What to see at the 13th DOC NYC Festival

For cinephiles looking to avoid the Black Friday crowds, DOC NYC runs online through November 27! (And my recommendations made it all the way to Outtake magazine on the other side of the pond.)

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers

Without a doubt one of the highlights of the 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival – and there were many, with this year’s red carpet attendees ranging from Kerry Condon, to Janelle Monáe, to Eddie Redmayne, to Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing recipient Ron Howard – was the Wonder Women: Producers panel, which took place at the light-filled Gutstein Gallery on a balmy October afternoon. Moderated as usual by industry vet Darrien Gipson, a specialist in diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the Executive Director of SAGindie, participants included English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey), English film producer Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks), manager and producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True), and indie icon and Killer Films founder Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol). Which meant that, including Gipson, half the panel were women of colour – split equally between sides of the pond – and representing multiple generations. Not a common sight on festival panels, let alone on industry boardrooms. Yet.

To read the rest visit Outtake magazine.

Get out: Racist Trees

RACISM / A row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs begs the question, can a tree be racist? As a critic who’s long enjoyed covering the Palm Springs International Film Festival – and even served on its doc jury this year – Sara Newens and Mina T. Son’s brilliantly conceived Racist Trees was an IDFA must-watch for me, and a film that ultimately made me rethink that sunny California fest’s host city in an unexpected, simultaneously laugh-out-loud and horrific way. To say that Racist Trees – which takes a deep dive into the origin of a line of trees separating a massive golf course in Palm Springs from the historically Black neighbourhood of Crossley Tract (named after its founder, African-American entrepreneur Lawrence Crossley) – is not your average work of investigative journalism is a vast understatement. In fact, the doc hews much closer to the absurdist satire of Jordan Peele (whose work can be seen as its own form of public service, I suppose). The «villain», as the title alludes, is what would at first glance seem to be an innocuous shrub but, upon closer examination, is actually a terrifying invasive species. One which not only keeps rich whites from having to interact with (or even see – literally «there’s nothing to see here» for these folks) the poorer and darker community next door but is actually wreaking havoc on those residents (from serving as an enticing home for the area’s numerous snakes and rats, to actually combusting in the hot desert sun). And while the citizens of Crossley Tract have fought for decades to have these dangerous nuisances destroyed, the gaslighting, Hollywood expat crowd on the other side insists there’s no reason to remove these natural, aesthetically-pleasing plants. Oh, and by the way, neither they nor their harmless tamarisk trees are racist; they’ll have you know.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

Wall talk: Silent House

IRAN / The fortunes of three generations of an upper-middle-class Iranian family tracked across forty years of turbulent Iranian history. Spanning a whopping four decades and (the camerawork of) three generations, Silent House packs a dramatic punch that belies its rather innocuous title. At the centre of the tale is one upper-middle-class family in Tehran that went from riches to, if not rags, being left with a once-grand, now Grey Gardens-esque, mansion formerly owned by the fourth wife of the Shah of Iran. (That would be Reza Shah, who ruled from 1925-1941.) And at the centre of the filmmaking – and also their own current real-life drama, having been banned from leaving Iran to attend the IDFA premiere – are a pair of siblings, sister and brother Farnaz Jurabchian and Mohammadreza Jurabchian, who happen to be the third generation taking up residence on one floor of this «silent house.»

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

“The Complexity of a Disorder”: Svetislav Dragomirovic on I’m People, I Am Nobody

Svetislav Dragomirovic’s debut feature I’m People, I Am Nobody is a film I wasn’t prepared to watch. From its coy DOC NYC synopsis, we learn it’s the story of a 60-year-old retired porn performer from Serbia named Stevan who’s found himself stuck, Kafka-style, in a Maltese jail, accused of indecent exposure. What we don’t learn from that brief description is that Stevan is actually Dragomirovic’s father-in-law, and that the filmmaker received a series of “audio-letters” that Stevan had sent from prison, which form the basis of I’m People, I Am Nobody, an experimental collage that takes us on a shocking journey through Stevan’s twisting (and often twisted) mind. To learn all about the project, including dealing with a family member suffering from one of society’s most taboo disorders, Filmmaker reached out to the Belgrade-born director-producer soon after the film’s November 16th DOC NYC premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Consequences of Putin’s Playbook”: Marusya Syroechkovskaya on How to Save a Dead Friend

"Russia is for Russians!” goes the far-right rallying cry. To which Marusya replies, “Bullshit. Russia is for depressed people.” She should know: Moscow-born Marusya Syroechkovskaya spent a dozen years turning her camera (multiple cameras, really) on herself and her co-credited cameraperson and best friend (turned lover, turned husband, turned ex) Kimi Morev. The two met as suicidal teenagers in their nation’s capital in the aughts, both part of the spiraling “silenced generation” under Putin. They shocked one another by deciding to stick around for a spell to see how their - and perhaps their antiauthoritarian compatriots’s — story would end. (That said, the soulmates didn’t actually notice the 2000s come to a close. As the director laments, “It’s just like they morphed into a bad trip.”) Surprisingly for a film that takes an unflinching look at mental illness and addiction in the “depression Federation” — and is tellingly titled How to Save a Dead Friend — the tale is one of unbridled joie de vivre as much as it is about ultimate self-destruction. Indeed, the doc moves as swiftly and headily as its post-punk and grunge-heavy soundtrack. It’s also thrillingly infused with kaleidoscopic imagery that unexpectedly brings to mind the work of Gregg Araki. (In addition to the New Queer Cinema icon, Syroechkovskaya has also cited Harmony Korine and the artwork of David LaChapelle as touchstones.) Through the drinking and snorting, injecting and cutting, remained an eternal love that would tear them apart. (Naturally, Joy Division also figures prominently in their lives, as evidenced by the cat they decided to name Ian.) This feature-length resurrection also persists, the sweetest of requiems for a futureless generation. A few days before How to Save a Dead Friend’s DOC NYC and IDFA debuts, Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning filmmaker, visual artist and oppositional voice in exile, who fled her homeland in March as the Russian hammer came down.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“This Myth Has Plagued the World for Centuries”: Maxim Pozdorovkin on His DOC NYC Closing Night Film The Conspiracy

From robot-inflicted deaths (2018’s The Truth About Killer Robots) to the rise of Donald Trump through Russian state-sponsored media (2018’s Our New President), Maxim Pozdorovkin recently has taken some unconventional routes down the darkest of rabbit holes. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the Russian-American filmmaker’s latest, The Conspiracy, closing this year’s DOC NYC, is both artistically inventive (featuring evocative animation seamlessly wed with archival imagery) and downright chilling. With a powerful score and big names such as Liev Schreiber (Trotsky) and Jason Alexander (Max Warburg) added to the mix, Pozdorovkin weaves together the interwar stories of three prominent Jewish families: the Warburg bankers headed by Max in Germany; the artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus in France; and Lev Davidovich Bronstein, a Russian Marxist revolutionary better known to the world as Leon Trotsky. The Conspiracy makes the case that in times of great upheaval, scapegoating acts like the strongest of opioids — a nonsensical balm that nevertheless can expeditiously soothe a nation’s soul. Prior to the film’s DOC NYC debut on November 17, Filmmaker reached out to Pozdorovkin (also behind 2013’s Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer and 2014’s The Notorious Mr. Bout) to find out more about this unusual history lesson, one humanity has yet to learn.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Zarifa Ghafari, 'In Her Hands'

Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s In Her Hands follows the unlikeliest of protagonists, with a backstory that practically begs for Hollywood to come calling. (Though Hilary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, co-founders of HiddenLight Productions and the film’s EPs, did answer the call.) While still in her 20s, Zarifa Ghafari became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors and the youngest to ever hold that job. And she was appointed by the recently deposed President Ashraf Ghani to the leadership role — not in relatively tolerant Kabul, but in Maidan Shahr, in the conservative province of Wardak, where the Taliban have long had widespread support. Nevertheless, 2020’s International Woman of Courage, who would go on to survive three assassination attempts, seemed to be making her mark when the filmmakers started following her inspirational tale that very same year. But then a fateful decision in a faraway corridor of power was made that changed the course of the film — and Afghanistan’s history (yet again). Luckily, Ghafari managed to hold out in Kabul right up until its devastating fall — with the camera, surprisingly, continuing to roll. And fortunately for Documentary, the passionate advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan, who continues her activism from her new refuge in Germany, found time to serve as our November Doc Star of the Month. In Her Hands releases globally on Netflix on November 16.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Stories That Need to Be Told”: Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski on Ukrainian Documentary The Hamlet Syndrome

One of the more unusual projects to play this year’s DOC NYC (also concurrently screening at IDFA in the Best of Fests section), Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski’s The Hamlet Syndrome follows five young men and women as they develop an experimental stage piece based on Shakespeare’s tragedy — as well as their own. The quintet questioning “to be or not to be” are all Ukrainians who have been engaged, to varying degrees, in the war Russia launched back in 2014. (This theater-as-therapy session even predated Putin’s full-scale invasion by several months.) Soldiers Slavik and Katya, along with paramedic Roman, all saw direct conflict. Meanwhile, Rodion, a stylist from Donbas, and Oxana, who’s conflicted about her acting opportunities abroad, bear their own individual psychological scars. Indeed, the latter two also seem to be battling personal wars internally. Having fled his homophobic hometown, Rodion now finds himself increasingly fed up with cosmopolitan liberals, who collectively celebrate the queer community as heroes. “Make this a country where we don’t have to be heroes!” he rages in one powerful monologue. Likewise, Oxana seems resentful of skin-deep groupthink, suffocated by the nationalism that war inevitably inspires. “There is no freedom, only responsibility,” she laments. Whose definition of freedom are these patriotic players actually fighting for? To learn all about shooting an existential drama in the middle of a hot war, Filmmaker reached out to the Polish directing duo (2017’s The Prince and the Dybbuk, 2014’s Domino Effect) — one of whom was selected for the Creative Culture Artist-in-Residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center — just prior to their film’s November 12 DOC NYC (and IDFA) debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Each Second Meant the Difference Between Life or Death”: Rory Kennedy on The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari

Forget social and political issues — in documentaries, 2022 is shaping up to be the year of the volcano. There was Sara Dosa’s exquisite Fire of Love (which I fell in love with back at CPH:DOX in March, also screening at DOC NYC), in which a pair of lovestruck vulcanologists are quite literally consumed by their passion. Now we have not one, but two volcano-centric films debuting at this year’s DOC NYC. While I’ve not seen Herzog’s (pre-festival premiering) The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft, its title naming Dosa’s aforementioned protagonists, I’m guessing it’s likely the polar opposite of Rory Kennedy’s latest, The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari. Though the volcano triumphs in the end of both films, Kennedy eschews the scientific angle (no vulcanologists were harmed in the making of the film — because they aren’t even in the film) in favor of the film’s humanitarian core. Comprised of footage from survivors (and Nat Geo cameras) alongside interviews with those who were there (with the emotional and/or physical scars to prove it), The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari is a nail-biting, blow-by-blow, firsthand account of the titular 2019 eruption off the coast of New Zealand. While “White Island” was known to spew its toxic contents every few years or so in the middle of the night, this time the blast occurred during business hours, so to speak, while the area was filled with sightseeing tourists innocently snapping pics of the stunning crater and its surroundings. Fortunately for Filmmaker, the force behind the film — and other docs delving into public tragedies (2022’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, 2014’s Last Days in Vietnam, 2007’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) — was gracious enough to take time from her busy schedule to answer a few questions about The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari, including how a documentarian with the Kennedy name connects to characters grappling with a personal nightmare in the glare of the media spotlight. The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari debuts at DOC NYC on November 11 with a Netflix release to follow on December 16.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Film Is Full of Ghosts”: Diana Bustamante on Her DOC NYC-debuting Our Movie (Nuestra película)

Diana Bustamante’s Our Movie (Nuestra película) feels like both a departure and a homecoming for the Latin American producer credited on numerous Cannes winners, most recently Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Jury Prize-awarded (and Tilda Swinton-starring) Memoria. Comprised entirely of news footage from the Medellín-born Bustamante’s childhood — who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s when kidnappings, political assassinations and blood-soaked streets were as common as choir practice — the “essay documentary” is, as the producer/director puts it, “a collage of images, repetitions and memories, built through the intervention of the Colombian news archive.” And what a visceral collage it is - from closeups of bullet holes to a zoom in on a chic high heel (never to be worn again). Perhaps the filmmaker is trying to divine something from the detritus of her past? Indeed, left with more questions than answers lingering long after the credits have rolled, Filmmaker reached out to the busy multi-hyphenate (who also somehow found time to serve as Artistic Director of the Cartagena International Film Festival from 2014-2018) a few days before her film’s November 11 DOC NYC debut. (The following interview was translated from Spanish to English by Samuel Didonato at Cinema Tropical.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

What to See at the 13th annual DOC NYC

Wondering what to catch at "America's largest documentary festival" (November 9-27)? My half-dozen-plus suggestions - along with some equally stellar recommendations from my keen-eyed colleagues - can be found at both Filmmaker magazine and Hammer to Nail this year. So doc on!

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers (the Christine Vachon Edition)

Moderated by Darrien Gipson, Executive Director of SAGindie, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers discussion at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival was a must-catch, mostly for two glaringly obvious reasons, with the first being the wide diversity of the participants. Alongside white Brits Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, perennial panelist and SCAD Savannah Film Festival Advisory Board member) and manager-producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True, and Sir Kenneth’s longtime rep), there was the English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), and American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey). Then there was the second reason — the presence of “grande dame” of indie film (per Gipson), Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol), who has been running her female-led Killer Films since the mid-’90s. In other words, Vachon had more than a panel’s worth of wisdom to dispense.

To learn more visit Filmmaker magazine.