Doc Star of the Month: Raymond Braun, ‘State of Pride’

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising this month, a slew of films reflecting on that seminal event in LGBTQ history are, unsurprisingly, hitting screens from coast to liberal coast. What sets Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s State of Pride apart from this pack, though, is the doc’s firm focus forward, as the Oscar-winning duo turn their lens on the many young queer communities celebrating Pride today. 

And not just the usual suspects — i.e., white cisgender gays and lesbians of means living in New York City and the Bay Area — that have historically been visible onscreen. Though San Francisco is indeed represented, its Pride is seen through the eyes of characters that include a recent immigrant from Syria who fled persecution for his sexuality. The filmmakers also travel to decidedly non-liberal Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Salt Lake City, Utah, encountering gay, lesbian and trans people of color (whose rural roots are as much a part of their identity as being queer) — and even meet with a disabled man who found coming out to be more frightening than losing the use of his legs. In other words, State of Pride — now streaming on YouTube as part of YouTube Originals — showcases an exciting variety of shades within the proverbial rainbow.

Also making State of Pride stand out is its earnest host on this cross-country journey, human rights activist Raymond Braun. The YouTube star serves less as onscreen interviewer than empathetic listener, allowing space for the people he lovingly greets to answer the profound question, “What does Pride mean to you?” in beautifully unpredictable ways. And because of this, Documentary is honored to celebrate Braun as our June “Doc Star of the Month.”

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Greta Schiller, “Before Stonewall”

“I made a whole film, Paris Was a Woman, about lesbians in Paris between the wars. Now we have the internet, and the communication on the web, and people can fly places, and you can live anywhere and still connect with other queer people. But back then you lived in Greenwich Village. You lived in the Left Bank of Paris. You lived in San Francisco. It was so hard if you didn’t.”

Such were the reflections of the award-winning director Greta Schiller when I recently got her on the phone to chat about First Run Features’s newly restored version of her landmark documentary Before Stonewall, in theaters this month (June 21st in NYC, June 28th in LA, with a national rollout to follow). Filmed in 1984 with a team that included co-director Robert Rosenberg and research director Andrea Weiss – who would go on to win both an Emmy for her work and Schiller’s heart (the married couple now run Jezebel Productions) – the film contains a treasure chest of revelations to surprise even the most queer history-savvy viewer.

To read the rest visit Global Comment.

‘Before Stonewall’ Tracks the Pre-Movement Era

Long before marriage equality, non-binary gender identity, and the flood of new documentaries commemorating this month’s 50th anniversary of the Greenwich Village uprising that begat the gay rights movement, there was Greta Schiller’s Before Stonewall. Originally released in 1984 —as AIDS was slowly killing off many of those bar patrons-turned-revolutionaries — the film, through the use of evocative archival footage, presents a remarkable portrait of queer life in the closeted time from the early 20th century right up until that fateful night in 1969.

To discuss this engaging history lesson-turned-lively time capsule — made all the more meaningful through first-person accounts from elderly lesbians and gays who survived both World War II and the war on their true selves — Documentary caught up via phone with the award-winning director, who personally supervised the 16mm restoration process of the film that opens June 28 in Los Angeles through First Run Features, following its June 21st premiere in New York City.

To read the interview visit Documentary magazine.

A Sneak Peek at the 30th Human Rights Watch Film Festival

The 30th anniversary edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival (running June 13-20, and co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center) has much more to boast than its smartly slimmed-down lineup of 13 feature-length films (11 docs and two narrative works). In addition to the requisite post-screening panel discussions with filmmakers, subjects and special guests, there’s this year’s added bonus of actual behind-the-lens parity. With half the films directed or co-directed by women, the majority directed by filmmakers of color and, perhaps most importantly, half helmed by filmmakers with actual roots in the places they’re documenting, HRWFF has done something truly remarkable – put its human rights mission into post-colonial film festival action.

To find out my top picks visit Filmmaker magazine.

“That’s What Public Art is All About…Everyone is Invited”: Andrey M Paounov on his Christo doc Walking on Water

Andrey M Paounov’s Walking on Water centers on the legendary environmental artist Christo and the realization of his most recent project (his second since the 2009 death of his beloved partner in life and art Jeanne-Claude). 2016’s The Floating Piers was a two-mile-long walkway of monk-yellow fabric that allowed over a million visitors to “float” on foot across Italy’s Lake Iseo.

What Walking on Water is not, thankfully, is your standard celebratory portrait of an unconventional maestro (though Christo, who brings to mind a Bulgarian version of Bernie Sanders, is certainly that). Indeed, what makes Paounov’s Locarno-premiering film so refreshingly unique is the parallel artistry behind the lens. Employing stunning cinematography and a reverent score, while smartly eschewing any context or backstory, Paounov thrusts us right inside the fast-moving, tension-filled creative process itself — a drama in which a grand vision can be dashed by anything from mindless bureaucracy to a sudden downpour.

Filmmaker spoke with the acclaimed Bulgarian director (whose last film was the TIFF-debuting The Boy Who Was a King) prior to the doc’s May 17th opening at NYC’s Film Forum.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We’re Looking for Passionate People Who We Think Will Put in the Work and Deliver”: Dorota Lech on the 20-year-old Hot Docs Forum

As a film journo who usually prefers celebrating the fruits of cinematic labor over covering the messy business of making the product I’m often a bit squeamish when it comes to observing pitch sessions (in no small part due to the glaring abundance of older white faces dangling the purse strings). Fortunately, the folks behind the two-decade-old Hot Docs Forum, which utilizes the appropriately Harry Potter-esque, neo-Gothic Hart House student center at the University of Toronto, do an expert job of combining industry necessity with collegial fun.

This is perhaps best evidenced by the Forum’s Cuban Hat Award, a prize decided by audience ballot and funded by literally passing around a Cuban hat as collection plate during the proceedings. And this year’s eclectic take, which went to Bo McGuire and producer Tatiana Bears for their intriguingly titled Socks on Fire: Uncle John and the Copper Headed Water Rattlers, included over $2,000 in six currencies along with various production services. And that’s in addition to a homestay in Copenhagen to office space in Greece to two Toronto Raptors “We The North” t-shirts — they’d made the NBA playoffs after all — and a tin of ginger mints. (No ginger mints went to the projects Midwives, Colour of the Wind or Twice Colonized, though they did ultimately receive Canadian dollar prize winnings totaling $30,000, $20,000 and $30,000, respectively.)

So to get a better understanding of how this transformation of high-stakes shark tank into supportive team spirit came about, Filmmaker turned to the nomadic (Poland-born but Toronto and LA-based) head of the Forum, Dorota Lech, who also leads the Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery section.

Doc Stars of the Month: Trinea Gonczar & Amanda Thomashow, 'At the Heart of Gold’

Erin Lee Carr (Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop; Mommy Dead and Dearest) has built an impressive career turning ripped-from-the-headlines stories (she is the daughter of late media icon David Carr, after all) featuring society’s “monsters” into sober reflections on society itself. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the deft documentarian decided to tackle one of the most outrageous scandals in recent memory: the aiding and abetting of pedophile doctor Larry Nassar over decades by Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics and the organization’s Olympian-making affiliates (including superstar coaching couple Bela and Martha Karolyi).

For as horrific as Nassar’s behavior was — hundreds of girls and young women subject to sexual abuse in the guise of medical “treatments” for years on end — there was the equally appalling reaction of the adults surrounding him, who refused to believe those who did have the courage to speak up. Indeed, one of the most chilling aspects of this whole sordid mess was the systemic “gaslighting,” as one former gymnast described it, of the kids who chose to come forward. Adults who didn’t want to face the truth simply told the adolescent victims that the molestation that was happening wasn’t actually happening, which the girls then often accepted — only to find out years later, once Nassar was revealed as a serial predator, that what they were comfortingly assured was reality wasn’t actually reality. In other words, a matrix of crimes — physical, psychological and emotional — by a multitude of culprits ultimately occurred.

To untangle the thorny drama, Documentary turned to two heroic women — Trinea Gonczar, a longtime family friend of Nassar’s and one of his earliest victims, and Amanda Thomashow, who filed the first Title IX complaint against him — to discuss everything from the intense coverage surrounding the shocking case to the symbiotic impact of #MeToo.

To read my interview with the remarkable ladies visit Documentary magazine.