Recalibrate the media, reconstruct the system, reimagine the police: pointing the way through movies (and a podcast and a web-series)

With trust in the media, in institutions, in each other at a depressing low, it’s important to know how we got here – and how to flip the script. Which is why I’ve compiled an eclectic “guide” to movies and more that have helped me make sense of our current moment, one in which the calculatedly-composed cultural narratives surrounding race, reporting, and policing have collided in the caught-on-camera murder of yet another unarmed African-American man. (And since racism should never be the burden of black and brown folks – it’s up to the people who built the system of inequality to participate in its dismantlement! – my following recommendations are also heavy on media-makers actively getting their own white hands dirty to right some deeply entrenched wrongs.)

To read on visit Global Comment.

Cannes Docs - Marché du Film & CPH:DOX on "Documentary Production now - and beyond!”

CANNES DOCS: Cannes Docs - Marché du Film & CPH:DOX provide the informative panel discussion "Documentary Production now - and beyond!"

The Doc Talk – CPH:DOX Panel titled "Documentary Production now – and beyond!" at this year’s virtual Cannes Docs – Marché du Film featured four of Denmark’s most knowledgable when it comes to navigating the suddenly upended documentary landscape. Stepping into the role of Zoom moderators were Katrine Kiilgaard, CPH:DOX Deputy Director and Head of Industry, and Tereza Simikova, Head of CPH:FORUM, posing their own questions, as well as some from the online international audience that tuned in live on June 22nd.

And answering those inquiring minds were veteran producers Monica Hellström of Final Cut for Real, and Sara Stockmann of Sonntag Pictures, both with impressive resumes and projects in the pipeline. Hellström, one of this year’s "Producers on the Move," is also one of the forces behind Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Cannes-selected Flee. In addition, she’s currently producing Simon Lereng Wilmont’s A House Made of Splinters, the Peabody Award-winning director’s follow up to his Oscar-shortlisted The Distant Barking of Dogs. While Stockmann is in production on Frederik Sølberg’s Hana Korea – which just won the Eurimages Award at CPH:FORUM – and is behind Jannik Splidsboel’s Being Erico, which nabbed the Nordic:DOX competition at CPH:DOX 2020.

To read all about it visit Modern Times Review.

Doc Stars of the Month: Cheyenne Adriano and Mari Timans, 'Unsettled'

Taking Best Documentary Feature Film at last year's Outfest, Tom Shepard's Unsettled, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee, adheres to every fraught definition of its title. Debuting on WORLD Channel on June 28 (and available for streaming on WorldChannel.org through July 12), the film follows four newly arrived LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers — Subhi, a gay man from Syria; Junior, a gender-nonconforming gay man from the DRC; and Cheyenne and Mari, a lesbian couple from Angola. Over several years, Shepard's camera captures this diverse foursome as they all figure out how to navigate life on these increasingly hostile shores — and in the process learn the true price of American freedom.

So for this Pride "Doc Star of the Month," Documentary is honored to spotlight two brave LGBTQ asylum seekers, Cheyenne Adriano and Mari Timans, who traded horrific threats on their lives for a more mundane form of US insecurity.

To read my interview with the persevering duo visit Documentary magazine.

“We Prioritized Hiring Trans Crew, and When We Couldn’t do That We Mentored Trans People on Set”: Sam Feder on Disclosure

Disclosure, directed by Sam Feder (Kate Bornstein is a Queer & Pleasant Danger) and executive produced by Laverne Cox, debuts on Netflix today, June 19th. And in the wake of the whiplash from the Trump administration’s decision to erase healthcare protections for trans people, followed by the US Supreme Court’s momentous ruling protecting those same folks from workplace discrimination, it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The doc is an exhaustive and entertaining look at how trans individuals have historically been depicted onscreen through surprising archival footage (Birth of a Nation and Bugs Bunny make appearances) and insightful interviews with a diverse array of activists and artists (everyone from the ACLU’s Chase Strangio, one of the attorneys on plaintiff Aimee Stephens’ winning team, to directors Lily Wachowski and Yance Ford).

During the start of this chaotic Pride Month, Feder took a few moments to fill Filmmaker in on the project, including working with an all-queer crew and celebrating the wide range of trans men and women and gender nonconforming trailblazers (who look nothing like the white and wealthy Caitlyn Jenner).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“This Whole Movement is about Performance”: Daniel Lombroso on his Alt-Right Doc White Noise

White Noise, the first feature-length documentary from The Atlantic, often plays more like it was sprung from the mind of Christopher Guest. Director Daniel Lombroso, who’s traveled throughout the world to shoot award-winning shorts for the magazine’s website, exploring everything from Russian espionage to Israeli settlements, now trains his lens on the alt-right — specifically on three of its biggest stars. There’s Lauren Southern, who seems to be crafting herself into a sort of Ann Coulter for the YouTube generation. Also conspiracy theorist and sex blogger Mike Cernovich, who eventually dispenses with fascist ideology in favor of the more lucrative dietary supplements grift, a la Alex Jones. (I guess the sexy conspiracy theories market was a bust.) And then there’s the notorious Richard Spencer, who traded in his childhood dream of becoming an avant-garde theater director for a career in what can only be described as bizarre, racist and xenophobic performance art. (Honestly, I cannot watch Spencer give a speech without thinking of those old “Master Thespian” skits on SNL. That said, when it comes to avant-garde stunts, “Twinks4Trump,” the creation of Lucian Wintrich, who’s also featured in the film, is admittedly pure genius.)

A week prior to the film’s AFI Docs Film Festival virtual debut on June 20th, Filmmaker reached out to Lombroso to learn more about his four-year journey down the far-right rabbit hole.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Made It Clear That I Wasn’t Just Going to Repeat How Evil He Was, That This Wasn’t a Rosenberg Revenge Film”: Ivy Meeropol on her HBO Doc Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn

I suppose it should come as no surprise that since the election of Donald Trump, Roy Cohn’s seemingly inexhaustible 15 minutes of fame have been extended yet again. Before his death from AIDS (or what he termed “liver cancer”) over three decades ago, Trump’s longtime mentor/lawyer/power broker/enforcer had spent his entire life reincarnating himself. Somehow the closeted homosexual and chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the infamous Red Scare transformed what should have been an existence defined by shame into one of pure shamelessness — living the Studio 54 highlife with his mobster and celebrity friends, and never missing the opportunity to mix shady business with hedonistic pleasure.

But for director Ivy Meeropol (Heir to an Execution), who takes a deep and illuminating dive into this enigmatic, law-evading man’s life with her latest HBO doc, Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, the brazenness is not only galling but personal. For Cohn first shot to fame straight out of law school with his prosecution of “atomic spies” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — Meeropol’s grandparents. Their execution left her father and uncle orphans and spawned a legacy of heartbreak passed down to this very day.

Filmmaker caught up with Meeropol to find out more about her uniquely personal take on a man who shaped history in all the wrong ways prior to the film’s airdate on June 19th — the 67th anniversary of her grandparents’ execution.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

From Stonewall to George Floyd (and back again)

June 28, 1969 – July 3, 1969. Those were the dates of the Stonewall Uprising. The days – and I emphasize the plural – that changed US LGBTQ history forever. What we too often forget, with our current-day corporate-packaged Pride parades and complementary brand marketing, is the messiness of the rebellion. Like with the decades-long civil rights movement, a half century on we’ve sanitized the struggle. As the feel-good fairytale goes, “In the blink of one night a community of righteous gays stood together in kumbaya harmony to neutralize law enforcement with a single kick line.” And though the Uprising did indeed feature a kick line, it also featured violence. Lots of it. Several nights, in fact, of broken glass, raging fires, street fights and looting. The West Village as war zone.

To read more of my musings on the queer connection to our current moment visit Global Comment.

“A new relationship to language and listening in cinema”: Lynne Sachs on her Sheffield Doc/Fest Retrospective

INTERVIEW: Documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs speaks on her career as part of Sheffield Doc/Fest's “Ghosts & Apparitions” online focus.

For the past three decades, experimental doc-maker Lynne Sachs has been collaborating with those both behind, and in front of, her lens. Whether recording encounters on her way from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi with her co-director sister Dana (1994’s Which Way is East: Notebooks from Vietnam); or using (her own) children’s performance to mine the life of a distant relative, a Jewish doctor who went from fleeing the Nazis to translating Winnie the Pooh into Latin in Brazil (2009’s The Last Happy Day); or getting to know the undocumented workers sharing "shift beds" in NYC’s Chinatown (2013’s Your Day Is My Night) and the immigrants and people of color who wash and dry and fold throughout the metropolis (2018’s The Washing Society, co-directed with Lizzie Olesker); or simply revisiting a moment in time on Cape Cod "with and for" the late great Barbara Hammer, incorporating the feminist filmmaker’s personal archive into her process of dying (2019’s A Month of Single Frames).

To read my interview with the celebrated filmmaker visit Modern Times Review.

Five Docs to Stream at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2020 Virtual Edition

This year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, streaming nationwide from June 11-20, is chock-full of impressive cinematic gems that delve into a wide variety of important topics woefully underrepresented onscreen. Beginning with opening night’s Belly of the Beast, the latest from Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Erika Cohn (The Judge), which shines a light on the involuntary sterilizations running rampant in our US federal prison system, the fest continues to express its commitment to strong films by and about women.

To read the rest of my streaming suggestions visit Filmmaker magazine.