David Garrett Byars made his feature documentary debut with No Man’s Land in 2017, a riveting chronicle of the the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon (I spoke with him about it during its Tribeca premiere). In the largely verité film he manages to not only paint empathetic portraits of both the occupiers and their government opponents, but communicate the larger social and political movements that caused his characters to behave as they did. This eye for explaining complex topics comes to the fore in his sophomore film Public Trust, out September 25 from Patagonia Films. This new […]

In the past few days trademarks and brands like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Eskimo Pie have been discontinued or altered in a long overdue reevaluation of racist stereotypes and iconography in American consumer culture. And the broader groundswell of change that finally got these brands removed — along with numerous other changes in everything from Congressional legislation on police reform to NASCAR banning the Confederate battle flag — seems poised to challenge one of the most infamous cases of corporate use of derogatory imagery, the Washington Redskins. Activists have long protested the use of a racial slur as an […]

When the coronavirus descended on the U.S., Firelight Media, like every other organization, quickly shifted its activities online. The Harlem-based nonprofit has been supporting nonfiction filmmakers of color since 2008, helping move hundreds of films forward through its Documentary Lab and other programs, and it functioned as a production company for another decade before that. Thus when the pandemic stopped film production and real-world gatherings the Firelight team responded quickly with a range of new programs, a service made all the more critical by COVID-19’s disproportionate affect on the Black population. Then, of course, came the murder of George Floyd […]

One thing that’s been uplifting to observe throughout all the recent closures of movie theaters, festivals, and other cultural institutions has been how individuals and companies have stepped in to provide relief, support, and camaraderie during an unprecedented crisis. This is true in the virtual and augmented reality community as much as in the broader film industry, as content creators and distributors have come together to support each other as their work has come to an essential standstill. Of course, some companies and services have seen an uptick in their business, as consumers explore using VR products to hold meetings, […]

Frequent visitors to major film festivals will have spent the last few years tracking the improvement not only of virtual and augmented reality pieces, but also of how they’re shown. Throughput has increased, displays and decorations gone from relatively slipshod to professional, and most recently entire groups of viewers have been accommodated simultaneously in group viewing sessions through synchronized headsets. In the meantime, commercial venues—some permanent, some pop-ups—have sprung up around the globe, offering VR games and films as part of a new wave of location-based entertainment (LBE). The Paris-based Diversion cinema is at the forefront of developments like these. […]

It’s been quite a year for composer Nathan Halpern. He had four films at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival—the feature-length documentaries After Parkland and One Child Nation and the narrative features Goldie and Swallow—and while he hasn’t slacked in his new output, all four of these projects have gone on to impressive post-festival activity. One Child Nation (directed by Nanfu Wang, a previous collaborator of Halpern’s) premiered at Sundance in 2019, and was acquired by Amazon Studios for a theatrical run in August; it’s now streaming on Amazon Prime. And three of the films are hitting theaters right now: After Parkland (directed by Emily Taguchi and Jake […]

“We are on a path to where eventually there will be no fish, and we will have spent billions of dollars to get to that point.” This dire warning is from one of the many experts in Artifishal: The Road to Extinction is Paved with Good Intentions, a new documentary from director Josh Murphy and Patagonia that opened on multiple platforms this past week. It premiered last spring at Tribeca, followed by screenings at Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride and the Seattle International Film Festival, near the heart of the film’s action. From there it’s moved into a series of 550 festival […]

Films and video games have been moving closer together for years now, including open world games that mimic cinematic storytelling and videos that include viewer input in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure novel. The mechanics of the latter have often been intrusive, however, making viewers click a link or—with the recent flowering of virtual reality—direct their gaze at an icon indicating their narrative selection. While this can result in compelling products, like the 2017 VR film Broken Night, many filmmakers in the space miss the immersion of a traditional film and want to mask the more game-like control mechanics in […]

Since 1895 films have had at least two distinct advantages over live theater: the ability to be reproduced and watched at times and in places where the action did not actually take place, and the ability to direct the audience’s attention to precisely what the filmmakers desired. Conversely, after more than a century of cinema’s evolution, these have become precisely the reason that theater remains vibrant: it’s live and it’s present, and audiences can look wherever they want. Now virtual reality is mixing these experiences in a new way. While still prerecorded and edited (generally), it expands the audience’s range […]

Perhaps the most innovative virtual reality work I’ve seen this year has been Lisa Jackson’s Biidaaban: First Light, which premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jackson, an Anishinaabe artist working out of the National Film Board of Canada, has spent years exploring issues of First People identity and language in her work, which includes documentary and fiction film, animation, installations, and other media; in fact, Biidaaban: First Light was designed as a corollary to a multimedia installation. The film’s narrative is minimal. It could be described as a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the viewer witnesses how nature has reclaimed […]