Documentary
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“Without the Consent of our Child Protagonists We Would Not Have Made the Film”: Lidia Duda on her Locarno-Premiering Doc Fledglings
Premiering at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Lidia Duda’s Fledglings is an entrancing look at a trio of seven year olds who bravely travel far from home to board at a school for the visually impaired. Forced to rely only on themselves, their teachers — and most importantly one another — Zosia, Oskar and Kinga spend their days mastering everything from handrails to utensils, to spelling words and playing the piano. Not to mention navigating often overwhelming emotions. (At least for the creative Zosia and sensitive Oskar, whose developmental disabilities can sometimes stress the besties out. Kinga, on the other […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 12, 2022 -
“The Very First Cut Lasted About 25 Hours”: María Álvarez on Her Proust Documentary, Le temps perdu
María Álvarez’s 2020 doc Le temps perdu (premiering theatrically on these shores at NYC’s Film Forum August 12th) is the second film in an exquisite trilogy, beginning with 2017’s Las cinéphilas and ending just last year with the IDFA debut of Las cercanas. All three docs are poetic meditations on the intersection of art, aging and memory, similarly focused on vibrant geriatric characters whose connections to cinema, literature and music (in ascending part order) are as profound as life itself. In the case of Le temps perdu reading becomes, in the apt description of one enthusiastic gent, “a creative act” — and an epic one at that. For […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 11, 2022 -
Back to One, Episode 212: Ethan Hawke on The Last Movie Stars
Ethan Hawke returns to the podcast (first time was episode 41) to talk about The Last Movie Stars, his epic six-part documentary that chronicles Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s iconic careers and decades-long partnership. Years ago, a friend of the couple interviewed Paul, Joanne, and many people close to them for a potential memoir, but Newman burned the tapes. Miraculously, the transcripts survive, so Hawke called on his acting friends to bring them to life. The result is both an intimate portrait of the lives and careers of this great duo and also a constant celebration of the endeavor of […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jul 19, 2022 -
“I Can’t Afford to Let Cliches Live in the Cinema I Make”: Leilah Weinraub on Shakedown
Leilah Weinraub’s 2018 Shakedown, which began playing Metrograph on June 17th (and has been held over through June 30th due to high demand), has been touted by Variety as the “the first-ever non-adult film” to be picked up by Pornhub. Yet it could also be called the sex site’s first-ever Berlinale-premiering and Tate/ICA/MoMA PS1/Whitney Biennial-screened acquisition. And likely the smut streamer’s first-ever labor of love release as well. Indeed, Shakedown is a film that defies any easy categorization. Ostensibly a longform cinematic exploration (crafted over 15 years starting in 2002) of the titular, mid-city, Los Angeles, Black lesbian strip club, the doc […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 27, 2022 -
“I Heard Shots Behind Me, Turned Back and Saw Killers Approaching”: Lesya Kalynska on Tribeca Premiere A Rising Fury
In Ukraine, Russian disinformation has finally met its lie-dismantling match in the information warfare sphere—which, ironically, within the larger landscape of our head-spinning, 24-hour news cycle, only serves to muddy the waters of “truth” even further. Fortunately, the besieged nation has a thriving documentary scene with a habit of taking the patient and longterm vérité approach. Out of that tradition comes Lesya Kalynska and Ruslan Batytskyi’s feature debut A Rising Fury, world-premiering at Tribeca Festival, the culmination of an often fraught, messily complicated eight-year filmmaking journey. This breathtakingly cinematic explainer of current events follows the young patriotic Pavlo, a soldier from the Donbas […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 13, 2022 -
“This is a Transgressive Force that Springs from the Imagination”: Rodrigo Reyes on his Tribeca-Premiering Doc Sansón and Me
The latest from “25 New Faces” alum Rodrigo Reyes, who we last spoke with for 2020’s Tribeca-selected 499, might also be his most personal and potentially fraught. The journey to Sansón and Me began a decade ago, when the Mexican-American filmmaker’s day job as a Spanish court interpreter in rural California took a turn for the tragically unexpected. Sansón Noe Andrade was a “quiet and super-polite” 19-year-old who was behind the wheel when his (even younger) brother-in-law decided to open fire on a rival from the passenger side of Sansón’s car. As a result, both teens were charged with murder. And Sansón, perhaps […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 12, 2022 -
“We Decided To Rewrite All of Our Consent Releases So That They Were More Favorable to Participants”: Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall on Their Tribeca-Premiering Doc Subject
“Catnip for the cinephile” boasts the program synopsis for Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s Subject, which makes its world debut on June 11 in the Documentary Competition at this year’s Tribeca Festival. It’s a pretty spot-on claim for a doc that probes the post-screen afterlives and reflective minds of some of nonfiction cinema’s most recognizable stars. By juxtaposing contemporary interviews with characters from Capturing the Friedmans, Hoop Dreams, The Staircase, The Wolfpack, and The Square as well as interviews with acclaimed documentary directors (though smartly, none behind any of the aforementioned), academics and various experts on non-fiction ethics, a bigger and deeper picture […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 11, 2022 -
“We Knew We Had to be Nude to Participate in This Space of Mutual Trust”: Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan on their Tribeca Festival-Debuting Doc Naked Gardens
The latest from husband-and-wife team – and 2016 25 New Face alums – Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan (Pahokee), Naked Gardens is a nonsexual skin flick of sorts, a season-long vérité look at the residents of family nudist resort Sunsport Gardens. Tucked away in the Florida Everglades, and run by a hippieish, Gandalf-like owner named Morley, the paradisiacal enclave draws folks from around the country – those opposed to society’s strict clothing mandate, but also just gung-ho for the place’s cheap rent. A virtual melting pot of nonconformity, Sunsport Gardens is likewise a bipartisan haven where a family with kids […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 10, 2022 -
“The Way the Janes Approached This, One Woman at a Time, Helped 11,000 Women Get Safe Abortion Care”: Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes on “The Janes”
The Janes, which closes this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival in-person May 26, followed by an HBO premiere June 8, is one woefully prescient walk down pre-Roe memory lane. Directed by Academy Award nominee Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water, which also nabbed the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Gotham Independent Film Award back in 2008) and Emmy nominee Emma Pildes (Spielberg, which the debut director likewise produced for HBO), the doc tells the illicit tale of the titular underground network of college-age activists who defied the law and male expectations to provide women in Chicago with safe, shame-free […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 25, 2022 -
“We All Have our Unique Biologies, a Variety of Differences”: Phyllis Ellis on her Hot Docs-Debuting Category: Woman
Middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has won two Olympic gold medals and three World Championships in the women’s 800-meter competition. But no amount of endurance training could have prepared this South African Olympian for the long legal battle (a dozen years and counting) sparked by that very first 2009 World Championship victory. While other winning athletes were celebrating in Berlin, this Black woman from the Global South was undergoing “sex testing,” her right to even compete being thrown into question by a sports governing body made up almost wholly of white European men. But optics be damned. In the end, the […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 6, 2022
