Attica
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The Year in Nonfiction Cinema: 21 Highlights of 2021
A highly personal hodgepodge of interviews, essays, coverage and quotes that stayed with me throughout (despite) this information overloaded year. Crime and Punishment Jon Alpert’s HBO doc Life of Crime: 1984-2020 (DOC NYC curtain raiser for Hammer to Nail) Thirty-six years following three street criminals in Newark, NJ culminates in one powerful, tightly-edited, two-hour journey. Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry’s Showtime doc Attica (interview with Curry for Filmmaker magazine, interview with former inmate Al Victory for Documentary magazine) A clear-eyed revisitation of the five-day, real-life, made-for-TV event that resulted in “the deadliest violence Americans had inflicted on each other in a single day since […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 6, 2022 -
Nine Best of the Fests Must-Sees at DOC NYC
This year’s DOC NYC is actually two consecutive fests. From November 10-18, vaxxed and masked fans of nonfiction cinema will be able to gather in person for the 200-plus films and events at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Cinépolis Chelsea. And for those outside NYC (but still in the US) or pandemic hesitant, most of the more than 120 features will be available virtually from November 19-28. In other words, “America’s largest documentary festival” is also now one of its most accessible. And while both US and world premieres abound at this 12th edition (60-plus by my last count), DOC […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 10, 2021 -
“It’s Also a Story of the Power of the Media to Shape a Narrative in Ways That Do Disservice to the Truth”: Traci A. Curry on Attica
Attica (releasing in theaters on October 29 and on Showtime November 6) is the latest from nonfiction national treasure Stanley Nelson. Along with his co-director and producer Traci A. Curry, a longtime MSNBC producer, the Firelight Media co-founder and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, who has previously chronicled organizations from The Peoples Temple to The Black Panthers, has now chosen to tackle a very different kind of institution: The prison industrial complex that was captured in one word and broadcast round the globe on September 9, 1971. The titular uprising that occurred at that correctional facility in Attica, NY a half century […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 29, 2021
