There are five reasons why Molly vs THE MACHINES should never have been made. It makes significant use of generative AI, from having AI voiceovers read the narration to AI images illustrating various points. This appears to have been done as a budget saving. Molly Russell, the 14-year-old named in …
Yo is short for Yolanda, and Yolanda was Yolanda Shea, a Swiss woman who spoke four languages fluently and spent most of her adult life in northern California. At a rummage sale in her seventies, Yo met a woman in her twenties named Anna Fitch, and their relationship became unusually …
The concept for WAX & GOLD is almost laughably deranged. It aims to examine the history of Ethiopia generally and Haile Selassie personally by filming only within Hilton Addis. Mr. Selassie was personally involved in bringing this Western hotel to the country, to the point of helping to design it, …
Music documentaries are very good at providing a sociological picture of the time and place where the band got together. If a band gets famous enough to participate in its own obituary, their lives of success on the road tend to blur into This is Spinal Tap. If there were …
Throughout the history of documentary filmmaking, the observational type captures a story through the absence of direct interference by the director. It is a format that allows the audience to understand the subject more profoundly. An observational film is the one that rejects the talking head interview scheme to create …
One of the beauties of non-fiction filmmaking is presenting the audience with a reality that they might never have known before. Yet, there is a fascinating aspect to comprehending how human beings behave and live differently in each corner of the world. In this sense, the Polish documentary The Queen …
The concept behind Given Names (Prénoms) is so simple that it’s hard to believe no one has ever done it before. Filmmaker Nurith Aviv showed up at the apartments of various friends of hers with a bunch of flowers, and then listened to the friend talk about their first, or …
For almost fifty years, the country of Yugoslavia was important in global geopolitics. Zastava, a company founded in the 1850s as a weapons manufacturer, pivoted and began producing vehicles a century later. Fiat, the Italian manufacturer from Turin, licensed its designs to the Yugoslav industry. Zastava would sell models of …
Before the spread of the academia as a central form of producing and teaching knowledge, the indigenous communities already understand crucial learnings about the world. Historically, civilizations such as the Mayans and Aztecs produced immense amounts of information on mathematics and engineering. Human being tends to seek understanding of their …
In the inception of filmmaking, cinema was similar to magic. It is the illusionism of the images that impressed dozens of people gathered in a room watching a machine that projects photos. In that first showing in Paris, filmmaking was a new form of witchcraft, the combination of chemical processes …
Rio de Janeiro is arguably the most well-known city in Brazil and one of the most iconic places in the world. However, despite the undeniable natural beauty, the town is destroyed by its contradictions. Throughout the construction of Rio as a city, there has been a connection between wealth and …
In recent years, documentaries have become a space for personal histories. Filmmakers saw the non-fiction form as an opportunity to reflect on their lives and eternalize the memories, shadows, and complexities of their backgrounds. Therefore, throughout archival, diary, and poetic structures, directors expose their intimacies, unveiling their emotions and the …
Documentary filmmaking also works as a personal chamber for filmmakers to pour their hearts into films. Throughout the diary or poetic non-fiction, the directors can discuss their personal lives, the formality of cinema, and themes they are passionate about. It is a chance to unveil themselves and the world surrounding …
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Europe was boiling with ideas and cultural movements. Modernism, Brutalism, and the Belle Epoqué bloomed with multiple currents that provoked changes in the cultural and societal landscape in the world. In 1919, a particular school in Germany taught and shaped artists whose work …
Since Seized showed at the Sundance Film Festival, news has dropped about the dismantling of the Washington Post by its billionaire owner. The ability of a free and fair press to hold power to account is something that it seems the seat of American government is about to lose, probably …
Throughout the social formation of the Americas, religiosity is fundamental to understanding the rooted traditions of the multiple Latin cultures. In a sense, the moral compass, the ethics, and the comprehension of the world reflect the influences of the Portuguese and Spanish Catholics, who, through the genocidal project, spread the …
Soul Patrol’s depiction of the Vietnam War combat experiences of a group of young black men is designed to restore their place within the military history of the American war machine, which at the time was still segregated as well as frequently openly racist. A great deal of the footage …
Cinema works as a personal diary for filmmakers. The camera as an instrument substitutes the pen, words shift to images, and the stories build upon a different logic. Similar to the process of writing in a journal, there is a process involved in the act of storytelling. The written story …
It is no surprise that Nuisance Bear won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, because it does what all good movies should, and even fewer documentaries achieve: it is not really about what it’s about. The ability to succeed on a double level is …
This documentary is about the power of community in healing from grief, through the method of Gaelic psalm singing. The dialogue is almost entirely in Scots-Gaelic – the indigenous language of Scotland and a cousin to Irish Gaelic, the indigenous language of Ireland – and centers the journey of one …