the world’s attention by a female crime blogger. Now, nearly seven years after the crime, Schwartzman takes a deeper look, revisiting […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 22, 2019 -
“I Had To Tell a Story About Five Guys Working Behind Computer Screens”: Hans Pool on Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World
Hans Pool’s Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World follows the diehard band of brothers (yes, there are no citizen journo sisters featured) behind the online investigative outfit Bellingcat, founded by a shy Brit determined to unmask some of the media’s most notorious blockbuster stories. Whether that be through geo-location mapping, voice analysis, drone imagery, or even fact-checking legacy organizations like the NY Times (one of several outlets to report a staged car bombing as real), the international collective takes tools once the province of law enforcement and other paid “professionals” to separate fact from fiction in a very 21st century way. Filmmaker spoke with the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 22, 2019 -
“I Have an Interest in Women Who Are on a Mission, Who Want to Create Impact”: Marie Skovgaard on Her CPH:DOX Opening Night Film, The Reformist
Marie Skovgaard’s The Reformist follows Sherin Khankan, a feminist revolutionary this American had never heard of, but who is practically a household name in her hometown of Copenhagen. Khankan, Denmark’s first female imam, founded the Mariam Mosque, one of the first in Europe to be led by women. And fortunately, Skovgaard was there to artistically document the mosque’s difficult birth as well as the trials and tribulations (both internally and externally) the uncompromising religious leader faced in its aftermath. Filmmaker spoke with the Danish director prior to the doc’s opening night, CPH:DOX premiere on March 21st. Filmmaker: So how did […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 21, 2019 -
“What I Discovered Was a Unique Bond Between Man and Dog…”: Heddy Honigmann on Buddy
For over 30 years the globetrotting Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann has been wowing audiences the world over. Born in Peru to Polish Jewish parents, Honigmann’s been honored with retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and also at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where her latest work of cinematic nonfiction Buddy closed this year’s Doc Fortnight. A heart-soaring tearjerker, the doc is an exquisite portrait of the lives of six guide dogs and their owners. But because it’s a Heddy Honigmann film it inevitably transforms into a philosophical meditation — in this case, an exploration of the love affair […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 20, 2019 -
Truth to Power: Why CPH:DOX is The Future of Progressive Fests
With the “golden age” of documentary filmmaking still upon us, there’s no shortage of doc fests to attend throughout the year (especially around November, when it often feels like a nonfiction pileup). The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, however, knows how to set itself apart from the pack. Besides now taking place in March (and thus not needing to fight with IDFA over eyeballs and premieres), CPH:DOX strives to be “the best festival in and for the world.” What this means in concrete terms is that, though CPH:DOX showcases everything from cinematic art pieces to true-crime thrillers, it’s forever rooted […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 19, 2019 -
“It’s Like Having a Diary Shot by Someone Else of Moments That You Don’t Remember….”: RaMell Ross on his Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and airing on PBS’s Independent Lens beginning February 11th (and now on iTunes), RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening lives up to its buzz and then some. The award-winning photographer’s debut feature is a low-key, highly cinematic look at the Alabama Black Belt over a period of five years. In that time Ross trained his lens mostly on two twenty-something men, Daniel and Quincy, as they navigated education, blue-collar labor, fatherhood, and just the intricacies of daily life in their culturally rich, economically impoverished Southern town. Filmmaker was fortunate enough […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 8, 2019 -
“Must Political Solidarity be Unconditional?”: Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche on Their Sundance Doc, Advocate
Long a lightning rod, Lea Tsemel is an idealistic Jewish lawyer who has spent the past five decades defending political prisoners. Or she’s the terrorist’s go-to barrister, rarely turning down a case no matter how heinous the crime. Like most things in Israel, the perspective depends on which side of the occupation you’re on. Veteran filmmakers Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche understand this reality all too well, having followed Lea Tsemel’s career closely for the past 25 years. And now with their Sundance-premiering Advocate they’ve created an in-the-trenches portrait of this unapologetic firebrand, trailing Tsemel as she juggles high-profile […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 27, 2019 -
“Sometimes Restraint and Holding Back Yields a Far More Meaningful Result…”: Luke Lorentzen on Sundance Doc Midnight Family
Poetically composed and effortlessly segueing between graveyard-shift stillness and chaotic rides through the darkened streets of Mexico City, Midnight Family is a unique cinematic gem. Director Luke Lorentzen spent nearly three months embedded night after night in a private ambulance run by the Ochoa family, an all-male team who race to the scenes of accidents hoping both to save lives and get paid by those they aid. Filmmaker caught up with the award-winning director to discuss this rare glimpse into an incongruous underworld characterized by equal parts heroic acts and monotonous labor prior to the doc’s January 27th premiere at […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 27, 2019 -
“I Have a Naive Conviction That Images Serve a Potentially Positive Purpose”: Beniamino Barrese on The Disappearance of My Mother
Not many filmmakers have a mom who’s an iconic model from the ’60s, photographed by the likes of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, a muse to Warhol and Dali. Far fewer have one that kept that past hidden. Indeed, it wasn’t until director/cinematographer Beniamino Barrese made a youthful discovery — a stash of portfolios containing Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar covers tucked away inside a locked wardrobe — that he got an inkling that Benedetta Barzini was more than just the radical, outspoken, intellectual mother he’d been filming since he got his first camera at seven. And with The Disappearance of […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 25, 2019 -
“I Was Watching Midcentury Hollywood Biblical Epics, Anti-Communist Propaganda Films, and 1970s B-Movies about Devil Worshippers”: Penny Lane on Hail Satan?
“Blasphemy is not free speech” reads a protest banner on the Little Rock statehouse lawn in a scene from Hail Satan?, the latest from Sundance vet Penny Lane (Our Nixon, Nuts!). The sign is emblematic of the ludicrous (and too often unchallenged) falsehoods that The Satanic Temple — fighting to place an elaborate statue of goat-headed god Baphomet alongside a local legislator’s equally ostentatious Ten Commandments monument — is up against. Luckily Lane, never one to shy away from provocative subjects, is right there on the ground, providing an intimate look into the group’s wild rise. By seamlessly alternating interviews […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 25, 2019
