The Notorious BHL: Bernard-Henri Lévy on Peshmerga and the Fate of the World

Long hailed as France’s most famous – and controversial – public intellectual, Bernard-Henri Lévy has been making waves through his writing and speaking (and outsized personality) since his early days in the “Nouveaux Philosophes” movement over four decades ago. In recent years, though, BHL (like RBG he’s a media darling with a hip acronym) has been lauded for turning his penetrating gaze to filmmaking. Just this past November Lévy received the American Media Abroad Award for Peshmerga and The Battle of Mosul, a pair of companion docs he directed that eloquently focus on the Kurdistan region, specifically its people’s importance in the fight against ISIS.

Awhile back I had the good fortune to meet with BHL – who’s currently on a US media blitz hawking his latest book “The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World” – during the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (also known by its hip acronym CPH:DOX) where both films were screening. Over early morning coffee at the elegant French embassy in the center of town he enthusiastically answered a wide range of questions, beginning with the obvious: Why on earth, after decades of being a Parisian man about town, return to the dangers of covering combat that he dove into during his youth?

To learn the answer to this question and more visit Global Comment.

#OSCARS SO RIGHT: WHY “BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE” IS THE PRIZE TO KEEP AN EYE ON

Recently, Vanity Fair ran a piece declaring the Best Documentary Feature category of the Academy Awards a “haven for female filmmakers.” Indeed it’s true that, as the article stated, just in the past decade “women have directed or co-directed more than half of the nominees for best documentary feature — and four of the winning docs over those nine years have been woman-helmed.” (This compared to the shameful record of the Best Director category – congrats to The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow for being the one and only chick to ever nab that prize.) And this latest batch of nominees includes not only RBG, by the female duo Betsy West and Julie Cohen, but also Free Solo, co-directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi with her husband Jimmy Chin.

Surprisingly, what wasn’t stated was something much more obvious to this longtime doc-watcher – that “Best Documentary Feature” is perhaps the most thrillingly diverse Oscars category period.

To find out why read my essay at Hammer to Nail.

Doc Star of the Month: Walter Burrell, 'The Gospel of Eureka'

Following on the heels of last month’s “Doc Star of the Month,” Ashley York, the lead character and co-director of hillbilly, Documentary is pleased to present for February yet another face of flyover-country diversity. Walter Burrell is the proud owner of a drinking hole in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, that he lovingly refers to as the “hillbilly Studio 54” in Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s The Gospel of Eureka. (And which, though it hosts weekly drag shows, Burrell is quick to point out is not a “gay bar,” since it welcomes everyone regardless of sexuality; he’s staunchly opposed to “gay segregation.”)

Documentary spoke with Burrell about appearing in Palmieri and Mosher’s in-depth exploration of his town, a place where deeply devout Christians (including Burrell himself) and those in the LGBTQ community live together in relative harmony, focusing on their shared common values rather than anything that might drive them apart.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“It’s Like Having a Diary Shot by Someone Else of Moments That You Don’t Remember….”: RaMell Ross on his Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and airing on PBS’s Independent Lens beginning February 11th (and now on iTunes), RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening lives up to its buzz and then some. The award-winning photographer’s debut feature is a low-key, highly cinematic look at the Alabama Black Belt over a period of five years. In that time Ross trained his lens mostly on two twenty-something men, Daniel and Quincy, as they navigated education, blue-collar labor, fatherhood, and just the intricacies of daily life in their culturally rich, economically impoverished Southern town.

Filmmaker was fortunate enough to catch up with Ross, a “25 New Face” of 2015, during this year’s Sundance, where his short Easter Snap celebrated its world premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Ways of Seeing: Images and Politics of 'Hale County'

I first saw Hale County This Morning, This Evening, RaMell Ross’s cinematic look at daily life in the Alabama Black Belt, at last year’s CPH:DOX. It was one of those unexpected festival finds, a film up for the DOX:AWARD, and thus required viewing for us international critics serving on the Danish film magazine Ekko’s annual Starbarometer jury. As I wrote of the doc in my final assessment, “A series of exquisitely framed snapshots alternate with kinetic camerawork, set to an ambient sound design weaved with an elegant score. The poetry of daily life in the rural South is deftly captured through unexpected sounds and intricate specific images.”

That’s a critic’s winded way of saying, “I fell for the film.” So it was quite a thrill to be able to chat with Ross over the phone nearly a year later to get the scoop on his Oscar-nominated debut (the result of a five-year production process that included not only industry heavyweights like Joslyn Barnes and Field of Vision’s Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook onboard, but even, quite surprisingly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Must Political Solidarity be Unconditional?”: Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche on Their Sundance Doc, Advocate

Long a lightning rod, Lea Tsemel is an idealistic Jewish lawyer who has spent the past five decades defending political prisoners. Or she’s the terrorist’s go-to barrister, rarely turning down a case no matter how heinous the crime. Like most things in Israel, the perspective depends on which side of the occupation you’re on.

Veteran filmmakers Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche understand this reality all too well, having followed Lea Tsemel’s career closely for the past 25 years. And now with their Sundance-premiering Advocate they’ve created an in-the-trenches portrait of this unapologetic firebrand, trailing Tsemel as she juggles high-profile cases (including that of a 13-year-old boy implicated in a random knife attack), while weaving in archival footage of her past legal battles — most of which she loses in Israel’s skewed system. Which is precisely what makes Tsemel such a remarkable character. A warrior for justice who’s spent her entire adult life taking punch after punch, she forever gets up undaunted to fight another day.

Filmmaker spoke with the equally passionate co-directors prior to the doc’s January 27th Park City premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Sometimes Restraint and Holding Back Yields a Far More Meaningful Result…”: Luke Lorentzen on Sundance Doc Midnight Family

Poetically composed and effortlessly segueing between graveyard-shift stillness and chaotic rides through the darkened streets of Mexico City, Midnight Family is a unique cinematic gem. Director Luke Lorentzen spent nearly three months embedded night after night in a private ambulance run by the Ochoa family, an all-male team who race to the scenes of accidents hoping both to save lives and get paid by those they aid.

Filmmaker caught up with the award-winning director to discuss this rare glimpse into an incongruous underworld characterized by equal parts heroic acts and monotonous labor prior to the doc’s January 27th premiere at Sundance in the U.S. Documentary Competition section.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.