“I’m Tired of this Appropriation of Stories by Filmmakers from the West:”: Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw on Cocaine Prison

Part of IFP’s 2013 Project Forum slate, Cocaine Prison is the latest completed work from indigenous Latina filmmaker Violeta Ayala, who’s long been an outspoken critic of the War on Drugs, which not only disproportionately affects low-income folks here in the States, but especially our impoverished neighbors south of the border, from Mexico on down. For this follow-up to 2015’s The Bolivian Case (another tale of South American coke smuggling and its consequences, but with a Norwegian teenagers twist), Ayala, along with filmmaker partner/husband Dan Fallshaw (a producer, cinematographer and editor on Cocaine Prison), have headed back to her birth country of Bolivia, and to the heart of the fallout: the dangerously overcrowded San Sebastian prison (where inmates who can’t afford to buy their own cells sleep outside).

The pair focus on a trio of “foot soldiers,” a teen drug mule named Hernan and his equally young sister Deisy fighting for his release, along with a low-level cocaine worker called Mario, incarcerated while the drug bosses above him remain untouchably free. Compellingly Kafkaesque, Cocaine Prison puts three remarkable faces on a too often abstract web of international injustice and systemic corruption. Filmmaker spoke with Ayala and Fallshaw prior to the film’s TIFF premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Industry of Big Game Hunting and Breeding is Such a Closed and Secretive World…”: Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau on Trophy

Trophy, directed by longtime photo-journos Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau, has been garnering buzz and sparking debate ever since its Sundance premiere. The film is a meticulously researched look at every possible angle of the “wildlife industry versus conservation” showdown, taking place in some of the most majestic parts of our world. Undeniably riveting, it’s also the only film I’ve seen all year that made my blood boil to the point of tossing all critical objectivity aside.

I spoke with the duo, cofounders of Reel Peak Films, which aims to bring the cinematic nonfiction treatment to journalism, prior to the doc’s September 8th release (through The Orchard and CNN Films).

To read the interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Chief Judge Abby Abinanti, 'Tribal Justice'

An eye-opening documentary about restorative justice on the rez, Anne Makepeace's Tribal Justice should be required viewing for anyone involved in running the US court system, from local lawmakers to (especially) US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The film follows two remarkable ladies, Chief Judges for tribes on either end of California, who are implementing traditional solutions (i.e. tackling criminal behavior's causes and not just its symptoms) to keep their community members out of jails and state foster care, and on a healthy, law-abiding path.

So it's quite an honor that the Honorable Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe on the North Coast of California - and the first Native American woman to pass the California Bar Exam (whose long résumé also notes that she's the founder of the "first tribal-run clean-slate program in the country to help members expunge criminal records, and focuses on keeping young people out of jail, in school and with their people") - found time in between court sessions to speak with Documentary.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

A Conversation with Sherng-Lee Huang and Livia Ungur (HOTEL DALLAS)

Named in 2016 to Filmmaker magazine’s annual “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” artistic and life partners Sherng-Lee Huang and Livia Ungur are at the forefront of the doc/fiction revolution. As I wrote last summer, their Berlinale-premiering, debut feature Hotel Dallas “tells the true story of how the soapy series Dallas — the only American program allowed to be aired in Romania because the authorities believed it a cautionary tale about the evil capitalist West — became must-watch TV that influenced an entire generation. It also tells the fuzzier tale of how Livia, who fell in love with Patrick “Bobby Ewing” Duffy as a youngster, and her father Ilie, who fancied himself a wheeler-dealer like J.R., pursued their Dallas dreams after the fall of the regime. While Ilie built Hotel Dallas (a Southfork replica and a means to embezzle millions in taxes), Livia left for America, only returning years later to revisit her adolescent obsession through the prism of the “new” — although ’80s-inspired — Romania. (And yes, Duffy actually agreed to be in the film, compensated with only a bottle of wine.)”

And after you wrap your head around that whopper of a synopsis, read on to learn more. I spoke with the counterintuitively down-to-earth couple before the film’s Vimeo/Amazon/Google/Fandor streaming debut.

EMPATHY IS CHEAP: A CONVERSATION WITH BRANDON HARRIS

As a Jewish chick who identifies as genderqueer, has never lived in Bed-Stuy, and is a generation older than African-American millennial Brandon Harris, I am most certainly not the target audience for his remarkable debut Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City. And yet I’ve long been in awe of Brandon’s writing. Back when we were colleagues at a now-defunct film site years ago, I considered him some sort of cinephile prodigy. (And now that we’re both contributing editors at Filmmaker magazine I remain steadfast in that belief.)



To read my interview with my Renaissance man friend visit The Rumpus.

FETISHIZING DISTRESS: THE WRONG LIGHT AND SEX TRAFFICKING

Josie Swantek Heitz’s and Dave Adams’s The Wrong Light, theatrically released in NYC through Cinema Guild on July 14, is disturbing on several levels. First, there’s the story itself. The filmmakers set out to create a portrait of the Children’s Organization of Southeast Asia (COSA), a nonprofit boarding school of sorts founded in 2005 by Mickey Choothesa. Choothesa is a self-proclaimed war photographer (with no background in child services) whose mission in life seems to be to save Northern Thailand’s girls from being sold into the country’s sex trade. Through the eyes of two “rescued” adolescents, whose parents had allegedly sold them to traffickers, the filmmaking team hoped to celebrate a tale of resilience, courage, and redemption. If all this sounds too good to be true, you’re probably not part of the rich, white philanthropy establishment.

To read my review visit The Rumpus.

Hulk Hogan Body Slams Gawker in Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press

Brian Knappenberger’s Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, which just hit Netflix, originally held the more sensational (and unwieldy) working title Nobody Speak: Hulk Hogan, Gawker and Trials of A Free Press upon its Sundance premiere. Shot during the run-up to the 2016 election, the film takes as its starting point the salacious Florida trial pitting the now disgraced, titular WWE hero against bad boy Nick Denton’s Gawker Media (a site that none other than the New York Times’s David Carr likens in the film to the “mean girls in a playground” – while copping to reading it).

And to read my review visit Global Comment.