Documentary
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“I Wanted the Film to Feel Like an Online Dating Hall of Mirrors”: Pacho Velez on his Sundance-Debuting Searchers
As someone who came of age at a time when looking for a potential partner(s), be it for a lifetime or one night, was less a neat calculated exercise and more a messy spontaneous surprise, I’ve never quite understood the appeal of online dating. Seeking love and/or sex via swipe just always seemed creepily clinical and controlled, cold and robotic — about as sexy as in vitro fertilization to my mind. And yet watching Pacho Velez’s Searchers, an exploration of online connecting through the eyes (literally, as Velez’s Interrotron-style setup allows his characters to look directly at us as they […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 30, 2021 -
“Black Life Has Always Been Better Than Black Cinema”: Documentary Makers Speak at Full Frame’s “Black Frame: New Voices of Documentary” A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy
One of the few upsides to the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival’s necessary pivot to digital was the smart decision to take its A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy discussions online with the rest of the fest – and one step further. Now these always inspiring panels have been expanded to year-round, free virtual events. While the palpable camaraderie at this southernly hospitable fest unfortunately can’t be replicated through Zoom, the insight from the many brilliant doc-making minds Full Frame consistently brings together still shines through. And the most recent edition “Black Frame: New Voices of Documentary,” which took place January 13, proved […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 18, 2021 -
Ring in the New: Top Female Filmmakers of IDFA 2020
As I’ve noted in the past, fulfilling the 5050×2020 Gender Parity Pledge is easy pickings for any nonfiction fest. Within the documentary realm female helmers have long consistently been behind half (and often more) of the highest quality work put out every year anyhow. And this year’s hybrid International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam — which like most non-Europeans I experienced exclusively online during varying states of pandemic lockdown over its ample (November 18-December 6) run — proved no exception to the rule. First there was the wealth of exhilarating new projects by acclaimed veterans to choose from. Czech master Helena Třeštíková […]
by Lauren Wissot on Dec 8, 2020 -
“His Materials and His Letters Were Just Sitting in Boxes in the Basement of Her House”: R.J. Cutler on Belushi at DOC NYC
From the mid to late 70s John Belushi was a multimedia meteor, seemingly destined to be an inescapable part of the zeitgeist for years to come. The outsized and ubiquitous talent — original cast member on late night TV’s SNL, scene-stealing star of the big screen (National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers), and hit record maker (again with The Blues Brothers) — was so inescapable that when in 1982, at the age of only 33 and the peak of his career, his life crashed to a drug-fueled end at L.A.’s Chateau Marmont, the shock to the world was seismic. So how […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 13, 2020 -
“There is No Film Safe from Some Version of Exploitation…”: Mo Scarpelli on her DOC NYC Feature El Father Plays Himself
Mo Scarpelli’s El Father Plays Himself, which premiered at Visions du Réel, is now at DOC NYC and will next be hitting IDFA, is one complicated multilayered journey, both logistically and emotionally. It began when Scarpelli (Anbessa, Frame by Frame) decided to train her documentary lens on a narrative feature in the making — specifically her partner Jorge Thielen Armand’s La Fortaleza (which premiered at Rotterdam). La Fortaleza in turn is based on the hard-hitting, hard-drinking life of Jorge Roque Thielen, the director’s father, who stars as himself in his own story. That “el father” remains as wild and unpredictable […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 13, 2020 -
“They Live and Breathe Video, So We Just Completely Fit in with the Fixtures”: Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir on her DOC NYC-debuting The Vasulka Effect
As a New Yorker who has long prided my ability to namecheck most of the experimental art pioneers of the 1960s, I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of Steina and Woody Vasulka before watching Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir’s The Vasulka Effect. Sure, I knew of The Kitchen, the legendary performance space the couple founded in 1971. And of course I was familiar with the work of the sound and visual visionaries that the Soho (now West Chelsea) institution provided a platform for — from Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson to Nam June Paik and Bill Viola. I’d just never connected a […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 11, 2020 -
Five WTF Must-Sees at the 2020 DOC NYC
Festival
If there’s one thing we can all agree on in these polarized times it’s that 2020 will inevitably go down in history as one WTF year. And since I generally tend to adore batshit insane films — and especially batshit insane cinematic nonfiction — I was pleased to discover a wealth of WTF treasure buried inside this year’s (a bit overwhelming at 108 features and 92 shorts!) virtual DOC NYC lineup, which begins today. So in honor of this global topsy-turvy moment, here’s just a handful of my favorite gems that, humbly and with little fanfare, screwed with my mind […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 11, 2020 -
Shining a Light on the Politics of Public Lands: David Garrett Byars on his Documentary Public Trust
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 […]
by Randy Astle on Sep 25, 2020 -
“An Outsider in that Testosterone-Driven Climate”: Laura Gabbert on Her Food Doc, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles
Sundance vet Laura Gabbert (No Impact Man, Sunset Story) is no stranger to the foodie world, having directed 2015’s City of Gold, which follows the Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold on his culinary excursions throughout LA. Now, with Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, Gabbert turns her lens to the other coast and across the pond, globetrotting through time and space with seven-time NY Times bestselling cookbook author and renowned restauranteur Yotam Ottolenghi. Though the Israeli Jew (whose business partner is a Jerusalem-born Muslim) is based in London, he’s invited by the Met to curate an edible, cake-centric exhibition […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 25, 2020 -
“Cardboard Cutouts Don’t Grow Old, They Don’t Die”: Jan Oxenberg on Criterion’s Rerelease of Her “Docu-fantasy” Thank You and Good Night
Jan Oxenberg was a thorn in the nonfiction establishment’s side long before hybrid doc-making was a thing (or even a term). Case in point: Her feature-length (Sundance ’91) debut Thank You and Good Night, a restoration of which will hit the Criterion Channel this week (along with two of the queer pioneer’s earlier shorts, 1973’s Home Movie and 1975’s A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts, accompanied by a new director’s intro). Though Thank You and Good Night has been described as a “docu-fantasy” it’s also a very real time capsule of sorts. The film takes as its starting point the looming […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 24, 2020
