documentary
The brave Rwandan women and the inspiring conclusion of The Uncondemned make it a heartbreaking, human, and empowering watch, and it reveals an important part of forgotten history.
How can an unconventional documentary lasting 134 minutes and consisting entirely of the juxtaposition of naturalistic scenes be a compelling and rewarding cinematic journey capable of matching the most innovative 3D IMAX movie for sheer scale, awe and engagement?
Amy Adrion shared her insights on gender inequality in the film industry and how we can create change for women in Hollywood.
Saving Mes Aynak’s central figure, Qadir Temori, is an Afghan archaeologist more Don Quixote than Indiana Jones, fighting forces from all sides threatening to wrench from his country what is deemed the most significant find of the century.
Imagine waking up from a coma and finding out that one of the nominees in the 2016 presidential election was a thin skinned egomaniac, with a penchant for airing his racist, misogynist and ableist views (and a platform that allows for homophobic views to boot). Imagine if you found out that he’d already set a precedent for his appalling behaviour, yet he was still inexplicably marching towards success, planning to grab the American electorate by the pussy. Having this news broken to you as your comatose body reanimates and prepares for a life in a new, quasi-dystopian future, is the only way you are likely to be shocked by any of Donald Trump’s antics.
Ice Guardians will broaden everyone’s view on the disparaged enforcers, framing itself as a plea to those who have sided against the bruisers without giving it much thought. After all, the lumbering men are just that, men, and Ice Guardians captures them and their role in all its complicated glory.
Magnolia Pictures brought important documentaries like Blackfish and Food, Inc to the public at large, and now they’re bringing us Danny Says. While Danny Says might not be an activist film meant to make an impact on our present day lives and the world we live in, Danny Fields made a huge impact on the world of music from behind the scenes – and this is his story, directed by Brendan Toller. Experimenting With Rock n Roll As a fan of documentaries, biographies and music, this film was right up my alley.
I, like a lot of people, don’t like scientology. I think it’s nonsense – nonsense propagated by arrogant people in an effort to coerce the desperate into giving them power and money. When I heard Louis Theroux was making a documentary about it, I was very excited.
When the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranked global education systems in 2015, South Korea came in third. Its strict, demanding schools feed off the country’s zeal for education, with many people believing that your performance in school will determine your lifelong socioeconomic status. Given the country’s recent history, this assumption is far from unfounded.
Ava DuVernay returns to the documentary format with 13th, a look at the amendment of the United States Constitution that simultaneously abolished slavery and established a loophole for denying rights to targeted groups. The troubling wording in the amendment has to do with convicted criminals, who are the only people exempt from the abolishment of slavery and involuntary servitude. That exemption, while small at the time, has snowballed into a huge issue thanks to America’s system of mass incarceration.
Coming Out is the personal story of young filmmaker Alden Peters. The film follows his coming out process as he tells his parents, friends and siblings how he has repressed his sexuality for a number of years. In using a homemade video style of filming, Coming Out gives us an insight into not only Peters’ journey but into his mindset as he starts to immerse himself into the 2016 LGBTQ lifestyle.
The sincerity of The Homestretch is certainly never in doubt. Depicting the plight of three homeless teens in Chicago, Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly’s documentary interweaves the personal stories with various facts and statistics highlighting the widespread nature of the issue. Unfortunately, despite its pure intentions, The Homestretch never really manages to succeed to be truly engaging, regardless of the clear warmth of the three featured youths.
First published in 2000 under the pseudonymn JT LeRoy by author Laura Albert, “Sarah” became a transgressive fiction literary sensation. After holding court with such seminal writers of the sub-genre such as Bruce Benderson and Dennis Cooper, the rising writer of American letters seemed destined for superstardom. Whisked away on the coattails of celebrities impressed with her abilities on the page, Jeremiah “Terminator” LeRoy become the queer it lit boy of a generation.
When we think of documentaries about North Korea, it is usually with an eye toward illuminating what to this day remains cloaked in self-imposed mystery. As it has always been an excessively reclusive nation, this state of unknowing has been the primary trait most of the West associates with the DPRK. As a young country, that means most of its brief history is known only to itself, and even then there are probably only a few at the government’s upper echelons that are privy to details not disseminated to a populace fed on propaganda.
You won’t find out much about Louise Osmond if you look online. She is an Oxford history graduate who joined ITN as a news journalism trainee, and that’s all I or probably any other writer could know about her. But the personal details are irrelevant in the face of such a sturdy, and increasingly successful career as a documentary maker.