“I Wanted the Film to Feel Like an Online Dating Hall of Mirrors”: Pacho Velez on his Sundance-Debuting Searchers

As someone who came of age at a time when looking for a potential partner(s), be it for a lifetime or one night, was less a neat calculated exercise and more a messy spontaneous surprise, I’ve never quite understood the appeal of online dating. Seeking love and/or sex via swipe just always seemed creepily clinical and controlled, cold and robotic — about as sexy as in vitro fertilization to my mind. And yet watching Pacho Velez’s Searchers, an exploration of online connecting through the eyes (literally, as Velez’s Interrotron-style setup allows his characters to look directly at us as they navigate their favorite dating apps) of New Yorkers during the physically distanced COVID summer, had me unexpectedly riveted. Through a variety of participants — spanning age, sex, sexuality, gender-identity and race — we become privy to the strangest of sociological experiments. Rather than any deep dive into the state of our collective love lives, or a statement on the often elusive promises of big tech, we get a fascinating visual realization of process itself. By allowing the searchers to focus intently on the task at hand (and not the camera in their face) we’re able to watch in real time how physically reaching out, tapping — and attempting to touch another human being through an inanimate object — radically alters natural behaviors, and thus perhaps even our desires. Which, inevitably, only led me to more questions. Luckily, Filmmaker was able to reach out and connect with the director behind Searchers as well as 2013’s Manakamana (co-directed with Stephanie Spray) and 2017’s The Reagan Show (co-directed with Sierra Pettengill) just prior to the film’s January 30 online premiere in the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT section.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Black Life Has Always Been Better Than Black Cinema”: Documentary Makers Speak at Full Frame’s “Black Frame: New Voices of Documentary” A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy

One of the few upsides to the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival’s necessary pivot to digital was the smart decision to take its A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy discussions online with the rest of the fest – and one step further. Now these always inspiring panels have been expanded to year-round, free virtual events. While the palpable camaraderie at this southernly hospitable fest unfortunately can’t be replicated through Zoom, the insight from the many brilliant doc-making minds Full Frame consistently brings together still shines through. And the most recent edition “Black Frame: New Voices of Documentary,” which took place January 13, proved to be a gem. (A video of the event will be posted on the site shortly.) The panel was deftly moderated by Mark Anthony Neal, who is the James B. Duke Professor of African & African-American Studies and Professor of English, and Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University. (The “Black Frame” series itself was recently launched in partnership with Neal’s department.) And the three faces joining the professor and prolific author on the screen were familiar ones to indie audiences. There was Time director Garrett Bradley, who nabbed the Best Director Award in the US Documentary Competition at Sundance 2020, and went on to win this year’s Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature; also Black 14 director Darius Clark Monroe, whose Evolution of a Criminal received the Grand Jury Prize back at Full Frame 2014; and rounding out the quartet was self-described “liberated documentarian” RaMell Ross, whose 2018 film Hale County This Morning, This Evening was one of the rare experimental features ever to be nominated for an Oscar.

To read all about this inspiring conversation that just about "broke my brain" (to parapharase Bradley) visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Barbara Lochiatto, 'Some Kind of Heaven'

The Villages, which bills itself as “Florida’s friendliest hometown,” has made news in recent years not for its supposed status as an adult retirement community utopia, but for being a loud and proud, geriatric MAGA stronghold. (Though the age 55-and-up place also made headlines just prior to the presidential election for a rumored pro-Biden turn against Trump.) Fortunately, first-time feature filmmaker Lance Oppenheim decided to set all politics aside when venturing into this heart of Disneyfied darkness. Instead, Oppenheim opted to craft Some Kind of Heaven, an exquisite character study centered around several of the paradise-branded town’s denizens, who struggle with everything from drug addiction, to Peter Pan syndrome, to looking for love in all the wrong places. Indeed, for those seeking eternal youth — specifically the existential hell of being a teenager — it seems The Villages really does live up to its hype. One of those intrepid residents in the doc spotlight is Barbara Lochiatto, a Bostonian who relocated to The Villages over a decade ago with her husband, Paul. But rather than partaking in the golden years dream as initially intended, Lochiatto soon found herself a grieving widow, adrift in a sea of fake nails and customized golf carts.

To read my interview with this down-to-earth fish-out-of-water (and aspiring actress) visit Documentary magazine.

Proud to be an American: Frederick Wiseman's City Hall

POLITICS: Touching on almost every aspect of life, Frederick Wiseman's latest opus illustrates all ways a local city administration can engage in civil discourse with its citizens. "What if the great American novelist doesn’t write novels?" asked the title of a recent NY Times profile of legendary documentarian/US national treasure Frederick Wiseman. The piece was occasioned by the nonagenarian’s latest (45th!) masterwork City Hall, a mesmerizing opus – currently airing on PBS in the States – that unfolds over an addictive four-and-a-half-plus hours. And as the film’s own title plainly implies, City Hall is an intricate study of on-the-ground government, in this case, that of the filmmaker’s hometown of Boston, where for the past six years Mayor Marty Walsh has been running the show (and I do mean show, as Wiseman’s theater directing background is forever evident in his framing of the world). In addition to Wiseman capturing Walsh’s daily humble routine, be it addressing his struggle with alcoholism at a veterans’ meeting or serving gravy to disabled workers at a Goodwill dinner (a stark contrast to President Trump’s busy schedule of bitching and moaning between rounds of golf), he also puts the "essential" and under-appreciated cogs in the machine front and center. Which culminates in something truly extraordinary – a cinematic celebration of bureaucracy at its best. Sure, democracy may be broken in DC, but at the local level, the myriad of public servants are certainly doing right by the rest of us.

To read my essay of inspiration visit Modern Times Review.

Doc Stars of the Month: Nunu and Patrick Hogan, 'Through the Night'

Before the coronavirus crisis, the “essential worker” — flexible shorthand for the anonymous, hardworking, underpaid populace that allow our country (and all countries) to function — was hidden in plain sight. But with this sudden awareness that not just healthcare professionals, but also everyone from factory workers to grocery store employees are putting their lives on the line for little acknowledgment and even less financial renumeration should come some collective soul-searching. Fortunately, there’s Loira Limbal’s Through the Night to spur us on. In her Tribeca-premiering (and IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantee) doc, Limbal, an Afro-Dominican filmmaker and DJ — and Senior Vice President of Programs at Firelight Media — follows two working mothers and their trusted caregivers, Deloris “Nunu” and Patrick Hogan, whose lives intersect at the 24-hour childcare center the Hogans founded and run in New Rochelle, New York. And through these individual heartfelt stories, we’re treated to both a “love letter to single mothers and caregivers” (as Limbal has described her film) and a wakeup call. Yes, we as Americans are truly blessed that private citizens like the Hogans have stepped up to fill in a glaring gap in the social safety net. But what does that say about us, when we in the richest country in the world blithely rely on folks like the Hogans, a couple barely making ends meet, to keep the children of those barely making ends meet physically safe and emotionally healthy? So to provide some answers, Documentary turned to the knowledgeable providers themselves. And we’re truly honored that Nunu and Patrick Hogan agreed to take time away (albeit with multiple children competing for attention in the background) from their literally round-the-clock schedule to be featured as our December Doc Stars of the Month.

To read my interview with the heroic duo visit Documentary magazine.

Ring in the New: Top Female Filmmakers of IDFA 2020

As I’ve noted in the past, fulfilling the 5050×2020 Gender Parity Pledge is easy pickings for any nonfiction fest. Within the documentary realm female helmers have long consistently been behind half (and often more) of the highest quality work put out every year anyhow. And this year’s hybrid International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam — which like most non-Europeans I experienced exclusively online during varying states of pandemic lockdown over its ample (November 18-December 6) run — proved no exception to the rule. First there was the wealth of exhilarating new projects by acclaimed veterans to choose from. Czech master Helena Třeštíková screened her latest “time-lapse documentary” Anny, a riveting character study shot between 1996 and 2012, that follows a hardworking bathroom attendant and sometime sex worker (who didn’t start streetwalking until her mid 40s).

To read all about this year's crop of cinematic visionary women visit Filmmaker magazine.

DOK LEIPZIG 2020: NAKED TRUTHS – INTIMACY IN DOCUMENTARY FILM

If there’s one panel that really catalyzed my mind this virtual festival year it was DOK Leipzig’s “Naked Truths – Intimacy in Documentary Film” discussion. Expertly led by moderators Djamila Grandits (who seemed to be posing questions straight from my head) and Carolin Weidner, both members of the fest’s selections committee, the participants ranged from sex-on-film veterans to those who defined intimacy in completely clothed terms. There was longtime producer and Berlinale programmer Jürgen Brüning, founder of Pornfilmfestival Berlin, and his co-organizer and curator at the fest, Paulita Pappel, who is also the cofounder of Lustery. And Pia Hellenthal, director of 2019’s exquisite Searching Eva (which Brüning had selected to premiere at last year’s Berlinale). And rounding out the lineup was Julia Palmieri Mattison, whose short Play Me, I’m Yours was playing DOK Leipzig.

To read Part 2 of my panel coverage visit Hammer to Nail.