Review: Netflix’s “The Family”

Jesse Moss’s docu-series, The Family, was executive produced by Alex Gibney, who likewise produced the Netflix series Dirty Money, which included an episode helmed by Moss (The Overnighters). Watching it is either heaven or hell, which is part of its brilliance. Whether you believe in the religious freedom the Founding Fathers espoused – or in the white Christian supremacy they actually practiced – will determine if the series is a five-part horror film or a much-ado-about-nothing profile (of an organization that, after all, has been “hiding in plain sight” since Eisenhower).

To read the rest of my take visit Global Comment.

“Every Viewer Can Decide What to Believe or Not Believe, Who to Trust and What to Question”: Avi Belkin on His SundanceTV True Crime Series No One Saw a Thing

Currently playing on SundanceTV, the Blumhouse-produced No One Saw a Thing is a true crime series directed by Avi Belkin, whose unexpectedly riveting Mike Wallace Is Here premiered earlier this year at Sundance (and launched in theaters just last month). It revisits a surreal episode in American vigilante history in which the small town bully of Skidmore, Missouri was shot to death while sitting in his truck, his wife by his side. This occurred back in 1981 — and to this day no one’s been charged. Even though a good chunk of the population witnessed the murder.

While this mystery remains unsolved, another mystery came to mind as I binge-watched the six-parter. How on earth did a Tel Aviv born-and-raised filmmaker get involved in a nearly four-decade-old story set in the American heartland? Fortunately, Filmmaker was able to catch up with the Israeli director to ask this question and more a few weeks after the first episode aired (on August 1st).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Better Science through Storytelling at CPH:DOX

One of the many highlights of the always impressive CPH:DOX is its annual CPH:CONFERENCE, five days of jam-packed industry events with each full day centered around a specific theme (film, art, science, technology and social change). While I wasn’t in town to attend them all, I did at least have the good fortune to catch the Science & Film program, which opened the conference and was curated by Greg Boustead, the founding executive producer of Sandbox Films, a new mission-based documentary studio (underwritten by the Simons Foundation and headquartered in Los Angeles) devoted to excellence in creative science storytelling.

To read all about it visit Documentary magazine (and pick up a copy of the summer issue at a newsstand near you).

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

“Living is an adventure and a challenge...If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.” Opening with the words of the great jazz musician himself, the tone is set for Stanley Nelson’s latest documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool. Though the film relies heavily on predictable archival footage, and straightforward talking head interviews with critics and historians (it’s for public television’s “American Masters” series after all), Nelson nevertheless manages to provide an informative glimpse into the life of an unconventional artist, one filled with real surprises at every turn. (All moved quickly along with the help of a mind-blowing soundtrack, naturally.)

To read the rest of my take on the great documentarian’s take on the great musician visit Global Comment.

Doc Star of the Month: Mads Brügger, ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’

Since I didn’t attend this year’s Sundance, I missed seeing Cold Case Hammarskjöld — the latest surreal offering from the Danish gonzo journalist/filmmaker/radio host/all-around provocateur Mads Brügger — at its debut back in January, when it won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award. Which, like the film itself, turned out to be a bizarre blessing in disguise. Instead of braving the Park City crowds, I found myself, several months later, serenely watching the mesmerizing (and hilarious) doc — a through-the-looking-glass reexamination of the death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in a mysterious 1961 plane crash — in Copenhagen, at a private screening (yes, another lucky twist — just for me) while I was in town for CPH:DOX. (It’s good to have friends in Danish places.)

And my very first thought upon emerging from the Danish Film Institute’s cozy screening space? Mads Brügger, who’s made a career of putting himself in front of his own lens, would make one heck of a “Doc Star of the Month.” So in a final fortunate break, Documentary caught up with Brügger a week before the film’s August 16th theatrical premiere, through Magnolia Pictures, to get the scoop on this sleuthing tour de force.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld is a gonzo journey you don’t want to miss

Mads Brügger’s Cold Case Hammarskjöld, which debuted at Park City back in January, is a cinematic reinvestigation of the mysterious 1961 plane crash that took the life of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld. But such a grave synopsis doesn’t even begin to describe this addictively gonzo (unsurprisingly, as Brügger is the Danish provocateur behind The Red Chapel and The Ambassador) doc, its every frame pulsing with sprawling ambition.

To read my thumbs-up review visit Global Comment.

“We Decided to Treat the Policy and the Propaganda as if They Were Also Human Characters”: Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang on One Child Nation

One Child Nation, winner of this year’s Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize (and premiering theatrically August 9th via Amazon Studios), is a striking cinematic examination of China’s three-and-a-half decade long, one-child policy by filmmakers Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang (Complicit). It’s also a stunning uncovering of the multi-layered machinations required for a government to negate reproductive autonomy.

And ironically, as the NYC-based Wang herself points out towards the end of the film, advocates of China’s (now defunct) policy and the US’s (very much alive) anti-abortion stance both subscribe to a core belief in state control over female bodies. Indeed, the US as well has a long record of forced sterilizations — most notably of Native American and black women — based on that same dubious “quality of life” justification that China long employed.

That said, the Chinese Communist Party took its mandate to a whole other bizarre level — openly celebrating (and, of course, propagandizing) its human rights abusing law. Which is why Filmmaker was excited to learn more from the China-born co-directors about this disturbingly dark chapter in their native country’s not-so-distant history.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.