“There Was a Fair Amount of Us All Killing Each Other”: Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls on Grand Theft Hamlet

Grand Theft Hamlet, which took the Documentary Feature Jury Award at last year’s SXSW, is groundbreaking cinema to say the least. The first documentary to win an Innovation Award at The Stage Awards in London back in 2022, the film’s production probably also marked the first time a filmmaker jumped into an online avatar and then shot her doc entirely within a video game (one in which conditions often resembled a war zone to boot). The project was born out of the UK’s third Covid lockdown in 2021, when abruptly out-of-work theater actors Sam Crane (who co-directed along with his veteran documentarian wife Pinny Grylls) and Mark Osterveen found themselves in existential distress, the former wondering how he’d support his young family, the latter physically and emotionally alone. Desperate for connection as many of us were, the two friends turned to Grand Theft Auto for camaraderie and escape, where one day they happened upon an amphitheater. Which led to a eureka moment that, safe to say, most of us never in a million years would have: Why not stage a full production of Shakespeare within GTA? Indeed, inside GTA all the world really is a stage. Which naturally only led to more questions (like how to cast a troupe. Or how to avoid getting gunned down during a soliloquy). Fortunately, Filmmaker was able to pose a few to the busy co-directors, both Oxford grads who cite Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I as a touchstone, to learn all about their inspired production process; and crafting a work perfectly balanced between the heartfelt and the poignant — while being also batshit crazy hilarious. Grand Theft Hamlet opens today in theaters from MUBI.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“It Was Crucial to Bring a Native Lens into Each Area of the Creative Roles”: Jonathan Olshefski and Elizabeth Day on Without Arrows

Delwin Fiddler Jr., star of Jonathan Olshefski (a “25 New Face” of 2017) and Elizabeth Day’s Without Arrows, grew up on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota, where he found his calling as a grass dancer (which led to championships on the pow-wow circuit and eventually even international fame. His work can be seen not only in the film but also in a continual loop at the Museum of the American Indian in D.C.). And then he spent over a decade in Philadelphia, making more money if not a better living. Having had enough of big city life, Fiddler eventually decided to return home to rekindle relationships, particularly with his aging mom and dad, and to reconnect with his culture and absorb the family history. However that’s where things got complicated, for the rez is a place of beauty and unconditional love but also dark generational trauma. Remarkably, it was in this intimate space that Fiddler and his family allowed two outsiders with cameras to film for 13 years, one of whom (Ojibwe filmmaker Day) was born on the Leech Lake Reservation and raised in Minneapolis–Saint Paul. So to learn how the co-directors crafted a film that celebrates heritage without sugarcoating the inheritance of genocide, Filmmaker caught up with the duo the week before the doc’s PBS debut. (January 13th on Independent Lens.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

A year of surprises: my top 5 documentary film discoveries of the last 12 months

To read all about them visit Global Comment.

“Examining Their Eyes, Hands, Hair, Mouths, and Posture”: Darius Clark Monroe on the Intimacies of Docuseries ‘Dallas, 2019’

Darius Clark Monroe has been on my radar for a decade, ever since his feature debut Evolution of a Criminal, a revisitation of the robbery the filmmaker committed when he was a teenager and its impact on both loved ones and victims, which world premiered at SXSW back in 2014. (Later that year it took top honors at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, where I programmed the film.) Since then Monroe has been on an artistic evolution as well, continuing with such unconventional projects as the 2018 Tribeca-debuting short Black 14, once again EP’d by Evolution executive producer Spike Lee, which explored the story of 14 African American student athletes dismissed from the University of Wyoming football team back in 1969 for speaking out against racism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and the doc quadtych Racquet, which played the Whitney Biennial the following year. Monroe’s eclectic CV also includes writing and directing for Terence Nance’s Peabody Award–winning HBO series Random Acts of Flyness (2018). Now Monroe has returned home, with the five-part docuseries Dallas, 2019 bringing the Houston native back to the Lone Star State for a “five week observation of the city of Dallas and its people.” Each episode tackles subjects ranging from environmental racism, injustice in the criminal justice system, to education and beyond, all through a chorus of characters that breathe life into those cold abstract concepts. To learn all about the series, which premiered over two nights on Independent Lens on January 3 and 4, Documentary reached out to the Brooklyn-based filmmaker.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Tip Jar

All tips appreciated!

A Conversation With Josh Fox (THE EDGE OF NATURE)

While Josh Fox might be best known for his documentaries – from 2010’s Oscar-nominated surprise hit Gasland right through to 2017’s Awake, A Dream From Standing Rock (made in collaboration with Doug Good Feather and Myron Dewey, who also served as EP on this latest) – filmmaking for the veteran director-writer-environmental activist has always been more means to an end than conscious pursuit. Indeed, Fox is a live performer at heart, and continues to serve as the producing artistic director of International WOW Company, which he founded nearly thirty years back (and has since toured with throughout Europe, Asia and of course the US). Which makes The Edge of Nature, a documentary theater piece that had its world-premiering run at La MaMa in NYC, an artistic culmination rather than diversion. (A critically-acclaimed one at that. Reviews even included a “great work” quote from Bernie Sanders, who Fox wrote parts of the Democratic platform on energy and environment for in 2016; Fox also receives funding from The Sanders Institute.) It’s also a wildly ambitious, and surprisingly successful, attempt to connect seemingly disparate subjects: long Covid – which prompted Fox to seek healing in his beloved Pennsylvania woods, isolated with only a camera and a variety of forest friends; the Native American genocide (of which the late Myron Dewey of the Walker River Paiute Tribe was a survivor); the Holocaust (Fox’s father fled the Nazis as a child, thus making him a survivor); and ongoing environmental devastation (save for the period of the “anthropause,” the first six to eight months of pandemic lockdown that resulted in worldwide emissions being reduced enough to actually halt climate change. Yes, the environment can survive if we prioritize). The multimedia spectacle likewise includes an 11-member ensemble from International WOW, who along with the banjo-playing Fox, use American folk music (score by musician-composer-producer Dougie Bowne of the Lounge Lizards) to guide us through the first-person documentary journey that unfolds onscreen above the stage, hovering like a cinematic conscience for us all.

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

A Conversation With Poulomi Basu (Maya: The Birth of a Superhero)

Who knew knocking down taboos could be so much fun? With Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, a VR piece that exhibited in the Immersive Competition, first edition at Cannes, and is currently available on Meta Quest, the UK-based Indian neurodiverse artist Poulomi Basu, along with her collaborator CJ Clarke, have crafted a coming of age tale that playfully tackles a topic usually discussed behind closed doors (if at all): menstruation. Indeed, with the titular, South Asian teen as our guide, we’re taken to a threatening land (contemporary London) filled with emotional minefields, forced to navigate everything from bullying classmates to a conservative mom for whom shaming comes easier than any expressions of love. Fortunately, Maya’s got some kickass girl moves – able to hurl tampons with Herculean strength! – which allow her (and us) to ultimately overcome insidious patriarchal stigma, the greatest hurdle of all.

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.