Doc Star of the Month: Pat Henschel, 'A Secret Love'

When one thinks of a coming-out story these days, an LGBTQ teenager proudly declaring their identity on Instagram might immediately spring to mind. Which wasn't the case for the two women at the center of Chris Bolan's heartfelt doc A Secret Love, streaming on Netflix starting April 29. 

The film is a decades-spanning portrait of the director's great-aunt Terry Donahue, a member of the women's pro baseball league that inspired the 1992 film A League of Their Own, and Pat Henschel, the hockey player she fell in love with way back in 1947. Over six decades later, facing their mortality and the challenges of aging, the two make the difficult decision to let the entire family in on the fact that they've always been more than just roommates. Which launches the couple into an unfamiliar — though ultimately exhilarating — gay marriage-accepting world.

Though Terry Donahue died in March of 2019 at the age of 93, her nonagenarian wife Pat is still very much alive and speaking out about her life (and the love of her life). And most fortunately for Documentary, she was willing to be featured as April's Doc Star of the Month.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

No exodus: Pray Away

SEXUALITY: Former survivors & leaders of the gay conversion therapy movement contend with its aftermath.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That aphorism could easily be the tagline for Kristine Stolakis’ debut feature Pray Away, which was selected for this year’s Tribeca Film Festival Documentary Competition. Stolakis, whose work is informed by an eclectic background in anthropology, journalism, politics, and community art, has crafted a fascinating character-centric study of a long-discredited movement that, nevertheless, continues to thrive. This in spite of its founders’ near-religiously zealous efforts to kill it off year after year.

To read my critique visit Modern Times Review.

What to Stream at the 17th Docudays UA Digital Edition

Attending the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival a couple of years back proved to be one of my most memorable festival experiences. Admittedly, part of that had to do with being acutely aware of my foreignness (I encountered not one other American during my stay – well, unless you count the mercenary in the hotel lobby who struck up a conversation after hearing my accent) in a country I’d never been to (one that still felt fresh off a revolution and was deeply embroiled in a border war). This was long before our current US president tried to shake down their president, of course – even before they elected a comedian to the highest office in the land – so Ukraine wasn’t really in the media feeds of many of us here in the States.

But the other thing that made the Kyiv-based festival so unforgettable is that it’s just hands down an impressively run event (complete with enthusiastic young volunteers who often doubled as engaging personal tour guides, eager for the opportunity to practice some English). So I guess it should come as no surprise that in the midst of a global pandemic the topnotch Docudays UA team decided to forge ahead with their 17th edition, which runs from April 24-May 3, albeit online. And luckily for those of us self-isolating from afar, doing so with an industry program made available to a worldwide audience for free (and in English!) via their YouTube channel.

And to read all about my eclectic home-viewing suggestions visit Modern Times Review.

“A Time-Traveling Conquistador Confronting Modern Mexicans”: Rodrigo Reyes on His Tribeca and Hot Docs Selected 499

499, the fourth feature film from “25 New Face” alum Rodrigo Reyes, is an epic, enchanting road movie that travels seamlessly through time (a 500-year-old journey reenacted in the present day) and space (across Mexico, from coastal Veracruz to the nation’s capital — or what used to be called Tenochtitlán back when the Aztecs claimed it as their own). Cemented by Eduardo San Juan Breña’s gripping performance as a Spanish conquistador who finds himself washed up into the future and onto modern day Mexico’s shores, the film recreates the path taken by Hernán Cortez in his 1621 quest to conquer the new land — but with a twist. In lieu of Aztec warriors, the ghostly conquistador encounters the victims and perpetrators held hostage by the country’s ceaseless drug wars — both sides bound by a legacy of Spanish colonialism that reverberates to this very day.

Filmmaker took the opportunity to catch up with the Mexico-born American director as 499 was making its (digital) debuts in the Official Documentary Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival, and in the International Spectrum Competition at Hot Docs.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Our Criminal Justice System is Broken, and the Sooner Folks See that the Sooner We Can Begin to Fix It”: Roger Ross Williams on the Netflix docuseries The Innocence Files

Executive produced and directed by Liz Garbus, Alex Gibney and Roger Ross Williams, with episodes also helmed by Jed Rothstein, Andy Grieve and Sarah Dowland, The Innocence Files is a riveting, nine-part docuseries that dives deep into eight wrongful convictions that The Innocence Project and its affiliated Innocence Network fought tooth and nail to overturn.

The Netflix series gets off to a binge-worthy start with its first three installments — “The Evidence: Indeed and Without Doubt,” “The Evidence: The Truth Will Defend Me,” and “The Evidence: The Duty to Correct” — all directed by Academy Award-winner Roger Ross Williams. (And if your time is limited, or if you’re just on streaming service overload, this is the must-see trio. Though you might also want to add Garbus’s equally strong “The Witness: Making Memory” to your queue. The only episode told through the eyes of a female rape survivor who unintentionally put the wrong man away, it marks the first time I’ve seen portrayed onscreen the awful toll taken when a victim becomes a perpetrator through no fault of her own.)

In three tightly edited episodes Williams tackles the horrifying cases of Levon Brooks, Kennedy Brewer, and Keith Allen Harward — all convicted mostly on the basis of unreliable bite mark evidence and all subsequently cleared through DNA (though only after serving a shocking 16 years, 13 years, and 33 years, respectively). Brooks and Brewer were both accused of the rape and murder of two different three-year-old girls in small-town Mississippi – and both had their teeth analyzed by a forensic odontologist named Dr. Michael West whose license was later revoked. Harward, the only white man of the bunch, was accused of raping a woman and murdering her husband in Newport, Virginia in the early 80s. To the jury the bite mark “evidence” proved stronger than the fact that Harward didn’t even match the hazy description of the assailant.

Filmmaker was fortunate enough to catch up with Williams to discuss his docuseries contributions soon after all nine episodes dropped on Netflix on April 15th.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

The Romanians Are Coming!: The nonfiction gems of “Making Waves U.S. Tour of Romanian Cinema”

Hard to believe that it’s only been a little over three decades since the people of Romania decided they’d had enough of their country’s communist strongman and rose up to topple his suffocating regime. And it’s even harder to believe that out of the ashes of the Ceauşescu dictatorship eventually rose a remarkable Romanian New Wave in the mid-aughts, one that put this small nation on the cinematic map from Cannes, to Venice, to the Berlinale and beyond.

But, for anyone paying close attention, the signs were there at least a decade earlier, most notably in the output directly on the heels of the 1989 revolution. Thankfully, there’s “Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema” to set the record straight. “The Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution” retro, the largest series devoted to Romanian film ever to be presented on these shores, began at NYC’s Film Forum last year, and was scheduled to tour through this spring to the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA); the Seattle Northwest Film Forum and SIFF Film Center; the Lightbox Film Center in Philadelphia; the ASU Marston Exploration in Phoenix; and Silver Spring’s AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, before wrapping up at DC’s National Gallery of Art.

And to read all about this spectacular (pre-pandemic) lineup visit Global Comment.

“There Were Clearly Other Things Going On, From Klan Involvement to Pedophile Rings...”: Maro Chermayeff on the HBO Docuseries Atlanta’s Missing And Murdered: The Lost Children

HBO’s Atlanta’s Missing And Murdered: The Lost Children, a five-part docuseries executive produced and directed by Sam Pollard and Maro Chermayeff, along with Jeff Dupre and Joshua Bennett, is an intricate reexamination of one of the most horrific events in that southern city’s not-too-distant history — the kidnapping and murder of at least 30 (though likely more) African-American children and young adults between 1979 and 1981. Though the crimes ultimately would all be pinned on one man, a 23-year-old oddball named Wayne Williams, the case has now been reopened by current Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The case was the throughline for the most recent season of the David Fincher-produced Netflix drama Mindhunter, and now, in the non-fiction world, it finds Pollard and Chermayeff weaving together archival footage, revelatory court documents, and a wealth of new interviews with those who lived through the tragedy (from still-grieving relatives to suspicious lawyers and reporters). In the process the acclaimed filmmakers unwind what had been a tidy tale about a prolific serial killer into a damning indictment of an entire city filled with self-serving secrets.

Filmmaker was fortunate to catch up with Chermayeff soon after the airing of the docuseries’s third installment. (Episodes drop every Sunday throughout the month.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Science Is Culture at the Online CPH:CONFERENCE 2020

The New Virtual Normal: Covering a Film Festival During COVID-19

Covering CPH:DOX — the first spring fest to respond to COVID-19 by moving entirely online rather than cancel or postpone — remotely from several time zones away proved a surprising respite from the global coronavirus chaos. Not only was I able to tune in to fascinating virtual talks (see Edward Snowden) at all hours of the day, and discover nonfiction gems (via the online CPH:MARKET, the most abundantly stocked market I'd seen in weeks), but I was able to do it all from the comfort of home in my pajamas (and sans jet lag).

To read all about the virtual excursion visit Documentary magazine.

CPH:DOX's Directors on Reinventing the Film Festival During the COVID-19 Chaos

Since its founding in 2003, the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival, better known as CPH:DOX, has avidly embraced expanding definitions of the nonfiction form — and in the process has redefined the doc film festival itself. So it makes strange cosmic sense that, faced with global pandemic shutdowns as opening night on March 18 approached, the groundbreaking CPH:DOX chose not to cancel or postpone, but to instead lead the way to a brand new future festival world, one in which calls to social-distance and self-isolate are re-envisioned as opportunities to reach out and touch an even wider audience.

And to learn more about the decision-making behind the pivot, Documentary reached out to CPH:DOX Director Tine Fischer and Deputy Director and Head of Industry Katrine Kiilgaard, a few days after the successful conclusion of the first-ever virtual edition.

To read all about it visit Documentary magazine.

A profile in parental courage: “D. Wade: Life Unexpected”

As its title suggests, D. Wade: Life Unexpected is an unexpected film. The latest offering from ESPN Films and Imagine Documentaries (an offspring of Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment company), the doc follows the all-too-familiar trajectory of basketball legend Dwayne Wade – from impoverished childhood on the mean streets of Chicago in the 80s with a drug-addicted single mom, to superstar status as a 13-time NBA All-Star and three-time NBA champ. But what elevates Wade’s story above usual well-worn cliché is that the film’s director and executive producer Bob Metelus, a longtime friend and cinematographer (and thankfully, one of many POCs involved in the production – including another legend, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning producer Sam Pollard), digs deep beneath the surface of a heralded sports figure. In the process revealing a surprising human being who would most likely be a hero had he never even picked up a ball.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

Going Virtual in the Pandemic Age: CPH:DOX 2020, The Digital Edition

Hard to believe just a few weeks back I was eagerly preparing for my annual pilgrimage to Copenhagen to begin the spring doc fest season. Well, we all know how that turned out. Or not. As a deadly virus forced festivals the world over to cancel, CPH:DOX, long a champion of outside-the-box filmmaking, counterintuitively decided the show must go on. Rather than cut losses and hunker down in social isolation, festival director Tine Fischer and her scrappy team did the exact opposite, reaching out online to actually expand the CPH:DOX audience on a global scale. Picking up and relocating to the virtual realm, they live streamed (as well as uploaded to YouTube) free daily talks, debates, and even the five-day CPH:CONFERENCE. And they made this risky pivot mere days before the event’s opening date (which they not only stuck to but then proceeded to stretch the fest for an extra week) — and all of this amidst the chaos of fast-moving government restrictions and cascading flight cancellations (mine included). Someone should give this festival its own DOX:AWARD.

To read all about my online trip visit Filmmaker magazine.