17 Blocks: review

Premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, where it picked up the Award for Best Editing in a Documentary Feature Film, Davy Rothbart’s 17 Blocks is a compelling, two-decades-long look at the Sanford-Durants, an African-American family navigating the ups and downs of daily, low-income life in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol – just 17 blocks away from our nation’s halls of power to be precise. The film’s main cast of characters includes Cheryl Sanford, the strong-willed matriarch who grew up middle-class in a neighborhood nearby; her college-bound son Emmanuel Durant, Jr., who began the whole documenting process as an inquisitive nine-year-old with a home video camera back in 1999; Denice Sanford-Durant, who serves as the family’s grounding force even as Cheryl’s drug addiction spirals out of control; and Akil “Smurf” Sanford, who unfortunately follows in his mother’s footsteps, using drugs and ultimately dealing them.

While the film is an undeniably moving and powerful portrait of the inner-city disadvantaged overcoming obstacles and rising above urban blight adversity, it is also problematically tidy, nearly cliché. Rothbart, the film’s Emmy Award-winning director – and a contributor to This American Life – is notably not from the neighborhood he chronicles. He first met a 15-year-old Smurf and his budding filmmaker brother Emmanuel on a public basketball court only by chance, then soon befriended the entire clan. Rothbart, not incidentally, is white.

To read my review visit Global Comment.

“We Have a Contract with our Audience that We Need to Look Behind the Doors”: Marcus Vetter on His Davos Doc The Forum

When one thinks of the World Economic Forum many words come to mind: Davos, global elite, Bono. One term that decidedly does not is transparency. Which is what makes Marcus Vetter’s The Forum all the more remarkable.

With this fly-on-the-wall doc the German director (The Forecaster) becomes the first filmmaker ever to be granted behind-the-scenes access to the exclusive organization. Vetter follows the WEFs octogenarian founder Klaus Schwab from the run-up decision-making (Who to pair with Netanyahu? Who’s moderating the Bolsonaro? Who gets a souvenir cowbell?) all the way through the glitzy event itself (one attended by both the Amazon-pillaging president of Brazil and the teenage superstar/climate change activist Greta Thunberg, the only guest with the balls to call bullshit on her hosts). In the process he creates a cinematic microcosm that plays like a cross between Andrew Rossi’s The First Monday in May and Jesse Moss’s Netflix series The Family. One in which the rich and powerful, drunk on their own champagne-flavored Kool Aid, groupthink themselves into the pretzel-logic conviction that welcoming the “sinners” — those (almost exclusively white male) titans of industry that Jennifer Morgan, CEO of Greenpeace International attends to confront — in to be “redeemed” is somehow not simultaneously enabling them.

To discuss the process and challenges behind the doc (including placing a boom mic over Bosonaro’s head) Filmmaker caught up with Vetter just prior to the film’s world premiere tonight, October 28, at DOK Leipzig.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“It’s Like the Secret Bar or Restaurant in NYC That You’re So Privileged to Discover First….”: Beth Aala on Made in Boise

When one thinks of Idaho, potatoes — not pregnancy — immediately comes to mind. Made in Boise, however, the latest from award-winning filmmaker Beth Aala, will forever change how one views this rugged northwestern locale. Following four gestational surrogates, all devoted mothers with children of their own, who carry babies for women and men (often gay singles and couples) both nationwide and around the world, the doc is an eye-opening look at how this red state-based “unofficial surrogacy capital” of the US is redefining family in surprisingly progressive ways.

Filmmaker caught up with Aala (Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman, Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon) a few weeks prior to her film’s opening the new season of PBS’s Independent Lens today, October 28th.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Counterbalancing the traditional narrative: My English Cousin

MIGRANTS: In 2001, Fahed reached the UK filled with dreams. By 2018 he is on the brink of a mid-life crisis.

Karim Sayad’s My English Cousin is a much-needed counterbalance to the slew of refugee-themed docs of recent years. Refreshingly surprising in directorial choices – starting with the opening shot of an industrial pier set to the sound of The Specials’s classic ska lament for the UK’s once-vibrant manufacturing sector, "Ghost Town" – Sayad’s film takes as its subject not the plight of today’s asylum seeker trying to find his way in a foreign new world, but the struggle of a middle-aged immigrant grappling mentally to make his way back home.

To read the rest of my DOK Leipzig critique visit Modern Times Review.

In service to performance: Army

CONFLICT: Following one South Korean recruits' journey of mandatory service reveals how an individual is shaped into being part of a collective identity.

From its arresting opening sequence of military exercises performed before a riveted crowd celebrating South Korean heroism during the war that tore the Korean Peninsula in two, Kelvin Kyung Kun Park’s Army places its central theme of "performance" front and center. Mandatory military service is a rite of passage in South Korea, the director/narrator explains, reflecting on his time (nearly two years required) performing his duty, And how his point-of-view changed as he returns to boot camp a decade later, camera in hand, to follow a fresh-faced recruit named Woochul.

To read the rest of my DOK Leipzig critique visit Modern Times Review.

Elegy for the imprisoned: Exemplary Behaviour

REHABILITATION: In viewing Vilnius prisoners serving life sentences, Exemplary Behaviour examines the paradox between justice and forgiveness.

Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius’s Exemplary Behaviour is a highly cinematic, surprising look at the Lithuanian prison system through a very complicated lens. With powerful images and an evocative, often ambient sound design, the directors manage to create a work that feels quasi-religious in both spirit and tone.

To read the rest of my DOK Leipzig critique visit Modern Times Review.

Doc Star of the Month: Nicole Williamson, 'Made in Boise'

"Loves being pregnant" is not usually a statement found on one’s bio, but it’s certainly relevant information when it comes to Nicole Williamson. The president and CEO of A Host of Possibilities, Idaho's largest surrogacy agency (located in Boise, the "unofficial surrogacy capital" of the US), Williamson is also one of the breakout stars of award-winning filmmaker Beth Aala's surprisingly uplifting Made in Boise.

Aala's doc follows four gestational surrogates, including this indefatigable businesswoman, who smoothly runs her agency alongside her husband while also raising their two young kids — all while carrying her fourth surrogate baby. Even more impressive, though, is that rather than slowing her down, the unconventional pregnancy seems to energize her — and, in turn, the film itself.

Which is why Documentary is delighted that Williamson found time in her 24/7 schedule to be featured as our October "Doc Star of the Month."

To read my interview with the unorthodox Idahoan visit Documentary magazine.

“It Was a Story that Played Out Almost as a Psychological Thriller and Yet it was True”: Ed Perkins on Tell Me Who I Am

Tell Me Who I Am, the Telluride-premiering feature from Academy Award-nominated (for Best Documentary Short Subject) director Ed Perkins, digs into the stranger-than-fiction saga of Alex Lewis, one half of an identical set of twins, who at the age of 18 lost his memory in a motorcycle accident. Upon awakening from a coma the only person Alex was able to recognize was his brother Marcus — the mirror image he would come to rely on to relearn pretty much everything, from the mundane (down to brushing his teeth) to his very sense of self.

In turn, Marcus devotes himself wholeheartedly to the project of healing his sibling both physically and mentally. So much so that he makes the fateful decision to implant a false family narrative into his brother’s brain in an effort to shield him from a much darker truth. One in which Marcus himself, through Alex, is able to, if not completely erase from his own mind, suppress enough to go on to live his own satisfying life.

Unfortunately, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And to learn all about bringing this thorny story to the screen Filmmaker caught up with the British documentarian just prior to the film’s Netflix premiere earlier this month.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.