Documentary
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JOHN TURTURRO, “PASSIONE”
For the past twenty-five years John Turturro has been one of the most dynamic presences in American narrative filmmaking, both in the independent world and in Hollywood. His roles in films such as Do The Right Thing, Barton Fink, Quiz Show and The Big Lebowski cemented his place as one of the most versatile actors around, someone who could slip easily between extremely varied character roles while occasionally moonlighting as a leading man. Beyond his work as an actor, he’s also directed a trio of mostly terrific feature narratives, 1992’s Mac, 1998’s Illuminata and 2005’s Romance and Cigarettes. With his […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 22, 2011 -
“PAGE ONE”‘S ANDREW ROSSI AND DAVID CARR
Filmed at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where their documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times premiered and received rave reviews, here are director Andrew Rossi and Times writer, subject, and soul David Carr (pictured above) discussing both the film and journalism in the age of the Internet. Originally posted Jan. 31, 2011.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 15, 2011 -
MICHAEL GALINSKY AND SUKI HAWLEY, “BATTLE FOR BROOKLYN”
In 2004 it was announced that real-estate developer and New Jersey Nets co-owner Bruce Ratner planned to build a new arena for the team on the Atlantic Rail Yards site. Right in the heart of the borough, just a short walk from Downtown Brooklyn, Ft. Greene, Park Slope and Prospect Heights, it was a prime piece of real-estate, and the developer stood to make a tremendous amount of money if he could successfully move the team to Brooklyn. Despite coming with the promise of mixed-income housing, many locals were unconvinced of the project’s necessity and many who lived in the […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 15, 2011 -
JAY DUPLASS TALKS KEVIN GANT
While I usually avoid Q&As (due to my impatience with too many audience members making statements rather than asking actual questions) I’m glad I stuck around after the screening of Jay Duplass’s short biopic Kevin, if only to meet the doc’s admirable director and arrange for an interview later. Unlike other filmmakers attending this year’s Arizona Int’l Film Festival, Duplass wasn’t in Tucson to publicize his film, per se, so much as to promote its subject Kevin Gant (who also showed up to treat us to a post-screening acoustic set), the Duplass brothers’ musical hero in the early ’90s who […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 20, 2011 -
SURVEYING THE DOCS AT TRIBECA, PART TWO
The Good Life is not about the good life, but the bad life. Mother Mette and daughter Anne lived a life of wealth and privilege, and then the husband-father died and the inherence dwindled, and finally the money ran out. Today the two survive on the mother’s minuscule pension in a small apartment in Portugal. While the mother seems resigned to her impoverished fate, the daughter is anything but resigned. She views life without wealth and servants as terribly unfair to her. At the age of 56, daughter Anne has never held a job — not one! “Work is still […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on May 2, 2011 -
Director Alex Gibney on Catching Hell
Few documentary filmmakers’ careers are as fascinating to follow as that of Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), and that’s not just because of the consistent quality of his films, but because of the astonishing rate at which he produces them. In the midst of three other projects — an untitled Wikileaks documentary in pre-production; The Road Back, about Lance Armstrong, in post-production; and the newly completed Magic Bus, about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters — Gibney was at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival with his sports documentary Catching Hell, which […]
by Daniel James Scott on May 2, 2011 -
SURVEYING THE DOCS AT TRIBECA
Attempting to wrap your mind around a film festival’s totality is an exercise of dubious value. Still, the dubious can be exceedingly difficult to resist. It seems to me that the documentary films at the Tribeca Film Festival are of a consistently higher quality than the narratives. But what doc rat doesn’t believe this at every festival? Still, there are extremely few stinker docs at Tribeca, and forget the bombs. After the screenings the descriptive word that I hear the most from the audience members is “good,” occasionally “outstanding,” but never “bad.” Stinker docs need not apply. The universal […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Apr 29, 2011 -
The Arbor — A Hammer to Nail Review
“Time heals all wounds,” goes an old adage with which everyone involved in The Arbor would likely take issue. Clio Barnard’s cinematic assemblage on English playwright Andrea Dunbar is certainly a document of sorts, but to call it a documentary would be to slight it: The Arbor is equal parts fact, reenactment, and archival footage. Adding to the genre-blending is a series of audio interviews recorded with Dunbar’s siblings, children (particularly Lorraine, in many ways the main “character” of the film), and acquaintances which Barnard then had actors lip-synch onscreen. The result is at first off-putting, eventually immersive, and unlike any […]
by Michael Nordine on Apr 28, 2011 -
IFP Partners with UN and HBO for Envision
This past weekend, the documentary as a tool for change was discussed at “Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentary,” a forum co-sponsored by the IFP in partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information. In her introductory remarks, Joana Vicente, IFP’s executive director, said that the goal of the event was to unite the “filmmaking community with the activist [community].” It was a sentiment echoed by Kiyo Akasaka, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications at the UN who encouraged the activists and filmmakers in the attendance to partner with each other “to envision a better world” and “meet the needs of […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Apr 11, 2011 -
OPEN SOURCE FILM TOUR – OR HOW I’M TRYING TO SPARK A POPULIST FILM MOVEMENT
“You have no idea what you’ve created, and how many people this will help” I was wrapped in warm embrace with a woman I had just barely met when she whispered this sentence into my ear. We were standing in the lobby of the Egyptian Theater in downtown Boise, Idaho where my film, JENS PULVER | DRIVEN, had just let out after a lengthy and fairly emotional Q&A with me and Jens Pulver, the subject of my film. This surprising interaction was the first of many that night, and one that came as quite a shock to both myself and Pulver. I […]
by Gregorybayne on Apr 4, 2011
