Documentary
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“Cinema is Prophecy — It Creates Truth”: Hubert Sauper on his Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Epicentro
“What kind of future does tourism portend?” wonders a Cuban character rhetorically in Epicentro, the latest work of cinematic nonfiction from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare, We Come as Friends). “None! It is only devouring the future,” the Havana man declares. Indeed, it devours the “past and the culture,” rendering everything “superficial.” But then comes the real multimillion-dollar question, “How much does cinema resemble tourism?” Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at this year’s Sundance, Epicentro — an allusion to the northern Caribbean island’s place at the epicenter of the Americas, both geographically and politically — is […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 28, 2020 -
“There is No Expiration Date on Your Sexuality”: Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard on Their Fantasia Festival-Debuting Doc Morgana
The bored and lonely housewife embarking on a life of erotic pleasure has been a porn-movie trope since at least the days of the 8mm-stag film. But the Belle de Jour-style protagonist is never an unhappy Australian mom who goes from planning suicide, to radically reclaiming agency by hiring a male escort, to soaring to international fame as an award-winning feminist pornographer. Until now. Meet Morgana Muses, the unlikely star of Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard’s Fantasia Film Festival-premiering documentary Morgana. Hess, a filmmaker and pornographer, and her co-director Peppard, who is also an animator and visual artist, began collaborating […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 20, 2020 -
“Very Much Like Short Cuts, and the Medfly was Duterte — That Was My Pitch”: Ramona S. Diaz on A Thousand Cuts
While recent right-wing attacks on the free press here in the US have rightly been sounding alarm bells, in a global context they are merely wake-up calls. Sure, Trump deeming the “lamestream” media “fake news” is dangerously juvenile, but it’s also a far cry from, say, the Duterte administration finding the founder and CEO of the Philippines’s top online news site Rappler guilty of “cyber libel” — a travesty of justice that happened just this past June. And the politically orchestrated verdict comes with both a hefty fine and potential prison time for “2018 Time Person of the Year” Maria […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 6, 2020 -
“This Movie is a Cry for Help from the Members of Congress to the American People”: Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme on Their HBO doc The Swamp
To call HBO’s The Swamp a thrilling character-based portrait of three conservative white guys might seem oxymoronic, but in the capable hands and open minds of co-directors Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme (Get Me Roger Stone) it’s a completely apt description. The doc is an unexpected, up-close look at the daily D.C. lives of a trio of House members who few subscribers to HBO would ever conceive of voting for: far right-wingers Matt Gaetz (R-FL 1st District), Thomas Massie (R-KY 4th District), and Ken Buck (R-CO 4th District). In other words, it’s exactly the caricature-busting film that progressives (like myself) really need […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 4, 2020 -
Pamela Cohn’s Lucid Dreaming Podcast Debuts with Documentary Filmmaker Penny Lane
Critic and programmer Pamela Cohn recently published her first book, Lucid Dreaming, a collection of extremely thoughtful and probing interviews with boundary-pushing non-fiction filmmakers. (Read an excerpt of the book’s conversation with Donal Foreman here.) And now an extension of the book, the Lucid Dreaming podcast, has just launched. The first guest is Penny Lane, well-known to Filmmaker readers for films like Our Nixon and Hail, Satan?, as well as for her occasional Notes on Real Life column. You can listen to Lane’s interview and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes here.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2020 -
“We Worked With as Many BIPOC Womxn Crew Members as Possible, Whenever Possible!”: Linda Goldstein Knowlton on We Are The Radical Monarchs
The Black Panther Party, with its firm commitment to nourishing and nurturing the children of Oakland’s barely served African-American community, was founded all the way back in 1966. So it’s a bit shocking that it took nearly half a century later for the Radical Monarchs to be born. Or maybe not. After all, historically, queer women of color — like the Monarchs’ tireless co-founders Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest — had never been given leading roles in the Black Panther show. Fortunately, dedicated feminist and filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton and her all-female team (including EP Grace Lee) are now shining […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 20, 2020 -
“His First Question To Us Was, ‘What Are Your Astrological Signs?'”: Cristina Costantini, Kareem Tabsch and Alex Fumero on Mucho Mucho Amor
Premiering at Sundance back in the pre-pandemic festival days (uh, January) Mucho Mucho Amor is a much-needed uplift in these trying times. Co-directed and produced by Cristina Costantini (Science Fair) and Kareem Tabsch (The Last Resort), and produced by Alex Fumero (I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson), the doc, which hits Netflix today, is a fascinating odyssey into the beautifully eccentric world of Walter Mercado. Combining the fashion sense of Liberace with the relentless positivity of Tammy Faye Bakker, the Puerto Rican astrologer, psychic and defiantly nonbinary pioneer spent decades spreading his mantra of “mucho mucho amor” to an audience […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 8, 2020 -
Risk Aware Filmmaking: Devising New Documentary Security Protocols for David France’s Welcome to Chechnya
Despite its ironically inviting title, Welcome to Chechnya, a new documentary by director David France, depicts a harrowing tale of escape. The film, which is being released by HBO on June 30, follows a group of Russian activists working to rescue LGBTQ people from a vicious anti-gay government campaign in Chechnya. Beginning in 2017, Chechen authorities detained, tortured and, in some cases, forcibly disappeared more than 100 (likely many more) members of the gay community, according to reports by journalists and human rights groups. Paced like a spy thriller, the documentary captures the Chechens’ perilous journey, aided by the Russian […]
by Sara Rafsky on Jul 7, 2020 -
Aviva Kempner and Ben West on Fighting the Dehumanization of Native American Mascoting in Imagining the Indian
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 […]
by Randy Astle on Jun 25, 2020 -
“We Prioritized Hiring Trans Crew, and When We Couldn’t do That We Mentored Trans People on Set”: Sam Feder on Disclosure
Disclosure, directed by Sam Feder (Kate Bornstein is a Queer & Pleasant Danger) and executive produced by Laverne Cox, debuts on Netflix today, June 19th. And in the wake of the whiplash from the Trump administration’s decision to erase healthcare protections for trans people, followed by the US Supreme Court’s momentous ruling protecting those same folks from workplace discrimination, it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The doc is an exhaustive and entertaining look at how trans individuals have historically been depicted onscreen through surprising archival footage (Birth of a Nation and Bugs Bunny make appearances) and insightful interviews […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 19, 2020
