Screen Time: Summer/Fall 2024

Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes, an elegantly crafted portrait of seven NYC psychics, contends with the theme of connection — that of the psychics to their clients and to the loved ones those clients desperately want to reach. Everyone is also connected to the director herself, who has made the inspired choice of casting a very New York–type of cinephile psychic, who has likewise pursued a career as an actor, writer, or artist, and similarly views their clairvoyance as a creative calling.

To read the rest of my review visit Documentary magazine.

The Feedback: Amy Nicholson on Embedding in the Community of ‘Happy Campers’

Though veteran director-producer Amy Nicholson has crafted feature-length films (2012’s Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride, 2005’s Muskrat Lovely), she first appeared on my radar in 2016 with her memorable short Pickle, which was nominated for an IDA Documentary Award and the Cinema Eye Honors, and went on to be featured in the New York Times’ Op-Docs as well as on the Criterion Channel (alongside Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven no less). And while Nicholson’s latest work of cinematic nonfiction does include her trademark approach of “chuckling along with” (never at) her sometimes offbeat characters, Happy Campers is actually much more elegiac in tone. This is understandable since this 2023 DOC NYC debut follows the final years of the soon-to-disappear blue-collar community of Inlet View, an RV park off the coast of Virginia that the director herself embedded with (i.e., bought a camper and moved in); and has since been sold to developers looking to cash in on its multimillion-dollar locale. But rather than focus on any battle against The Man (spoiler alert: there is none), Nicholson instead chooses to train her lens squarely on the longtime denizens to be displaced, many of whom have been summering there for generations and have morphed into one big loving family. And thereby capture a view money can’t buy. Documentary recently caught up with Nicholson, fresh off the film’s festival run, to learn all about Happy Campers, which has journeyed from a 2022 DocuClub NY work-in-progress screening all the way to acquisition by Grasshopper Film. It plays theaters in NY and LA this month.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Wide Awake: dream hampton’s It Was All a Dream,

Filmmaker and cultural critic dream hampton was both shaping and reshaping the world around her decades before she was named in the TIME 100 most influential people list of 2019 (not coincidentally, the year Surviving R. Kelly, the Lifetime docuseries hampton executive produced, received an Emmy nomination – and kickstarted the downfall of the titular sexual predator). In fact, between writing her first opinion piece all the way back in ’91 for The Source, now the world’s longest-running rap periodical, and hanging out with folks like her neighbor Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G., hampton had both a front row seat to the birth of hip hop – and a seat at the table. Which is what makes It Was All a Dream, hampton’s “visual memoir” (EP’d by Biggie’s son C.J. Wallace) much more than a walk down an early 90s memory lane.

To read the rest of my essay visit Global Comment.

“A probing journey into the imperialist mindset”: Intercepted

“A Russian wouldn’t be a Russian if they didn’t steal something!” an anonymous woman wryly exclaims with a hint of pride in Oksana Karpovych’s Berlinale-premiering Intercepted, a probing journey into the imperialist mindset through a most unusual route. The film’s title is a nod to the trove of phone conversations, between Russian soldiers fighting and dying (and pillaging and looting) on the ground in Ukraine and the men’s often supportive (in denial?) families back home, that were intercepted by the Ukrainian Secret Service in 2022.

To read my review visit Global Comment.

“Nature Is a Concept That Exists to Divide Us From the Land”: Josh Fox on His Documentary Theater ‘The Edge of Nature’

Josh Fox’s (Gasland) The Edge of Nature is as description-defyingly complicated as the simple question behind its conception might imply: What is nature? It’s both a subdued, standalone feature-length doc consisting almost entirely of Fox’s narration and a Pennsylvania forest filled with equally alive beings; and a rousing theater piece with Fox reprising/mirroring his role onstage alongside an 11-member ensemble (from International WOW Company, the activist troupe Fox founded nearly three decades ago) who add an experimental, American folk music-filled dimension to the film playing above and behind them. The Edge of Nature is also an exploration of our long-forgotten, inherent integration with nature, intergenerational trauma, the effects of long Covid and even longer colonialism. Indeed, with the fast-moving urgency of a flooded Pennsylvania waterway, Fox and his team reconnect topics ranging from the climate crisis, to the Native American genocide, to the Holocaust, to the pandemic, to global corporate capture and the MAGA movement — all culminating in a passionate call to once and for all return humanity to its original role as environmental caretakers. Post-show Q&As frequently include climate activists and celebrity travelers such as Extinction Rebellion and DJ Spooky. To learn all about this multimedia extravaganza, Documentary caught up with the veteran director-playwright-environmental activist the week after The Edge of Nature’s run at NYC’s LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Club, which critic Bernie Sanders succinctly deemed “great work.”

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“My Hope Is That the Film Itself Is An Impact Campaign”: Alex Hedison on Her Sundance Short Alok

“What lives outside of the frames of this camera and your own eyes?” is the question the poet/comedian/actor/public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the viewer to ponder at the very start of Alex Hedison’s Sundance-premiering short Alok. Currently on the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, and premiering at IFC Center on June 14th (with both the nonbinary star and Hedison, who also happens to be married to her EP Jodie Foster, in attendance), the doc is based on footage Hedison shot during the performer’s recent international tour and is supplemented with highly stylized interviews with the spiritually enlightened artist and their equally deep-thinking friends (including Dylan Mulvaney, who poignantly self reflects that “replacing fear with fascination” is what has made her life worth living). Indeed, for Alok, eliminating the binary between “us” and “them” is more important than the blurring of he and she. (Alok likewise stresses that the most controversial pronoun they have is “we,” which requires acknowledging our interconnectedness.) Transphobia is just another form of pain, they firmly believe. And by the end, as in the beginning, we’re faced with another potentially revolutionary question: “What would it look like if our weapon was love?” To learn more about Alok and Alok, Filmmaker reached out to Hedison, likewise an internationally-acclaimed artist and actor (and fine art photographer whose work has graced galleries throughout Europe); along with producers Natalie Shirinian and her wife Elizabeth Baudouin (also credited as music supervisor), who together founded indie production company Not All Films.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“A Shapeshifter in Constant Motion”: Sandi DuBowski Spent 21 Years Filming ‘Sabbath Queen’

It’s been 23 years since Sandi DuBowski’s groundbreaking Trembling Before G-d, which uncloaked the lives of Hasidic and Orthodox gays and lesbians, made its Sundance debut. Since that time DuBowski has built a career at the intersection of religion and queerness, social activism and filmmaking, always avoiding the binary choice in favor of the “and.” This insistence is a bond shared by the director-producer and the riveting Israeli-American star of his latest feature Sabbath Queen—a doc over 21 years in the making focused squarely on Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, a descendant of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis. This member of rabbi royalty is also the creator of drag persona Rebbetzin Hadassah, the founder of Jewish congregation Lab/Shul, and a queer dad to three young kids. And also a Jewish Theological Seminary-trained Conservative rabbi with a loving family entangled in a heartbreaking war back home. In other words, it’s complicated. Which is why Documentary decided to reach out to the veteran activist-filmmaker to learn all about his Tribeca-premiering Sabbath Queen, the film’s unconventional lead, and embracing the messy nonbinary nature of humankind itself.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.