Authors — Stewart Nusbaumer
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TRUTH AND DOCS AT TRIBECA
Truth-Telling from Mississippi to Israel to China to Texas Yes, truth is the essence of documentaries. But whose truth? What truth? In dangerous times, truth is elusive. When pain lingers, truth digs deeper into the obscure. Regardless, sometimes truth must come out. Sometimes there is no choice. Sometimes even fear is no match for truth — such as in Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story. In 1965, filmmaker Raymond DeFelitta traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi to shoot a documentary for NBC News on racial tensions in the South. DeFelitta initially planned to capture the conflict from the perspective of Southern whites, yet […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Apr 24, 2012 -
OREN MOVERMAN’S “RAMPART” — A REVIEW
Rampart is a hard-slamming action film … a disturbing portrait of a goon gone-amok … a subtle investigation of a sensitive man … an incisive dissection of a raging numbskull … a shrewd portrayal of a terribly wounded soul. Rampart is a film of extremes and subtleties swiftly moving yet rich in detail. If not expertly crafted and intricately woven, Rampart would quickly implode. Set in 1999 Los Angles, Rampart is about a dirty cop rushing into a train wreck with reality. The cynical and enraged 24-year LAPD veteran is locked in a whirlwind of events that rip him to […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Feb 7, 2012 -
DANFUNG DENNIS: FROM AFGHANISTAN TO SUNDANCE
Originally posted in the Web Exclusives section on February 11, 2011. Hell and Back Again is nominated for Best Documentary. “At first my view of war was boyish and romantic,” Danfung Dennis told me in his Brooklyn loft five years after we initially met in Kabul, “but that view of war was based on video games and Hollywood.” In the spring of 2006, Danfung flew from Beijing to Kabul and was driven to the Le Monde Guest House. I remember when he arrived. His clothes were neat, his hair stylish, he wore an easy smile and had soft brown eyes. […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Nov 2, 2011 -
Shooting Occupied Wall Street for 99 Percent: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film
I meet-up with documentarians Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites in downtown New York, they introduce me to Joanna Arnow, and Joanna and I are off to Liberty Plaza. Two streets north of Wall Street — in the former shadow of the World Trade Center towers — Liberty Plaza Park was created in 1968, renamed Zuccotti Park in 2006 for a real estate baron, and then renamed back to Liberty Plaza a few weeks ago by the Occupying Wall Street protesters. The park is one long block long and one short block wide, paved in stone with several colorful flower beds, ringed […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Oct 10, 2011 -
WRAPPING WOODSTOCK 2011
Forget that the world economy is inching precariously close to tanking, yet again. Forget that new film festivals are also streaming out of the starting gate. “The inaugural Singafest Asian Film Festival hits Westwood this weekend,” the email proclaims. So just how many festivals are there? “First Palo Alto Film Festival opens with a bang.” The emails won’t stop. A lowball count is 4,000 worldwide, although doubling, possibly tripling, that number is probably closer to reality. Forget that we know all the top-tier festivals, the celebrities attending, the films winning, and the festival race-chatter: Toronto is up and Venice is […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Oct 4, 2011 -
THE 12th WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL
Looking @ Docs Bookended by two of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, the super-gala in Toronto and the cinephile delight in New York, the Woodstock Film Festival is set in a tiny village on the edge of the Catskill Mountains, and for a dozen years it has been garnering a different kind of prestige. With a quality film program that’s not humongous, filmgoers experience fewer film scheduling conflicts — a frequent irritant for film buffs. With plenty of film industry people in attendance, looking and enjoying instead of working and stressing, they’re approachable, even friendly. People have always come […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Sep 27, 2011 -
DOCS AT THE 2011 URBAN WORLD FESTIVAL
When historical documentaries spotlight the dynamic past, they also reveal, if one is prone to see, an uncomfortable present. This can fuel nostalgia and a yearning to return to that great by-gone era just witnessed on the screen. While making you feel good about the past, docs can make you feel lousy about today. After watching the premier Brooklyn Boheme, and listening to the Q&A afterwards, a lot of us felt lousy about today. For some 15 years in the 1980s and 1990s, Fort Green and to a lesser extent neighboring Clinton Hill were home to an extraordinary community of […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Sep 25, 2011 -
DOCS ON THE CAPE: THE 20TH WOODS HOLE FILM FESTIVAL
“Oh no, the festival hasn’t changed at all in 20 years,” Judy Laster, founder and director of the Woods Hole Film Festival, says with a devilish twinkle in her eyes. Twenty years ago the first Woods Hole Film Festival was one-hour long with five short films. Today it’s eight-days long and over 100 films with panel discussions and workshops and some of the best social events on the festival circuit. “We could be much larger,” Judy adds, “if we wanted to be. But we don’t. You don’t have to be Sundance to have impact.” Small yet prestigious, community-anchored with national […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Aug 9, 2011 -
FROM BROOKLYN TO FINLAND: DOCS OF SUBSTANCE (PART 2)
The recent DocPoint NYC featured 47 Finnish documentaries in celebration of the Helsinki festival’s 10th anniversary. Here, Stuart Nusbaumer considers two in a weekend that bounced him between DocPoint and the Brooklyn Film Festival. Part 2: DocPoint New York City Reindeerspotting: Escape from Santaland Reindeerspotting is set in northern Finland in the town of Rovaniemi, which is not important since a junky is never part of a town. The central character, 19-years-old Jani, is not particularly important since junkies are nearly all young and mostly all alike. The overwhelming importance of their drug addiction makes the junkies overwhelming the same. […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Jun 16, 2011 -
FROM BROOKLYN TO FINLAND: DOCS OF SUBSTANCE
Part I: Brooklyn Film Festival Two film festivals just wrapped-up in New York City, the Brooklyn Film Festival which screened more than 100 narratives and documentaries — 36 by New York City based directors, and over a dozen shot in Brooklyn — and the DocPoint NYC which featured 47 Finnish documentaries in celebration of the Helsinki festival’s 10th anniversary. I ping-ponged between the two festivals, between Brooklyn the mecca of American independent film and Manhattan the site of the Finnish event, Finland being part of Scandinavia a powerhouse of European filmmaking. Good cinematic bloodlines for both fests. First, three films […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Jun 13, 2011
