Ask the Sexpert: Can a gynecologist's advice column change Indian culture?

Ask the Sexpert is a fascinating portrait of Mahinder Watsa, a 91-year-old former gynecologist who writes the “Ask the Sexpert” column for the Mumbai Mirror. From the start, we learn that India’s Dr. Ruth is a beloved figure in his conservative country, but abstinence activist Pratibha Naithani is taking him to court to “preserve the nation’s morality.” She believes his column is akin to pornography and “debases” Indian society. Many conservatives believe a moral line has been crossed when children can read a column that discusses everything from masturbation to golden showers.

To read the rest of my review visit Bitch magazine.

Spotlight on UXdoc at The 20th RIDM (Montreal International Documentary Film Festival)

Running November 9th-19th, this year’s 20th edition of RIDM (or the Montreal International Documentary Film Festival for us non-Québécois) once again proved that big things come in small(ish) packages. Though not nearly as big as that other international doc fest directly on its heels, RIDM’s charm lies precisely in the fact that it’s both wide-ranging and easily navigable. In other words, a docuphile can relax and focus on the inspiring work in front of their eyes at any given moment instead of lamenting over the dozen other screenings, panels and events they’re inevitably missing.

Which is not to say there isn’t a wealth of activities to choose from. In addition to the opening and closing night flicks (both helmed by women — Quebec native Céline Baril’s world-premiering 24 Davids and Sonia Kronlund’s Nothingwood, respectively) RIDM features an Official Competition, Panorama and Retrospectives sections, UXdoc for interactive work plus assorted art exhibitions, master classes, parties and more. Also, in its 13th year is Doc Circuit Montreal (DCM), Quebec’s only documentary market, which runs for five concurrent days during the fest.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Don’t Think Movies are Old-Fashioned”: James N. Kienitz Wilkins on His RIDM Retrospective (and Making Art in the Internet Age)

For this year’s 20th anniversary of RIDM, the Montreal International Documentary Film Festival teamed up with Visions, the city’s experimental documentary film series, for a truly cutting edge retrospective titled “James N. Kienitz Wilkins: Vessels/Containers.” Wilkins, a 25 New Face” of 2016, was honored with four programs containing seven of his works, created from 2012 through 2017. This includes 2012’s nearly two hour Public Hearing, a 16mm, B&W-filmed performance of the transcript from a town hall debate about replacing a Walmart with a Super Walmart, all the way to 2017’s 38-minute Mediums, a medium-length movie made up entirely of medium shots in which actors play potential jurors passing the time outside a courthouse (using actual words from material such as a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise contract and a Volkswagen car manual. This might be my favorite Wilkins work).

So it was with great pleasure that I was able to catch up with Wilkins once again to discuss his delightfully unorthodox approach to the documentary form.

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

IDA Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award: From Gatekeeper to Storyteller--Yance Ford on 'Strong Island,' and a Decade at 'POV'

Strong Island is Yance Ford's cinematic nonfiction exploration of racial injustice in the Long Island suburbs, told through the murder of the filmmaker's 24-year-old brother at the hands of a 19-year-old white mechanic 25 years ago. Nabbing the Special Jury Award for Storytelling at Sundance this past January, the film is as unconventionally riveting as it is emotionally searing. It's also been long in the making, having been on the indie film radar for over half a decade (or at least since Ford made Filmmaker magazine’s annual "25 New Faces of Independent Film" back in 2011).

Nonetheless, after entirely scrapping the first version of his film and returning to the editorial drawing board (in Copenhagen, guided by the folks at Final Cut for Real, rendering the doc a Danish co-production), Ford is now the rightful recipient of the IDA Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award.

To read the rest visit Documentary magazine.

“A Horror Film in Slow Motion”: Greg Barker on His DOC NYC Opener The Final Year

Opening this edition’s DOC NYC on November 9th is Greg Barker’s The Final Year, a truly up-close-and-personal, behind-the-scenes look at the Obama administration and its foreign policy team during its last 12 months. To say that Barker gained unprecedented access to the president’s men (and one woman) during that period is an understatement. The veteran documentarian (Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma, Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden, etc.) managed to shadow three heavyweight insiders — Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, and “Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting” Ben Rhodes — across multiple time zones and deep inside White House offices (one literally bugged — the sight of a dead cockroach actually disrupts a strategy meeting). And all before the trio had any inkling of the biggest unconventional threat to come.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Y’allywood Babylon: The 20th Savannah Film Festival’s Docs to Watch Roundtable

This year’s 20th anniversary edition of the SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) Savannah Film Festival, which lays claim to being the largest university-run film fest in the world, continued its two-decades-long tradition of mixing Hollywood wattage with downhome southern hospitality. Once again the fest honored an eclectic mix of celebrity guests of all ages (elder statesmen and women included Richard Gere, Sir Patrick Stewart, Aaron Sorkin, Salma Hayek Pinault, Holly Hunter, and Kyra Sedgwick, while the “youngsters” featured the likes of John Boyega, Zoey Deutch, Robert Pattinson, Andrea Riseborough, and Willow Shields). The festival also played host to a number of buzzy independent filmmakers, such as Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch, who were on hand to present a discussion titled “Scribble to Screen: The Florida Project” prior to their film’s screening later that night.

To read all about the dazzle and the docs visit Filmmaker magazine.

'FU'! Jay Rosenblatt and Ellen Bruno on their Omnibus (Trump-inspired) Project 'Filmmakers Unite'

Merely a week after 9/11, San Franciscans Jay Rosenblatt and Caveh Zahedi teamed up to address the national crisis, putting out a call to 150 of their fellow filmmakers to create short films or videos as a response to the mainstream media coverage. The result, Underground Zero, a feature-length omnibus consisting of 11 short works, went on to play on both HBO and the Sundance Channel (and with the participating filmmakers receiving an honorarium, along with $10K of the proceeds going to charity).

Now, over a decade and a half later, a new national crisis has emerged in the form of "a real threat to our democracy, to freedom of speech, and to civil rights," as Rosenblatt and collaborator Ellen Bruno put it in their recent call to (filmmaking) action. Reaching out to over 200 media-makers, the duo selected 13 shorts from more than 50 submissions to create Filmmakers Unite, a project that "documents diverse thoughts and feelings about the current state of our union," as they explained in their description of the project.

To read all about it visit Documentary magazine.