It has been said that Harriet Beecher Stowe helped start the Civil War with her novel, Uncle Toms Cabin, which enumerated the evils of slavery in shocking detail to a nation that had all but turned a blind eye to what was known as the peculiar institution. It may just be the idealist in my… Read More »
UNDERGROUND ZERO
Before we are inundated with what will no doubt be a lions share of indifferent movies about the events of 9/11, take the time to see UNDERGROUD ZERO, a thoughtful, intelligent take on what that day and its aftermath mean. The film is an anthology of thirteen short films commissioned by producers and filmmakers Jay… Read More »
THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL
After spending 83 minutes with Mark Bittner and the flock of WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL that have allowed him into their lives, it?s easy to come away with the sense that there was an element of fate in their meeting up. An 魩gr頦rom Washington state with plans to be a musician, he got sidetracked… Read More »
INSIDE DEEP THROAT
Filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have taken a hot button topic and turned it into a piquant and incisive sociological treatise on the societal attitudes towards sex and sexuality and how those attitudes, oddly, havent changed much even with the sexual revolution. That it’s also a look at the eternal struggle between art and… Read More »
DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE
The subject matter of this intimate documentary belies its breezy title, a title imposed, of course, by the commissioning editors with an eye towards its marketing potential. Made by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, it shows the casual brutality inflicted upon women in a country that views independent females with suspicion and, perhaps, even fear. Mir… Read More »
IRAQ — THE UNTOLD STORIES
Mike Shiley’s IRAQ: THE UNTOLD STORIES shows just that. This self-proclaimed non-journalist, Shiley reports on things that the professional journalists working in Iraq wouldn’t, or couldn’t, discover. He’s a genial host, talking directly to the camera between three-minute clips of the footage he shot, expanding on his experiences in Iraq, experiences that range from the… Read More »
MANA — BEYOND BELIEF
The concept at the heart of MANA: BEYOND BELIEF is defined at the outset of film. A Maori explains the power of objects, both inherent and that with which people imbue them. From the cherry blossoms of Japan that draw avid viewers and drunken, all-night partying to the mystique of a freakishly large tuna. It… Read More »
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (La March de L’Empereur)
It’s not that Luc Jacquet’s documentary, MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, tells the penguin lover in all of us anything about them that we didn’t already know. It’s that he frames it in such a way that the audience is allowed to experience the emotional life of these birds in a way that is compelling, intimate,… Read More »
PROTOCOLS OF ZION
It is no surprise to learn that there are still people who believe in the PROTOCOLS OF ZION, the long discredited document outlining a Jewish plot for world domination written by Czarist secret police to fulfill an agenda that disappeared with the royal family. Nor is it a surprise that a Nazi mail-order concern can’t… Read More »
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY
The irresistible thing about SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY is how it takes the mystery of original vision and workings of the imagination behind it, effervescent and ineffable qualities, and translates them successfully into the confines of a documentary. That is not the only reason to see Sydney Pollack’s first crack at a documentary, but it… Read More »
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