When a documentary film is about a filmmaker and their own family, there is really no way to critique the work of art without critiquing the people in it. That caveat, or concern, is especially important for Remake, the new documentary by Ross McElwee, who single-handedly changed the world of …
You don’t realise how tough it is to make a good documentary until you see ones which fall short. For a documentary to succeed, it needs to back up its assertions in ways which will stand up in court, access to the people who will give you that backup, and …
The Brazilian experimental filmmaker Ana Vaz is probably best known for her 2022 project É Noite na América (It is Night in America). The project premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and she has now returned to it with Fire Flower (Hanabi). Shot over the last ten years, her latest …
In the recent history of the Brazilian society, despite the majority in numbers, the Black population is a minority economically. This fact reflects the hundreds of years of slavery that exploited those coming from the African continent, and after their freedom, led them to the margins of the society. One …
While the Girl Scouts of America do plenty to build up young women, they are best known for their cookies. Which makes sense, given that they are an $800 million industry. In her documentary Cookie Queens, currently in theaters, Alysa Nahmias examines this business through the eyes of four young …
A female Korean superfan featured in Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, speaking through tears, provides the best explanation possible for Oasis’ appeal: they are not a band that hectors you to get up when you fall down. They are a band that falls down beside you; they know themselves …
We all know China is an industrial superpower, but we (especially in the west) don’t devote much time wondering how China has become an industrial superpower. Well, part of the answer is that it buys a lot of its raw materials in from Mongolia. China’s upstairs neighbour is a nation …
The trouble with prison documentaries is the elephant in the room. Either you must find the reasons people are incarcerated beneath mentioning, or you must be right up front with the conviction that landed someone inside. This unfair but reasonable fact of life might go double if the documentary is …
The journalist and documentary filmmaker Daniel Lombroso has been consistently releasing shorts and features that reflect on two central themes: beauty and the American society. In the previous years, he released Denial, Hold the Line, American Scar, and White Noise, which all portray the history of the United States and …
When discussing pioneers in cinema, Barbara Hammer’s name is quintessential for any discussion. The avant-garde filmmaker is essential for the feminist cinema alongside names like Chantal Akerman, Lizzie Borden, Barbara Loden, and Sally Porter. In a sense, all of those directors provided different multitudes for the feminine representation on the …
To younger audiences, Martin Short is a name that’s synonymous with Oliver Putnam, the clumsy, struggling co-lead in Hulu’s hit show, Only Murders in the Building. To older generations, he represents a collection of hilarious characters that have graced both the big and small screens for over five decades. And …
The prolific filmmaker and theorist Mark Cousins returns to the festival circuit with his 16-part project, The Story of Documentary Film. Recently, he presented the segment 1970s at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a two-halves project that narrates the production of non-fiction in the decade. Firstly, in the …
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 …