DOC NYC 2017
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“I Had to Think How to Distill the Spirit of the Book, and Not Try in Any Way to Replicate It”: Rachel Dretzin on Far From the Tree
As someone who is not a parent, never wanted to be a parent, and still says a silent prayer of “thank heaven that’s not me” every time I walk by a mom or dad struggling with a stroller, Rachel Dretzin’s Far From the Tree — based on Andrew Solomon’s NY Times bestseller Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity — at first glance seemed far from making my must-watch-docs list. Which is precisely how I know it’s as good as it is. When I finally got around to catching it on screener recently, Dretzin’s film — […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 20, 2018 -
Power and Perspective in Storytelling: How To Support Each Other, Authentically Represent Characters, and Dismantle The White Power Structure
Discussing the Other, race, and privilege in documentaries is no straightforward task. Who can tell whose story to whom using whose story-telling techniques have been questions since before 1922’s Nanook of the North, and when we toss in why, and whose paying for it, it doesn’t get simpler. At a panel on perspective and point of view in storytelling at DOC NYC PRO, filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña deftly moderated as five award-winning filmmakers who present as non-white grappled with some of the issues around representation, the white gaze, and what we as individuals can do to support each other, act authentically […]
by Lauretta Prevost on Dec 12, 2017 -
“Don’t Judge Your Footage in the Field”: Tips on Doc Verite Shooting From the Camerafolk Behind One of Us, The Judge, and E-Team
Vérité cinema is frequently tossed about as a term, and likely most of us know the broader strokes of the genre: an observational camera whose team aims not to interfere with the subjects or action; a film frequently built on intimate access, shunning sit down interviews or use of archival footage. At a November 12 DOC NYC PRO panel dubbed “Observational Camera,” five respected filmmakers reflected on the specifics of how they go about shooting direct cinema. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s One of Us follows three individuals who leave an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and on the panel were cinematographers Jenni […]
by Lauretta Prevost on Nov 27, 2017 -
DOC NYC 2017: Peter Braatz on Blue Velvet Revisited
The past year has proven to be a uniquely rewarding time for David Lynch obsessives, with the Showtime revival of Twin Peaks being the obvious highlight, but also marked by recent Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD special editions of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and the new documentary, David Lynch: the Art Life, focused on Lynch’s painting roots. However, one of the most fascinating Lynch-related features in recent memory has yet to receive the widespread U.S. exposure it richly deserves, and it reflects back to a more traditionally structured Lynch favorite (indeed, still the film that some cite as his key work) that those […]
by Travis Crawford on Nov 14, 2017 -
Premiering Docs within the New World Order: Thom Powers on DOC NYC 2017
The increasingly robust DOC NYC opens today through November 16, with over 100 documentary features unspooling in three locations in downtown New York and Chelsea. Among the 23 world and 23 U.S. premieres are new films from Barbara Kopple, Sam Pollard and Julia Bacha, whose Naila and the Uprising, about the woman of First Intifada, won the festival’s first pitch competition in 2016. Films unspool across 16 sections, including the new New World Order, focused on pictures with global news importance, and Metropolis, the competitive section featuring films from and about New York City. The DOC NYC Pro section is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 9, 2017
