short documentary
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“My Hope Is That the Film Itself Is An Impact Campaign”: Alex Hedison on Her Sundance Short Alok
“What lives outside of the frames of this camera and your own eyes?” is the question the poet/comedian/actor/public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the viewer to ponder at the very start of Alex Hedison’s Sundance-premiering short Alok. Currently on the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, and premiering at IFC Center on June 14th (with both the nonbinary star and Hedison, who also happens to be married to her EP Jodie Foster, in attendance), the doc is based on footage Hedison shot during the performer’s recent international tour and is supplemented with highly stylized interviews with the spiritually enlightened artist and […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 13, 2024 -
“We Were Filming at a Time When Putin Was Arresting Opposition”: Sarah McCarthy on Her Telluride-Premiering Doc Short Anastasia
Sarah McCarthy is no stranger to navigating the myriad challenges posed by authoritarian states. Indeed, the Australian doc-maker has shot in precarious political places throughout the world, from the Philippines, to Saudi Arabia to Russia—where she’s returned time and time again. Nor is she a stranger to the Toronto International Film Festival, where following on the heels of feature-length works (The Sound of Mumbai, The Dark Matter of Love) she now debuts her latest short Anastasia; and the innocuous title, much like the film’s titular character, belies one powerful punch. Anastasia Shevchenko is a Russian civil rights advocate who’s been arrested […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 3, 2022 -
“Directing When You Are an Editor Feels Like Cheating”: Cinque Northern on His Telluride Doc Short Angola Do You Hear Us?
Having already made the prestige fest rounds to great acclaim this year—from Tribeca to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage outdoor film series just this summer—Cinque Northern’s Angola Do You Hear Us? is now a must-catch at Telluride. The documentary short follows the incomparable actor and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson on her artistic and spiritual mission to bring her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to none other than the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The film also explores all the baggage, bureaucracy and ultimate blocking that was met with a work centered on racial injustice (that deftly connects the capitalistic dots […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 3, 2022 -
“The Tragedy of Martha is That Her Story Had Been Hijacked So Thoroughly by the White Men Around Her”: Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy on The Martha Mitchell Effect
Per Wikipedia, “The Martha Mitchell effect refers to the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, mental health clinician, or other medical professional labels a patient’s accurate perception of real events as delusional, resulting in misdiagnosis.” Per Sundance, Full Frame, Hot Docs, and ultimately Netflix, The Martha Mitchell Effect is one must-see doc. Running at just under a brisk 40 minutes, Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy’s all-archival short – which recently screened at the virtual Full Frame in the NEW DOCS section and is set to play in the Persister Shorts: Mother’s Day program at the hybrid Hot Docs – spotlights the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 26, 2022 -
“Complicity Comes in Many Forms”: Jay Rosenblatt on His Sundance Short About Bullying, When We Were Bullies
Jay Rosenblatt’s latest inventive short When We Were Bullies, world premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, originated with a stranger than fiction coincidence surrounding a guy named Richard and the making of Rosenblatt’s 1994 short The Smell of Burning Ants — which itself had been influenced by another Richard, who is likewise the spark for this film. Fifty years ago the director and the former Richard, fifth-grade classmates, had been on the bullying side of a bizarre incident involving the latter Richard — a moment in time subsequently frozen in both their minds in similar, yet distinctly different, ways. So to get at […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 1, 2021 -
Watch: Barbara Kopple’s New Short Documentary for Free
Fortune has partnered with WorkingNation to distribute four episodes of “FutureWork,” a series of digital shorts by award-winning director Barbara Kopple. The first of the films, A Story of Yesterday & Today, which explores the demise of the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, NY, and the impact it has had on local families, is available for free now. You can watch it above. It is also available at Fortune.com, Time.com and WorkingNation.com. WorkingNation is a new not-for-profit national campaign dedicated to raising awareness of the looming unemployment crisis and skills gap in the United States. The series consists of four 10-minute […]
by Paula Bernstein on Oct 19, 2016
