“The Charismatic Leader Leads People, But What Toward?”: Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey on Their HBO Docuseries The Synanon Fix

Currently unspooling across four episodes on HBO and continuing to stream on Max is The Synanon Fix, the latest true-crime catnip from the cable channel that’s not a juggernaut of the genre. And while the Sundance-debuting docuseries does involve the usual “suspects” (a cult, a cache of weapons, attempted murder via a venomous snake), it’s also the latest HBO Original from director Rory Kennedy and writer Mark Bailey (Ethel, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing). Which means it’s less interested in lurid details and more focused on actual individuals with an optimistic vision who are drawn into — and failed by — a larger system. In this case the system was Synanon, an organization that was a drug rehab program, a New Age-y community and finally violent cult, founded by Charles “Chuck” Dederich, a former adman and Alcoholics Anonymous acolyte who in the ’60s welcomed “dopefiends” into his Santa Monica storefront. He then proceeded to experiment mentally and emotionally on these fragile recovering addicts with a scarily confrontational talk therapy he branded “The Game.” (Un)fortunately, it often worked, at least for awhile, and long enough to attract fawning media attention, celebrity visits and non-addicted “lifestylers” who just wanted to be part of this ever-expanding, model communal community. And then things got, well, really weird. Soon after the April 2nd premiere of episode one (“Here Come the Dope Fiends”), Filmmaker reached out over email to the veteran director along with her co-EP and writer (and husband), to learn all about The Synanon Fix and the risk of looking to quick fix a long-broken society.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Step from Being a Human to Becoming a Monster is Much Shorter than We Think”: Oksana Karpovych on Her ND/NF Doc, Intercepted

While the on-the-ground horrors of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been viewed around the world, often in real time — and even formed the basis of this year’s Best Doc Feature Oscar winner, Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol — Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych has chosen to take a much different and rather innovative approach to documenting the war. Intercepted premiered this year at the Berlin International Film Festival before traveling to CPH:DOX and now, tomorrow night, New Directors/New Films, and while it contains no shortage of cinematically-framed images of both devastation and defiant rebuilding, it predominantly captures our attention through an archive of voices — specifically those of Russian soldiers phoning home from the frontlines. The riveting conversations, all intercepted by the Ukrainian Secret Service back in 2022, veer from maddeningly heartless, to downright confused, to painfully clear-eyed and back again, culminating in a sort of audio X-ray of the imperialist psyche itself. Just after the film’s screening in the Urgent Matters section of this year’s CPH:DOX, Filmmaker caught up with the bi-continental, Kyiv-born director, who also worked as a local producer with international reporters covering the spring 2022 assault on her beloved homeland.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

On Power and Solidarity : Brett Story and Yance Ford at CPH:DOX 2024

Produced in collaboration with Documentary Campus, this year’s five-day CPH:CONFERENCE featured a wide-ranging series of panels and conversations, diving in to everything from indigenous narratives to climate storytelling to the mind of Alex Gibney. Especially notable were the four mornings, FILM:MAKERS in Dialogue, all moderated by Wendy Mitchell (festival producer of Sundance London as well as a journalist for Screen International). In these sessions audiences were invited to listen in as the directors behind two films chose clips from each other’s work to engage with. One such pairing in particular proved both inspired and inspiring. Brett Story (The Hottest August, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes) took the stage with Yance Ford (Oscar-nominated Strong Island) on March 20th to probe one another about both the process and the politics behind their latest Sundance-premiering features, Union and Power, respectively. While the former takes us inside the fight by a scrappy band of activist-workers to unionize Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse back in 2021, the latter essayistic doc is a “sweeping chronicle of the history and evolution of policing in the U.S.”

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

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“I Operate From a Trans Lens, or Frame, as Though It Is the Only Choice Available”: Jules Rosskam on Desire Lines

For me, watching Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, which won this year’s Sundance Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition, was a cinematic breath of fresh air. The experimental feature combines no holds barred interviews with transmen (of all shapes and colors) who are attracted to men, with a fictional storyline involving a real archive (one that includes shamefully buried history, like the story of author/ activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay). The result is a riveting look back in time, and to the present and possible future, to reveal how, in the words of the director, “gender and sexuality animate each other.” Post-Sundance Filmmaker reached out to Rosskam, who is also a longtime artist and educator, to learn all about reframing queer history through a trans lens. After playing the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival and BFI Flare, Desire Lines will screen at the upcoming Wicked Queer, Cleveland International and Milwaukee film festivals.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Bodiless Entities, Body Politics and Bodily Functions: CPH:DOX Inter:Active 2024

Expertly curated (under the direction of Londoner Mark Atkin, who also serves as Head of Studies of the CPH:LAB), this year’s edition of the Inter:Active exhibition at CPH:DOX (March 13-24) featured the provocative theme “Who Do You Think You Are: The Body Reexamined.” As the title might suggest, the 17 XR works were wide-ranging and eclectic, both in form (VR yes, but also mixed reality and AI chatbots) and substance (perhaps unsurprising coming from a group of creators with myriad intersectional identities). Indeed, quite a number of the works I experienced on the top floor of the invitingly designed (palace turned contemporary arts space turned festival headquarters) Kunsthal Charlottenborg actually spoke to me — a few literally as well as figuratively.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Ways of (nonbinary) thinking: on desire and Desire Lines

“Past and present collide when an Iranian American trans man time-travels through an LGBTQ+ archive on a dizzying and erotic quest to unravel his own sexual desires” reads the synopsis for Jules Rosskam’s Sundance-premiering (and Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition-winning) Desire Lines. It’s a hybrid doc that uses a fictional narrative to unbury inconvenient history. (How many of us know the name of the trailblazing author and activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first trans man to publicly identify as gay? Where’s Lou’s biopic?) And an experimental film that features shockingly frank contemporary interviews with trans men – which opens up a Pandora’s Box of questions and conundrums strictly for, and about, queers. (In other words, straight cis folks are welcome to look but don’t touch. Refreshingly, this conversation, for once, isn’t about you.)

To read the rest of my nonconforming essay visit Global Comment.

‘Adrianne & the Castle’ Review: A Grieving Man Builds a Shrine to His Late Wife in a Beautiful Documentary About a Love Larger Than Life

“Reality is for those who lack imagination” is one of the many witticisms dispensed by Adrianne Blue Wakefield St. George, the star and subject of Shannon Walsh’s documentary “Adrianne & The Castle” and a woman who also once proclaimed: “I am my own art.” Indeed she was. A gloriously Rubenesque force of nature who appeared to take her fashion and beauty tips from Divine, Adrianne was muse not only to herself but likewise to her adoring husband Alan St. George, who built a castle for — and his entire life around — his beloved wife of 30-plus years.

To read the rest of my (thumbs up) SXSW review visit IndieWire.

"A Film Can Be a Spark, and What Comes After It Is Where the Magic Is”: Elizabeth Nichols on Her True/False-Debuting Flying Lessons

Debuting at True/False (followed by First Look), Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons is a beautiful ode to a New York City Lower East Side artist as well as to the larger “dying breed” that once roamed the streets of Alphabet City, performing in its now extinct clubs. Importantly, it’s also a call to end rampant gentrification and a love story between director and character all rolled into one. The drama began, rather unhappily, with an eviction notice after NYC real estate owner/convicted fraudster Steve Croman bought the building Nichols was living in as a rent-stabilized tenant. Within months the “Bernie Madoff of landlords” had unleashed a harassment campaign (right down to the use of mafia-esque “tenant-relocation specialists”) that in turn led the filmmaker to join the Stop Croman Coalition, bringing her camera along to meetings to document the fight. It was at one of those SCC meetups that Nichols encountered her upstairs neighbor, a fiery-haired, septuagenarian bohemian named Philly Abe. The filmmaker then fell down a rabbit hole that lasted close to a decade, beginning with the discovery that Abe was a minor-cultural icon — an artist and performer and star of various underground movies (from other seminal underground figures like Todd Verow and the Kuchars). Their relationship eventually blossomed into a friendship that grew so deep that Nichols is now the caretaker of a historical treasure chest, much of it now resting at Howl Arts. The vast multimedia archive likewise features prominently in Flying Lessons, itself a cinematic fulfillment of the three-part promise Nichols made to Abe: to show her art, tell her story, and of course, fight for her apartment. A few days prior to the doc’s March 1st True/False premiere Filmmaker caught up with Nichols, a “25 New Faces of Independent Film” alum and an international educator, whose work in Tanzania has changed her own creative process and ways of thinking.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

"I Don’t Invest Hope in Celebrity or Leaders Too Much, But I Do Have Hope in People”: Mitch McCabe on Their True/False Premiere 23 Mile

While the pandemic spurred many (white collar) Americans to flee the big cities and retreat to the safety and comfort of living room Zooming, Detroit native Mitch McCabe returned home to the big city and instead roamed the often chaotic streets, eventually journeying throughout Michigan, camera in tow. What the veteran filmmaker-educator (and Flaherty Seminar and MacDowell fellow) witnessed was what we all primarily saw in that “unprecedented” election year: anger. At lockdowns, at those attending protests unmasked. And masked. At the murder of George Floyd, at the BLM movement, at Trump. At Democrat elites like Governor Gretchen Whitmer and President Joe Biden. And while the characters were likewise familiar — from white gun-toting militiamen to Black bullhorn-wielding activists — McCabe also dug deeper into this mess of humanity to capture scenes unfolding that were ever more surreal. A group of the aforementioned anti-government extremists on the steps of the state capitol defending, via an intimidatingly armed show of force, a Black activist’s right to free speech. A pro-Second Amendment speech in which he fervently addresses every “beautiful” person, including “women, men, and whatever they identify as.” Or an unexpectedly amiable guy standing outside his house (and lawn) plastered in Biden-Harris signs as he’s subject to jeers from his MAGA hood. So how does it feel to be the target of nonstop daily vitriol? “Sad,” he laments with a shrug. “Sad for the Trump folks because they’re so angry.” The result is McCabe’s endlessly fascinating and elegantly crafted 78-minute video diary titled 23 Mile, which serves as a much-needed cinematic reminder in this round two election year that uncomplicated narratives that simply confirm our preconceived notions do a disservice to us all. So just prior to the doc’s True/False debut today, Filmmaker reached out to the eclectic director, whose work runs the gamut from narrative to nonfiction, short to feature-length, and everything in between, to learn all about shooting in potentially explosive environments and extending an ear if not hand to the other side of the political divide.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“It was sort of like that scene in Coming to America, where Eddie Murphy and Semmi are in the bar interviewing all the different women”: D. Smith on her Sundance-winning Kokomo City

At its heart, D. Smith’s 2023 Sundance-winning (NEXT Innovator Award and NEXT Audience Award) Kokomo City is a music-laden, kaleidoscopically-edited series of raw monologues from four defiantly survivalist women whose voices are too often eclipsed by what the debut feature director terms the “red carpet narrative”: “When a fierce PR team puts a trans woman in a fabulous gown and has her speak like a pageant finalist.” (Aka the RuPaul’s Drag Race effect.) Indeed, while Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll (who, tragically and outrageously, was fatally shot by a teenager last spring), Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver are all Black, beautiful and trans, they are certainly not interested in making straight cis white Americans feel all kumbaya comfortable – nor straight cis African Americans for that matter. All are urban (NYC and Atlanta) sex workers with strong and deep opinions on a wide variety of topics – from the vulnerability of macho Black men to the fear of Black mothers for their sons (especially when those sons become daughters. Which according to Carter adds a whole other level of psychological complication for single moms, often forced to grapple with male abandonment for a second time). Not to mention the day-to-day reality of working in the oldest profession in the world, from facing life-threatening dangers to encountering unexpected hilarities (sometimes simultaneously). Just after the film was awarded Outstanding Debut at the Cinema Eye Honors (where the aforementioned four characters likewise received The Unforgettables non-competitive honor), and prior to its nomination for Best Documentary at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, I caught up with Smith, who’s also a twice Grammy-nominated producer-singer-songwriter, to learn all about this unusual passion project; one forged during three years of couch surfing after being shown the door by the music industry for walking “in her truth,” as the red carpet was rolled up back in 2014.

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

“A War Without Rules”: Shoghakat Vardanyan on IDFA Best Film Winner ‘1489’

Had it not been for a spiraling rift that began with a pro-Palestinian protest on the opening night of last year’s IDFA, Armenian director Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489 surely would have been the big story out of the fest. It’s an unassuming debut by a first-time filmmaker who took the IDFA’s top prize for best film in the international competition. Regardless, it was a bittersweet win that could likewise be read as a consolation prize, as 1489 is a doc that Vardanyan certainly never wanted to make. Its coldly bureaucratic title refers to the number assigned to a “body of an individual missing in action.” The film centers on one particular MIA conscript in the most recent struggle over the disputed Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) region — a 21-year-old student and musician (a pianist and saxophone player), and brother and son, named Soghomon Vardanyan. Simply put, 1489 is a distraught sister’s calmly clear-eyed, day-by-day, smartphone-shot account of her and her parents’ unenviable (ultimately two-year-long) search for her sibling's bones, some semblance of closure, and an ever-elusive hunt for answers. Just prior to the film’s US premiere at True/False, Documentary reached out to the first-time director, producer, and cinematographer with congratulations, condolences, and our own carefully framed questions.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“We Always Sought Out Photos with Movement”: Klára Tasovská on Her “Nan Goldin of Soviet Prague” Doc I’m Not Everything I Want to Be

"The only way to survive is to take photos,” declares Libuše Jarcovjáková, the iconoclastic star/narrator/guide of Klára Tasovská’s visually arresting (and eye-catching titled) I’m Not Everything I Want to Be. Nominated for the Teddy Documentary Award at this year’s Berlinale, the all-archival film is a globetrotting, black and white trip back in time (primarily to the 80s and 90s) viewed entirely through the rebelliously inquisitive eyes of this “Nan Goldin of Soviet Prague” (in the words of curator Sam Stourdzé). And words. For not only did Jarcovjáková obsessively collect images of both her defiantly unglamorous self and her decidedly adventurous life, she kept copious diaries of that wild inner-outer journey as well. Indeed, throwing caution to the wind, the outlaw shutterbug goes from hanging out at an underground gay club in Czechoslovakia (a country where she found herself “zigzagging through totalitarian reality”) to escaping, via fake marriage, to West Berlin. (Which “might be a step into the void but it’s a step forward,” she notes in her journal with hope. Alas, capitalism also left Jarcovjáková depressingly disoriented, unsure as to whether she was “outside or inside the cage.”) And on to Tokyo as an unlikely commercial photographer, an unsurprisingly awkward fit for a creative who’s always used her art to discover her “true self.” (In fact, Jarcovjáková much preferred returning to an unpretentious janitorial job in Berlin — camera in tow of course.) Just after the film’s Berlin premiere, and prior to its CPH:DOX debut, Filmmaker reached out to the veteran Czech director (2012’s Fortress and 2017’s Nothing Like Before, both co-directed with Lukáš Kokeš) to learn all about cinematically capturing a larger-than-life lenser.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Jazz hands: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

GEOPOLITIC / How jazz music played a role in political manoeuvres during the Cold War. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, as the old slogan goes, and the murdered Congolese leader/assassinated civil rights martyr Patrice Lumumba is certainly the latter in Johan Grimonprez’s Sundance debuting Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. Nearly a decade in the making, the veteran director’s (dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Shadow World, Double Take) cinematic reframing of history is every bit as grand and showy as its title might imply. (Not to mention as overwhelming as a doctoral thesis, albeit a groovy one.)

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

'Will & Harper’ Review: Will Ferrell Gets a Crash Course on Trans People During a Cross-Country Road Trip with One of His Oldest Friends

Director Josh Greenbaum was known as a documentary filmmaker before he shifted gears for “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” and with “Will & Harper” — a nonfiction buddy comedy in which Will Ferrell drives across the country with a beloved colleague — he returns to his nonfiction roots in order to confront a series of questions that seem as far from his comfort zone as they are from Ferrell’s. Questions like: How does a straight cis male of a certain age come to terms with the fact that one of his oldest friends has just come out as trans? And what will happen to their friendship when said trans woman refuses to stop for donuts? (Spoiler alert: Ferrell has a comic meltdown, declaring the whole trip “stupid” if he doesn’t get his Dunkin’).

To read the rest of my genderqueer critique visit IndieWire.

“As Authentic as Any Psychic Interaction Can Be”: Lana Wilson on ‘Look Into My Eyes’

A revelatory portrait of psychics and their clients, Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes is also an unexpectedly poignant love letter to the myriad artists and performers that fake it till they make it in NYC—as well as to the city itself. Birthed during the pandemic that took a particularly heavy toll across the five boroughs, the doc follows a group of psychics who are all movie-fluent performers who similarly view their low-paying, psychic side gigs as more a calling than a job. Wilson, along with her much-in-demand DP Stephen Maing (whose own Union, co-directed with Brett Story, premiered over the weekend at Sundance) takes us from readings with clients (selected by the filmmaking team from table auditions) in barebones rooms (sets likewise provided by Wilson and her crew), to the psychics’ actual apartments (it’s not hoarding, it’s NYC). In the process, we learn less about predicting the future and more about connecting in the present. As Wilson herself puts it, whether ESP is “real” might just be beside the point. A few days prior to the film’s January 22 premiere at Sundance, Documentary was fortunate to catch up with the busy director, whose impressively eclectic oeuvre ranges from 2013’s Emmy Award-winning After Tiller (co-directed with Martha Shane) and 2017’s Independent Spirit Award-nominated The Departure, to the celebrity-centric studies of 2020’s Miss Americana and last year’s Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

‘Gaucho Gaucho’ Review: Argentinian Ranchers Cherish a Dying Lifestyle in Western-Inspired Documentary

No strangers to Sundance, filmmaker/cinematographer Gregory Kershaw and filmmaker/visual artist Michael Dweck (2018’s “The Last Race,” 2020’s “The Truffle Hunters”) are back for this 40th edition with their latest unsurprisingly cinematic, nonfiction study “Gaucho Gaucho.” While the acclaimed duo’s previous docs were set at a Long Island racetrack and in the Italian countryside, respectively, “Gaucho Gaucho” is an “Argentinean Western” (according to the Sundance synopsis) that takes place in the remote plains of that faraway, South American land. And therein lies the rub.

To read the rest of my review check out my Sundance IndieWire debut.

“A Symphony of Echoing Voices”: Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó on ‘Agent of Happiness’

As a clueless American not previously aware that “Gross National Happiness” is a measurable index in the Himalayan country of Bhutan, I did a double-take reading the synopsis of Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s Sundance-debuting Agent of Happiness, thinking that “GNH” might be the premise for some sort of dystopian fiction. However, I then realized that Bhattarai, a native of Bhutan, and the Hungarian Zurbó are the co-directors behind the critically-acclaimed, IDFA-premiering 2017 doc The Next Guardian. Like that Bhutan-set feature, which pits a Buddhist monastery caretaker’s expectations for his two kids against their own very different hopes, Agent of Happiness is an up-close character study in contrasts. In this case, we’re introduced to the titular agent Amber, a longing-to-be-married, middle-aged guy who lives with his elderly mom and works for a government that refuses to grant him citizenship since he’s a member of the Nepali minority. As Amber and his easygoing colleague Guna Raj travel throughout the tiny nation conducting the mandated Gross National Happiness survey, posing the same set of questions to rural farmers and city folk alike—from how angry or depressed they are to whether they own sheep—unexpected revelations unspool apace. Even as the key to happiness remains as stubbornly elusive as the keys to this “Partly Free” (per the Freedom House index) kingdom. Prior to the premiere of Agent of Happiness, Documentary reached out over email to the co-directors to learn all about their stranger-than-fiction collaboration. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“I Write Stories Using Light”: Asmae El Moudir Discusses ‘The Mother of All Lies’

Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir (2020’s The Postcard) grew up in a world in which images were forbidden. She had no childhood photos (save for one that she doubted was even her) and only learned as an adult of the shocking military crackdown that occurred in her neighborhood in 1981; not only were the “bread riots” absent from any school lessons, but only a single photograph managed to make it past government censors and into her nation's historical archive. So when her parents decided to finally move from her childhood home, the director-writer-producer seized the opportunity to both help out and potentially solve the mystery behind these unexplained erasures. Returning to Casablanca, she did what any dogged camera-carrying investigator would do, which is to try to get some answers to her burning lifelong questions from relatives, friends, and neighbors. But she also went one step further and did what only the innovative filmmaker daughter of a distinguished local mason could possibly do—she convinced her dad to rebuild their house and district, in miniature, complete with figurines of local residents. This doll-sized neighborhood became a lovingly crafted film set El Moudir could then use as a vessel to gently transport even the most recalcitrant and reluctant to a past too traumatic to exist. To learn more about the resulting nonfiction drama, The Mother of All Lies, shortlisted for an Oscar as Morocco’s official entry, Documentary reached out to the critically acclaimed filmmaker, who was bestowed Best Director at both Cannes’s Un Certain Regard and the 2023 IDA Documentary Awards. The Mother of All Lies next screens the Spotlight section at Sundance. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“The Good, Bad and Ugly of Organizing Against Amazon’”: Stephen Maing and Brett Story on their Sundance-debuting Union

Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s unsurprisingly riveting Union is the one Sundance selection most assuredly not coming to Prime Video anytime soon — or ever. (Nor I’m guessing will the doc’s producers Samantha Curley and Mars Verrone be receiving any Amazon Studios Producers Awards from the Sundance Institute. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bezos behemoth did try to bid for Union to then bury it.) As its title succinctly implies, the film follows a group of very brave, and admirably unrelenting, activist-workers in their fight to unionize a Staten Island warehouse known as JFK8 back in 2021. Calling themselves the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), and led by the media-savvy Chris Smalls, it’s the classic David vs. Goliath setup. Only with Maing (whose Crime + Punishment followed the NYPD 12 whistleblowing cops) and Story (whose The Hottest August deeply embedded the Canadian director in NYC) jointly behind the lens — and on the frontlines — there’s enough street cred between the two to inspire the unwavering trust of their rightfully vigilant characters. Which, in turn, gives the critically acclaimed duo access to a tight-knit world the Blue Origin founder might try to infiltrate but could never imagine. Just prior to the film’s January 21st (US Documentary Competition) premiere Filmmaker reached out to the intrepid co-directors to learn all about their teaming up to tackle this anthropological project and take on The Man.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“There Was No Backup Plan Other Than We’d Make It Happen Somehow”: Natalie Rae and Angela Patton on Their Sundance-Debuting Daughters

Filmed over a remarkable eight years, Natalie Rae and Angela Patton’s Sundance-premiering Daughters is an on-the-ground (and behind the bars) look at the preparations — physical, mental and above all emotional — leading up to the DC-jail-based Daddy Daughter Dance, the culmination of a fatherhood program for the incarcerated. Following Aubrey, Santana, Raziah, and Ja’Ana — four “at-promise” girls ranging from tiny to teenage — and the respective dads who are desperate to bond with them (and are serving sentences that likewise range in years) the doc is every bit as inspiring as one would expect from a co-director (Patton) who is also the CEO of a nonprofit called Girls For A Change. But also heartbreaking, infuriating, and downright revelatory in its characters’ trajectories. As vérité as life itself. Prior to the film’s (January 22nd) US Documentary Competition debut Filmmaker reached out to Patton, who is also a speaker and author (and TEDWomen talker), and Rae, a women’s rights advocate and Cannes Young Lions nominee (twice), to find out how they joined forces for this unconventional nonfiction project.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“My Shooting Process Involved a Mix of Planned Setups and Spontaneous Captures...”: Silje Evensmo Jacobsen on Her Sundance-debuting A New Kind of Wilderness

Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s A New Kind of Wilderness is a film structured in a way I’ve not seen before. With a title that likewise could apply to the psychic space into which the audience is thrust, the rural Norway-set doc is an intimate, first-person narrated, cinematic essay from a director whose story it is not. Indeed, straight from its bold opening, the viewer is left abruptly disoriented, forever second-guessing whose eyes we are actually looking through. It’s a deft structural feat that in turn emotionally transports us into the shoes of the free-spirited, forest-dwelling – and above all grieving – Payne family, five protagonists deeply connected both to one another and to nature; who are unexpectedly forced to find their own individual footing in a brand new dizzying world. Just prior to the film’s Sundance debut (January 19th in the World Cinema Documentary Competition), Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning Norwegian director to learn all about her multiyear voyage into the beautiful unknown.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Being a Latina Immigrant Offered Me Personal Insight Into the Culture That Influenced and Inspired This Great Artist”: Carla Gutiérrez on Her Sundance-Premiering Frida

Though 2024 marks seven decades since the passing of Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, it often feels as if the ubiquitous artist never actually died (or lived) at all. A feminist/Chicana/indigenous/disabled/nonbinary icon ahead of her (if not outside the concept of) time, Frida Kahlo has long been celebrated as more phantasmagoric myth than flesh-and-blood painter (as opposed to her corporeal hubby Diego Rivera). So how does a filmmaker go about capturing and confining such an ethereal figure to the screen? If you’re the multi-award-winning editor Carla Gutiérrez (Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s RBG and Julia) you compile and compose as much Frida-generated material as seemingly possible: letters, essays, her personal diary (and sketches and paintings from that diary); and also nearly 50 original paintings and sketches (and around half a dozen Rivera murals). Then you add in first-person accounts from Kahlo’s colleagues and intimates (and very intimate intimates) and arresting archival photos. Finally, you complete your topnotch, mostly Latinx team with Mexican animators and a lyrical narrator to guide us through this wonderland that was the fiery legend’s real magical world.

Just prior to the Sundance premiere of Frida (January 18th in the US Documentary Competition) Filmmaker reached out to the veteran editor to learn all about her own artistic journey to this auspicious, all-archival directorial debut. (Produced by Imagine Documentaries and TIME Studios, in association with Storyville Films, Frida also hits Prime Video on March 15th.) To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

¡VIVA MAESTRO!

With all the Oscar season hoopla surrounding Netflix release Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein-centered bio-rom-drama, it’s a good time to revisit Ted Braun’s 100% Rotten Tomatoes-fresh ¡Viva Maestro!, currently streaming across a number of platforms (and Netflix competitors, including Max, Prime Video, Vudu and Apple TV). The 2022 doc follows the world-renowned (and unexpectedly zen) Venezuelan conductor and violinist Gustavo Dudamel as he circles the globe in an effort to spread the gospel of music. Until deadly protests throughout his home country threaten to derail the decidedly apolitical mission.

To read the rest of my review visit Hammer to Nail.

Personal truth and consequences: Transition

Perhaps the most unnervingly unexpected film I stumbled upon in 2023, Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s Transition follows co-director Bryon, a veteran Australian journo granted exclusive access to a group of Talib fighters just as Afghanistan is collapsing back into their human rights-abusing hands. Which is a complicated situation for any Western reporter to be in, but especially for Bryon, who happens to be a trans man passing as a cis man in this lethally patriarchal world.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

A Conversation With Patricio Guzmán (Dreaming Of Utopia: 50 Years Of Revolutionary Hope And Memory)

Dreaming of Utopia: 50 Years of Revolutionary Hope and Memory was the outsized title for an equally ambitious nonfiction program presented throughout venues across NYC this past fall. In commemoration of “the first September 11th” – the 1973 coup d’état by the CIA-backed General Augusto Pinochet, which overthrew Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende – Icarus Films teamed up with Cinema Tropical to present weeklong (newly restored in 4K) theatrical runs of Patricio Guzmán’s The First Year (1971), along with the exiled Chilean filmmaker’s critically acclaimed three-parter The Battle of Chile (1975-1979); as well as special screenings of Nostalgia for The Light (2011), The Pearl Button (2014), The Cordillera of Dreams (2019) and My Imaginary Country (2022). And then in November IDFA likewise paid tribute to Chile’s great nonfiction icon, showcasing The First Year in its “Focus: 16 Worlds on 16” program (“reflecting on 100 years of 16mm since Kodak introduced this film format”). So to mark these momentous occasions I reached out to the now octogenarian, master documentarian himself to learn a bit more about his own historical journey. (Special thanks to Cinema Tropical’s assistant director Samuel Didonato who provided translation.)

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.