‘In the Waves’ Finds Peace and Wisdom in the Waves of Cape Breton Island
Jacquelyn Mills’s portrait of her grandmother is at once abstract and intimate.
Daniel Walber
‘In the Waves’ Finds Peace and Wisdom in the Waves of Cape Breton Island
Camden International Film FestivalJacquelyn Mills’s portrait of her grandmother is at once abstract and intimate.Joan Alma Mills sits with her husband at a small table in their Nova Scotia home. The e…
‘Taste of Cement’ Is an Impressionistic Portrait of Syrian Workers in Exile
Ziad Kalthoum’s cinema soars above Beirut to capture the uncanny experience of absence.
‘Taste of Cement’ Is an Impressionistic Portrait of Syrian Workers in Exile
Camden International Film FestivalZiad Kalthoum’s cinema soars above Beirut to capture the uncanny experience of absence.Many documentary filmmakers find their most compelling artistic truth in the “s…
An Update from The Cove: ‘A Whale of a Tale’ Finds Little Changed in Taiji
Filmmaker Megumi Sasaki shows how neither the media craze nor the dolphin hunt has ceased.It has been more than seven years since The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film …
‘Risk’ Is a Perceptive, Subtle Portrait of Power and Posture
Billed by some as a prequel to ‘Citizenfour,’ Laura Poitras’s new film has a much more complex relationship to her previous work.In October 2012, Lady Gaga paid a visit to Julian Assange at the Ecuado…
Notes from Art of the Real: What Critics Can Learn from Great Programming
Let’s leave the issue film and its accompanying straw men behind. A new Cinematic Nonfiction is already here and it has brought some giant owls.Documentary critics have a tendency to describe good fil…
Peering for Nonfiction in the Erotic Webcam Milieu of ‘The Human Surge’
This bold new experimental feature is a documentary of its own making.Jacques Rivette once said that every film is a documentary about its own making, an observation that has become quite the convenie…
‘Kedi’ is the Feline Spiritual Awakening You’ve Been Waiting For
Finally, something better than cat videos.
Three Beautiful New Latin American Documentaries Paint Portraits with Sound
Surire, Site of Sites, and Black Sun are highlights of this year’s Neighboring Scenes showcase.Salt flats are truly bizarre ecosystems, fields of mineral deposits under vast expanses of sky. The Salar…
The 16 Best Documentaries of 2016
Nonfics editors share their favorite nonfiction films of the year.“It’s been a great year for docs” has become a cliché, and that’s a good thing. The merits of individual list-toppers are always up fo…
‘Notes on Blindness’ Is a Precise Portrait of Altered Perception
John Hull, an Australian theologian working at the UK’s University of Birmingham, went blind in 1983. He was 48 years old. Over the next two decades, he skillfully adjusted his professional, intellect…
The 5 Must-See Films of DOC NYC 2016
DOC NYC can be an overwhelming affair. The largest festival of its kind in the United States, it showcases well over 100 feature documentaries, including many of them world and international premieres…
‘Portrait of a Garden’ Is a Colorful Sojourn in a Place of Beauty
A rose is a rose is a rose. That may be true, and who am I to argue with Gertrude Stein? But a pear is not a pear is not a pear, as is quickly apparent in Rosie Stapel’s debut feature, Portrait of a G…
‘Thank You for Playing’ Is a Heartfelt Meditation on Parenting, Cancer and Nonfiction Art
At first glance, video games and documentaries have very little in common. One is an interactive medium, usually built from computer generated 3D animation and often featuring entirely fantastical pla…
‘13th’ is an All-Too-Brief Document of America’s Essential Crime
What do we mean when we call a film, particularly a documentary, “important”?Ava DuVernay is certainly an important filmmaker, both as an artist and as an advocate for positive change in a white- and …
‘Cameraperson’ is a Powerful and Inquisitive Memoir
The tremendously beautiful opening images of Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson were shot in the small Bosnian town of Foča. The scene is rural, picturesque, and evocative of an ancient way of life, like …
‘The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger’ Is a Family Album Anchored by Tilda Swinton
The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger is, unavoidably, an anthology film. It is made up of four shorts, each of which was directed by a different person and shot in a different season. …
‘Weiner’ and ‘The Other Side’: When Documentaries Have Cringe Appeal
The crowning moment of Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s Weiner comes courtesy of MSNBC. Anthony Weiner, flailing in the second wave of sexting revelations that utterly ruined his campaign for the m…
‘Our Last Tango’ Is a Thrilling Portrait of a Tumultuous Career
Maria Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes redefined an art form. Likely the most important tango couple of the 20th century (and the 21st, as Nieves would tell you herself), they took the dance out of the ni…
‘Our Last Tango’ Is a Thrilling Portrait of a Tumultuous Career
Maria Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes redefined an art form. Likely the most important tango couple of the 20th century (and the 21st, as Nieves would tell you herself), they took the dance out of th…
Revelatory ‘Robert Frank’ and ‘Hieronymus Bosch’ Continue a Great Year for Art Docs
In an age of renewed interest in nonfiction cinema as art, documentary profiles of artists are caught between two mindsets. On the one hand, many filmmakers understand the need to distinguish their wo…
Revelatory ‘Robert Frank’ and ‘Hieronymus Bosch’ Continue a Great Year for Art Docs
In an age of renewed interest in nonfiction cinema as art, documentary profiles of artists are caught between two mindsets. On the one hand, many filmmakers understand the need to distinguish their wo…
‘The Russian Woodpecker’ is a Revolutionary and Convincing Conspiracy Theory Film
Fedor Alexandrovich shares his quest for the truth behind the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
‘The Seventh Fire’ Leads an Essential Series on Native American Documentary
The Seventh Fire, the debut documentary from Jack Pettibone Riccobono, is a stylistically ambitious portrait of life lived on the American fringe. His subjects are two Ojibway men living on the White …
‘Jim: The James Foley Story’ Frustratingly Separates Heroism From Journalism
Jim: The James Foley Story begins with clarifying announcement. This film will not feature the infamous footage of James Foley’s murder at the hands of ISIS. It’s the right decision for a whole slew o…
While Heartfelt, ‘Life, Animated’ Squanders Its Cinematic Potential
The OrchardOwen Suskind was diagnosed with autism when he was three years old. Now he is 23, preparing to move into his own apartment. Once, in early childhood, his parents thought he might never spea…
While Heartfelt, ‘Life, Animated’ Squanders Its Cinematic Potential
Owen Suskind was diagnosed with autism when he was three years old. Now he is 23, preparing to move into his own apartment. Once, in early childhood, his parents thought he might never speak again. Af…
The 5 Best Films of Human Rights Watch 2016
Last week I wrote about the overall trend in the programming of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, a move away from typical “issue films” and toward more artistically-minded filmmaking. The banner …
‘Growing Up Coy’ and How to Transcend “Issue”
Eric Juhola’s documentary about a transgender child rises above.
A History of Stillness: Five Documentaries by Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, is a powerful work of visual stillness. Nearly all of its images were shot within the walls of a single apartment, that of the filmmaker’s mother. Like an …
‘Unlocking the Cage’ Is a Uniquely Hairy Courtroom Drama
The most successful animal rights documentaries of recent years have often leaned into the sensational. The Cove uses the stylistic conventions of the spy movie to tell its dangerous narrative of inve…
Now On DVD: ‘Where to Invade Next’ Is an Easy, Empty Comic Travelogue of European Success
Michael Moore rose up in the world by speaking truth to power. Or, rather, by speaking truth at power. When he began, power wasn’t particularly interested in hearing from him. His signature self-aware…
Documentaries Feature New Ways of Seeing at the New York African Film Festival
“Cinema is an important art. It’s the art of telling the world about yourself.” These words of wisdom are offered by Congolese filmmaker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda in LaBelle at the Movies, a new document…
‘Eva Hesse’ and ‘Fassbinder’ Redefine the Artist Biography, with Mixed Success
As David Hockney once said, “new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling.” Life inflects art, art inflects life, and biographical documentaries often strive to capture these inflections as they go bot…
‘Keep Quiet’ Is a Smart Portrait of Antisemitic Politics Undermined by Truth
Hungarian politician Csanad Szegedi had been a committed fascist, nationalist and antisemite since high school. He was a founding member of Jobbik, now his country’s largest extreme-right party. He ra…
‘Hockney’ Is a Colorful, Creative Biography of the Celebrated Pop Artist
When David Hockney was young, he was different. He had a “crinkly chipper.” For those who don’t immediately recognize the phrase, that’s a device to crinkle-cut his homemade french fries. This informa…
‘All This Panic’ Is an Impressionistic Depiction of Growing Up in New York City
Ginger, in her own words, is “petrified of getting old.” She may only be in high school, but that hardly matters to her. If she were a character in a narrative film, the line might very well inspire s…
‘All This Panic’ Is an Impressionistic Depiction of Growing Up in New York City
Ginger, in her own words, is “petrified of getting old.” She may only be in high school, but that hardly matters to her. If she were a character in a narrative film, the line might very well inspire s…
The 5 Best Discoveries at Art of the Real 2016
It is perhaps something of a misnomer to refer to the best of the Art of the Real lineup as “discoveries.” Many of the films in the nonfiction showcase have already received warm receptions across the…
Art of the Real Proves Documentary Festivals Should Show Experimental Films
We live in an age of documentary festivals, dotting both the calendar and the globe. Most of them offer a wide range of subjects and draw from an equally impressive range of countries of origin. Only …
‘Of Men and War’ is an Essential, Expertly Edited Portrait of American Veterans
An essential document of 21st century American conflict.
‘A Poem Is a Naked Person’ Is Les Blank’s Triumphant Ode to American Creativity
Painter Jim Franklin wanders about an empty pool holding a glass jar. It’s not immediately apparent what he’s up to until he makes his first capture. Scorpions. They’re everywhere, tiny ones, and he’s…
‘Lost and Beautiful’ Spins a Mystical Fable from a Heartfelt Documentary with the Help of a Talking Buffalo
“Dreams and fables, though imaginary, should tell the truth.”This is among the many morals of Lost and Beautiful, a new film directed by Pietro Marcello (The Mouth of the Wolf) and narrated by a buffa…
‘Eldorado XXI’ Is an Unpredictable Experiment in Style from the Top of the World
Salomé Lamas makes unpredictable films. This is true on a nearly microscopic level, down to the intricacies of sound and editing. One never knows how long a shot will last, and the resulting tension d…
The Best of New Directors/New Films 2016 Might Be These 3 Documentary Shorts
What exactly is a “new director”? This question is something of an annual tradition, regarding the lineup of New Directors/New Films. The festival frequently features fourth, even fifth features, and …
‘Behemoth’ Is a Bold Depiction of Environmental Destruction in Northern China
Behemoth is a Bold Depiction of Environmental Destruction in Northern ChinaBehemoth is a film of enormous metaphor, which is perhaps obvious from the title. Like many artistically inclined environment…
‘Strange Victory’ Is an Essential, Sobering Work of American Anti-fascist Art
Leo Hurwitz’s Strange Victory is among the masterpieces of American anti-fascist cinema, a genre that may not actually exist. This is, in part, because of the conventional wisdom that America has neve…
Jean Eustache’s ‘The Pig’ and ‘The Virgin of Pessac’ Capture a Fading Rustic Culture
Jean Eustache was born on November 30th, 1938 in the village of Pessac. A small town of about 14,000 people, it was a community of mostly farmers, a representative example of French country life as it…
‘Here Come the Videofreex’ Is a Joyful Archive of the Early Days of Video
It began, like so many stories of nostalgia, at Woodstock. David Cort decided to grab his camera and head upstate to document the festival. It was a good idea, though it turned out to be hardly a uniq…
‘INAATE/SE/’ Is a Unique and Transformative Retelling of Native American History
Every one in a while, a film comes around that so bluntly and creatively rejects the dominant form of documentary expression, it feels like something brand new. INAATE/SE/, the debut feature by brothe…
‘France Is Our Mother Country’ Is a Sharp Archival Tour of Cambodia’s Colonial Past
Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh is one of the great experimenters, tackling the topic of his nation’s history from every conceivable angle. He’s made vérité documentaries, narrative features and films …
‘The Event’ Is an Incisive, Powerful Record of Political Uncertainty
Long before the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace, the word “revolution” began its long linguistic journey in a much different place. It was celestial, referring to the movement of planets; think o…
‘Over the Years’ Is a Humble Epic of Life and Work
Are we shaped by the work we do?Nikolaus Geyrhalter poses this question to an Austrian factory worker, one of the last remaining employees of the Anderl textile plant in Austria’s rural Waldwiertel re…
‘(T)error’ Is a Wry, Shocking Triumph of Journalism
(T)error is an extremely difficult film to describe, if only because it raises a concern that doesn’t frequently arise in the work of a documentary critic. It’s that rare nonfiction feature with a sig…
The 6 Must-See Films of MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight 2016
The Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight is a showcase for artistic intersection. Given today’s nonfiction landscape, that obviously includes films that elide the difference between documentar…
Watch Uncanny Short Films ‘Playground,’ ‘Bailu Dream’ and ‘Quantum’ for Free
Our entire world is now mapped. It doesn’t matter how terrible your sense of direction, if you’ve got a smart phone you know exactly where you are. There’s even a (very fun) game that drops you in a r…
The 2016 Oscar Nominated Documentary Short Films Reviewed and Handicapped
The 2016 Oscar-nominated short documentaries are a very international bunch. Out of the five nominees, only one of them is set in the United States, which is actually pretty rare. Otherwise, though, t…
‘Kiki’ is a Strong Community Portrait That Does Good by the Legacy of ‘Paris Is Burning’
Kiki is in a weird spot. As a documentary about the Kiki scene, a youthful section of New York City’s drag ball culture, it will almost certainly be compared to Paris Is Burning in every single review…
‘All These Sleepless Nights’ Is a Stylish Dream of Bored Youth
All These Sleepless Nights is a film about beautiful, young people with no financial concerns and nothing to do but gaze into each others' eyes, take club drugs, and wonder at the perpetual twilight o…
‘The Land of the Enlightened’ Is an Astonishing, Mythical Docudrama of Afghan History
The history of Afghanistan is a history of invasions. Everyone from Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan to Leonid Brezhnev has knocked on the door, to mixed success. Combined with the nation’s provoc…
‘Plaza de la Soledad’ Highlights the Resilience of Mexico City Sex Workers
Maya Goded has been telling the stories of the sex worker community of Mexico City’s La Merced neighborhood for a long time. In 2006 she published a book of photographs on the subject. Later she contr…
Why You Should Watch the Electric ‘Hum 255,’ Now Streaming Free
2016 marks the 50th anniversary of Kartemquin Films, a pillar of American nonfiction cinema. Founded by Stan Karter, Jerry Temaner and Gordon Quinn to pursue “cinematic social inquiry,” the company ha…
‘The Look of Silence’ Sweeps the 9th Cinema Eye Honors
A likely portent of next month’s Academy Award ceremony, The Look of Silence had a very good night at the 9th annual Cinema Eye Honors. The film picked up three top awards, including Outstanding Achie…
Watch Nicolás Pereda’s Enigmatic ‘Summer of Goliath’ for Free
Nicolás Pereda has rapidly become a ubiquitous name on the international festival circuit. Two of his films, The Absent and The Palace, were on our list of must-see films in last year’s Art of the Rea…
‘The Creation of Meaning’ is a Breathtaking Agrarian Film with an Eternal Sensibility
Simone Rapisarda Casanova’s The Creation of Meaning is a film set in a strange, mystical borderland. It technically takes place right in the middle of a single country, surrounded by Central Italy’s A…
‘Dreams Rewired’ Is an Early Cinema Fantasia of New Technology
We are all connected, now more than ever. This sentiment is repeated so often these days that it has lost its power, a technically accurate observation of the 21st century without any real, productive…
8 Documentaries Newly Added to the National Film Registry and Where to Watch Them
The Library of Congress has announced the National Film Registry class of 2015–25 films to be preserved for their “cultural, historic or aesthetic significance.” It’s a good year for nonfiction select…
‘The Mills of the Gods’ at 50: The Groundbreaking Vietnam War Documentary Is Still Shocking
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. In 1964, Canadian filmmaker Beryl Fox went to Vietnam on behalf of the Canadian Broa…
‘Downeast’ and ‘Night Labor’ Are Memorable, Colorful Portraits of a Small Maine Town
Gouldsboro is a quintessential example of the Downeast region of Maine, the coastal portions of the state’s two easternmost counties. At least its residents would like you to think as much, never pass…
‘The Square’ is a First-Rate Document of the Egyptian Revolution
From the 2013 New York Film Festival, we review Jehane Noujaim's extraordinary film, which went on to earn an Oscar nomination.
The Top 5 Discoveries of DOC NYC 2015
DOC NYC is gigantic. It’s also relatively quite new. This year’s sixth edition of the festival featured over 100 feature films, packed into just a week of screenings. As a result, it’s in something of…
‘3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets’ Takes a Stand Against Stand-Your-Ground
On the day after Thanksgiving 2012, 17-year-old Jordan Davis was shot and killed outside of a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. The shooter was Michael Dunn, a middle-aged white man who had gotten…
‘Democrats’ Is an Incisive Profile of Zimbabwe’s Smiling Dictatorship
Paul Mangwana and Douglas Mwonzora are extremely busy. That’s probably a very boring thing to say about politicians, but it’s also the first thing you notice. The two men are the stars of Democrats, C…
‘On the Rim of the Sky’ Finds a Riveting Story in a Remote Corner of China
Gulu Village is a very remote place. High up in the mountains of Sichuan, China, it is both beautiful and elusive, though not quite as cut off from the world as it once was. Much of the village used t…
‘Stations of the Elevated’ Is an Exuberant City Symphony Film
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. Stations of the Elevated is a portrait of New York City made by an alien. It most im…
‘Mala Mala’ is an Inclusive Portrait of Puerto Rico’s Drag and Transgender Communities
Ivana Fred is an activist. She represents the transgender community of Puerto Rico on television, fighting to be taken seriously on talk shows that aren’t always the most respectful. She also spends h…
Crossing Borders at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival
The Czech city of Jihlava, about an hour and a half outside of Prague, is not a very big place. In bad weather it can feel like the world’s most picturesque ghost town. Yet for a few days a year, it b…
‘In Jackson Heights’ Masterfully Captures the Scope of American Diversity
Leave it to Frederick Wiseman to make a cinematic masterpiece about something as humdrum and close to the ground as community organizing. The filmmaker’s attention in recent years has mostly been focu…
How Julian Assange Became a Movie at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival
Julian Assange is a character. He is also a very important and very real person. He’s a revolutionary publisher of classified information, for starters, a perilous occupation that has had a tangible i…
‘Seymour: An Introduction’ is a Mystical, Occasionally Rapturous Profile of a Reclusive Musician
Seymour Bernstein does not want to be a famous pianist. Or, rather, he chose quite consciously not to become a famous pianist many years ago, on the stage of Alice Tully Hall in New York City. Despite…
Khalik Allah’s ‘Field Niggas’ Frames the Beauty and Woe of 125th Street
“People on Tumblr love you,” says an anonymous young woman to Khalik Allah near the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue. “You should be in Chelsea. LES. People down there love stuff like that.…
The Best Nonfiction Films of the 2015 New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival is many things. It’s an auteurist showcase of the best feature films of the year, many of them plucked from prestigious European festivals like Cannes and Locarno. In recent…
‘Jia Zhangke: A Guy from Fenyang’ Follows a Brilliant Auteur Down Memory Lane
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. In the beginning of Jia Zhangke’s Still Life, a man returns home after 16 years,…
Field of Vision Is Off To a Bold Start With Its Redefinition of Documentary Journalism
The most intriguing new venture to hit the nonfiction film community in some time took its first bow at the New York Film Festival last weekend. Field of Vision, a “filmmaker-driven documentary unit,”…
‘Ninth Floor’ Explores a Traumatic Moment in Canada’s History
Some old national wounds never entirely heal. They remain raw, even decades later, and even if society as a whole has begun to evolve in the direction of healing and justice. One such instance of viol…
‘Dior and I’ is the Most Ethereal and Cinematic of Fashion Documentaries
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. A brand can be a powerful thing. Frederic Tcheng, director of Dior and I, is absolut…
‘Citizenfour’ Is Both Essential Journalism and a Gripping Profile of Lived Truth
Citizenfour begins in the dark, alone. Laura Poitras reads her first missive from Edward Snowden aloud over the image of a car driving through a tunnel, all wrapped in shadow save for two red tail…
‘We Come As Friends’ and the Advent of Post-Apocalyptic Nonfiction
The world is ending.“Post-apocalyptic” is a term we usually reserve for elaborately conceived, nightmarish fiction cinema. Mad Max, Waterworld and Planet of the Apes all come to mind. Post-apocalyptic…
Cooking Character: ‘How to Smell a Rose’ and Les Blank’s Love of Food
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at His Farm in Normandy is, in s…
5 Essential Richard Leacock Documentaries
The final film by legendary documentarian Les Blank, co-directed and completed by collaborator Gina Leibrecht, is a profile of another titan of American nonfiction. It is, in a sense, a grand meeting …
The 4 Best Discoveries of the 2015 Sound + Vision Festival
Music documentaries are often seen as films with built-in audiences. Fans of an artist are pretty likely to go see them perform on screen, after all. Amy Winehouse’s enormous popularity in life is cer…
‘The Wages of Resistance: Narita Stories’ Excavates a Forgotten Political Battle
Tokyo’s Narita International Airport is a landmark with a troubled past. Yet like so many grand monuments of urban development, its physical presence has outlasted the memory of what once lay beneath.…
‘Born to Fly’ is a Solid Profile of Choreographer Elizabeth Streb and the Extreme Action Company
Human beings cannot fly. This is, relatively speaking, a commonly held truth. Yet Brooklyn-based choreographer Elizabeth Streb is not so sure. Her whole career can be seen as a pursuit of flight, thou…
Nonagenarian Love Story ‘My Love, Don’t Cross That River’ Is a Worthy Box Office Smash
When filmmaker Jin Mo-young met Jo Byeong-man and Kang Kye-yeol they had already been married for three quarters of a century. Jo was 98 and Kang was 89. A year and a few months later, when Jo passed,…
‘Stop the Pounding Heart’ Captures the Soul of a Community By Finding a New Reality
Stop the Pounding Heart is not a documentary. It’s also not not a documentary. It is, as it turns out, something entirely different. Roberto Minervini went to Texas to make this film, the third…
The 10 Best Documentaries About LGBT History
The earliest days of the Gay Liberation movement in the United States. The fight to respond to the AIDS epidemic. The international scope of the pursuit of LGBT civil rights around the world today.
‘Point and Shoot’ is an Expertly Woven Compilation of an Almost Unbelievable Life
The ghost of Ernest Hemingway hovers over Marshall Curry’s new documentary, a profile of amateur filmmaker and revolutionary Matthew VanDyke. Or, rather, the novelist’s name is perhaps the best way to…
The 10 Best Documentary Portraits of LGBT Culture
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. Happy Pride Month, everyone! The best way to celebrate is to watch documentaries, as…
‘The Yes Men Are Revolting’ Brings Comedy to the Climate Change Crisis
The Yes Men Are Revolting is a slapstick comedy about the end of the world. If the humor comes as a surprise, that’s because the climate change documentary genre is generally perceived as pretty sober…
The 5 Must-See Films of the 2015 Human Rights Watch Film Festival
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is focused on advocacy. Human Rights Watch is, after all, an organization with a global commitment to social justice. It follows that its traveling series of docum…
‘Rich Hill’ is a Powerful Metaphor for the State of the American Dream
There is no such thing as the typical American small town. The imagined close-knit community of financially secure farmers and tradespeople, united by patriotism and God, has begun to fade from th…
Watch Experimental Nonfiction Films by Peter Tscherkassky For Free
Much is made these days of the concrete impact of documentary, how much political change is inspired and how much money is raised by any individual film. It’s a controversial research topic, to say th…
Now on DVD: Thrilling Transmedia Documentary ‘Last Hijack’ Shows Piracy as Addiction
Last Hijack is about piracy and pirates. This makes it surprisingly different from the last few major movies that address the subject, including A Hijacking and Captain Phillips. While they all try to…
What Will Win the New Documentary Prize at Cannes?
The Cannes Film Festival is trying to address its documentary problem. Since 1976, only five nonfiction features have been selected for the official competition. This drought came after decades of pro…
The 8 Best Documentaries of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
It’s become something of a cliche that the best of the Tribeca Film Festival can always be found among the documentaries. It’s true, of course, yet it’s hardly the most interesting thing to say. Unfor…
Tribeca 2015: ‘Thought Crimes’ Finds Troubling Questions in the Case of the ‘Cannibal Cop’
Gilberto Valle, the “Cannibal Cop,” never ate anyone. Can he still be called a cannibal if he only fantasized about it on the Internet? When he was arrested, the government asserted that conversations…
‘In Transit’ Is a Final Film of Great Intimacy and Intuition
From the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, we review the last work of the late, great Albert Maysles.
‘Uncertain’ Finds the Heart of East Texas in Its Troubled Waters
Uncertain, Texas is a town on the edge. It’s quite literally on a border, the one shared by Texas and Louisiana. It’s on the edge of a fragile body of water, Lake Caddo. It’s on the fringe of society,…
Art of the Real Makes the Case for Reenactment
There is a moment in The Eternal Frame in which one of the participating reenactors exclaims, “This is really bad taste,” and then throws his head back in laughter. The film, made by two collaborating…
Watch Documentaries By Deborah Stratman for Free
The heavens have always exhilarated and terrified us. Comets loom particularly large in the mythology of the cosmic sphere, if only because they come around so infrequently. Caesar was born under one,…
5 Must-See Films at Art of the Real 2015
At the end of Edgardo Cozarinsky’s Letter to a Father, the sun sets. Set to the softness of tango, its bright colors slowly turn to embers before the audience. This film is a personal one, in which th…
Watch Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab Documentaries for Free
The Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard is something of a documentary hit factory. Sweetgrass (2010) and Leviathan (2012) were both tremendous critical hits, dominating year-end top 10 lists and inspir…
‘Good Things Await’ is a Beautifully Spiritual Cow Movie
Good Things Await is not your typical farm documentary. It is no expose of the abuses of the industrial food industry, in the manner of Food, Inc and its descendants. Nor is it one of the adamant defe…
Barbara Kopple’s ‘Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation’ Informs But Ultimately Disappoints
The Nation is old. This year marks its 150th birthday, the occasion to which Barbara Kopple’s new documentary is timed. Hot Type: 150 Years of the Nation is a gift to the magazine as it is, a portrait…
‘Father and Sons’ Is a Challenging, Aggressively Simple Portrait of Youth in the 21st Century
Father and Sons opens with a single, remarkably complex image. It’s evening in a small apartment in Fumin, China. Two boys sit back in bed, the flickering light of an unseen television barely visible …
‘Storm Children, Book One’ Is a Slow, Restrained Revelation in the Wake of a Natural Disaster
Lav Diaz is a filmmaker who takes his time. Storm Children, Book One is among his shortest features, clocking in at a mere 143 minutes. Yet this newest project is not nearly as briskly paced as last y…
‘Approaching the Elephant’ Is an Exciting Chronicle of Free Schooling and Chaos
Kids like to swear. That’s probably because they’re frequently told not to, but the appeal hardly dissipates once they’ve been placed in a more relaxed environment. They just get more excited about it…
‘Costa da Morte’ is a Starkly Beautiful Film About Nature’s Troubled Relationship With Mankind
Costa da Morte is the best nature documentary of the year, mostly because it has nothing in common with what we typically think of as a “nature documentary.” This isn’t Planet Earth or Disney’s Africa…
Enacting and Reenacting Art: 5 Must-See Films at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight 2015
Each February, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presents Documentary Fortnight, a showcase of nonfiction cinema with a particular eye on the way it intersects with contemporary art. It’s an o…
‘Ballet 422’ Draws Great Beauty From Little Details
Choreographer Justin Peck is something of a big deal in the world of ballet. In a recent column, New York Times dance critic Brian Seibert addressed the growing “Messiah” chatter around Peck’s work, a…
‘The Chinese Mayor’ Is the First Great Political Documentary of the Year
Datong is an overwhelming place. Home to three and a half million people, this historic mining center is now the most polluted city in China. Like many metropolises in the world’s largest nation, …
Watch Victor Kossakovsky’s ‘Svyato’
Viktor Kossakovsky is a documentary filmmaker of remarkable and wildly varied ambition. Some of his projects seem too large to be feasible. He directed his most recent feature film, Demonstration, wit…
‘The Search for General Tso’ Review
Any film about General Tso’s chicken is by definition a film about America. The dish is almost unheard of in China. The way it is prepared in the United States, with broccoli and a sugary sauce, is an…
‘Maidan’ Review: A Grand, Unflinching Epic of the Ukrainian Revolution
Maidan is a film built from the raw material of revolution. That may seem like an obvious point. It is, after all, a documentary about the Euromaidan protests that exploded in Ukraine in November of 2…
‘The Barefoot Artist’ Review: A Bifurcated, Personal Portrait of an Artist at Work
In North Philadelphia, nestled into a long-struggling neighborhood, there is an oasis. Mysterious monuments, striking murals, creatures made of mosaics and an impossible collection of colors weave thr…
A Celebration of Two Films by Sergei Loznitsa, Streaming Free on Nonfics This Month
The documentaries of Sergei Loznitsa, featured this month by Doc Alliance in an online retrospective, are an enigmatic bunch. The occasion is the upcoming release of his newest nonfiction feature, Mai…
Interview: ‘Concerning Violence’ Director Goran Hugo Olsson on Depicting Revolution and Knowing His Audience
Göran Hugo Olsson’s archival documentaries are like shots of political adrenaline. The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 was one of the more interesting hits of 2011, a fiery and fascinating dive into…
Our Top 6 Discoveries of DOC NYC 2014
DOC NYC is a massive festival. The largest of its kind in the country, this thriving downtown Manhattan event featured well over 100 films this year. It included 20 world premieres and seemingly count…
Virunga Review: A Confident and Shocking Geopolitical Thriller
From 2014, here's our review of the Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio.
‘The Great Invisible’ Review: A Wisely Empathetic, If Not Quite Stirring Portrait of the Gulf
The Great Invisible is about oil, big oil, in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the newest film in this banner year for petroleum-themed documentary, alongside Big Men and Virunga. Yet while those films take a…
The 7 Best Documentaries of the 2014 New York Film Festival
Never mind all of the glitz and glamour of the gala screenings, New York Film Festival is a great place for documentaries. The Main Slate included two nonfiction features (down from last year’s five),…
NYFF 2014: ‘Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait’ Is an Essential Essay on Violence, Civil War and New Cinema
Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait begins with a revolution and a circumcision. The former is the Syrian Uprising that erupted in the spring of 2011 in the wake of revolutions in Egypt and around the…
‘The Last of the Unjust’ Review: A Character Study of a Most Significant Nature
Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust is the grandest of epilogues. Most simply, it is a postscript for the director’s landmark documentary about the Holocaust, 1985’s Shoah. This new film is built…
‘20,000 Days on Earth’ Review: A Sly and Shadowy Day in the Life of a Star
Nick Cave is a myth. He also exists. The inherent tension between the musical icon and the person beneath is hardly new. Plenty of concert films have mixed legendary performance footage with vignettes…
Stream Israel/Palestine Doc ‘Videomappings: Aida, Palestine’ Free on Nonfics This Month
Videomappings: Aida, Palestine is a revelation in the already crowded field of documentary portraits of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Directed by Till Roeskens, a German-born filmmaker based in Fr…
‘Levitated Mass’ Review: Ironically Misses the Chance at Real Weight
Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer’s Monolithic Structure is, well, exactly that. The object in question is a massive, 340-ton boulder that is now displayed prominently in front of the Los An…
Three Concert Films That Capture the Soul of James Brown
Late in October of 1964, a crowd of teenagers gathered at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. They were there for a concert billed as “The Excitement, Entertainment and Music of Teenage America!” The v…
‘Through a Lens Darkly’ Review: An Uneven Art History Doc with Some Truly Striking Moments
It is said that cameras don’t lie. Photography is similar to documentary in this way, both of them arts in which truth is often assumed. This affinity presents a problem to filmmakers trying to make a…
‘Expedition to the End of the World’ Review: Beautiful, Contemplative and Tumultuous
The creative types aboard the Activ hope to be attacked by a polar bear. Artist Daniel Richter is visibly thrilled by the possibility, his outward sense of “bourgeois anarchist” irony barely masking t…
‘Manakamana’ Review: A Lovely Slice of Life With a Very Narrow Scope
This review was originally published during the New York Film Festival on October 1, 2013. It is being reposted now as the film is released to home video.The Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard has pro…
Film Critics Have Failed LGBT Cinema By Misreading ‘The Dog’
John Wojtowicz, star of the new documentary The Dog, comes across as a selfish jerk. That, alone, has no real impact on the quality of the film. There are plenty of excellent documentaries about terri…
‘The Dog’ Review: A Misguided Look at the True Story Behind ‘Dog Day Afternoon’
This review was originally published during the New York Film Festival on October 1, 2013. It is being reposted now that the film is opening in theaters.John Wojtowicz was a terrible person. They say …
‘Fifi Howls from Happiness’ Review: A Shocking Profile of a Provocative Genius
This review was originally published during the New York Film Festival on October 11, 2013. It is being reposted now that the film is opening in theaters.Once upon a time, Bahman Mohasses was one of T…
Let’s Talk About Sex: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Love Meetings,’ 50 Years Later
Fifty years ago, Pier Paolo Pasolini turned to the public and asked them a series of uncomfortable questions. They took it surprisingly well. The resulting film, Love Meetings, had its world premiere …
‘Aim High in Creation!’ Is the Best North Korean Propaganda Film You’ll Ever See
Single-issue documentaries are propaganda. Most of the time that particular observation is meant as a criticism. It usually implies that the film is boring, transparent and far from artful. The aggres…
‘The Horses of Fukushima’ and ‘Tale of a Butcher Shop’: An Unlikely Pair of Beautiful, Brave Portraits of Japan’s Social Fringe
Animals die. Horses are not indestructible, despite what Steven Spielberg would have you believe. To eat beef we must first kill cows. Death is a fact of life, one that is made no less present by pret…
Stream ‘Byeway’ Free on Nonfics For the Next Two Weeks
They make great documentaries in the Czech Republic. If this is news to you, that’s ok. It was news to me as well. In anticipation of the nation’s biggest cinema event, the Karlovy Vary International …
‘Broken Heart Land’ Review: A Powerful Reminder of the Struggles of LGBT Youth in America
Marriage equality is not “Happily Ever After.”A blunt way to begin a review, I know. But it can feel as if the conversation around LGBT rights in the United States has begun to consider nationwide sam…
The 5 Must-See Films of the 2014 Human Rights Watch Film Festival
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is in something of a precarious position, at least theoretically. On the one hand there is its commitment to, well, human rights. The result of this raison d’etre …
‘The Case Against 8’ Review: A Dulled, Cautious Chronicle of the Fight for Equality
The Case Against 8 is a fundamentally conservative film.This is something of a surprise. It is, after all, a triumphant chronicle of the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 and the restoration of …
The Persistence of the Bizarre: On the 40th Anniversary of ‘General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait’
More than 40 years ago, the world was given a unique opportunity to laugh at a despot. He laughed back.
‘Before You Know It’ is a Touching, Empathetic Portrait of Three Gay Senior Citizens
The elderly are invisible. American culture, obsessed with the young and new, has a way of making senior citizens disappear. It’s a particular problem in the gay community. The emphasis on youthful ph…
‘The Flood’ is a Forgotten Masterpiece of Environmental Devastation
Watch the 1947 Cannes-wining short film
What’s Really the Matter with Cannes and Documentaries?
The Cannes Film Festival does not embrace documentaries. Just look at the lineup over the last few years for proof. There may be a growing movement within the film community to recognize nonfiction ci…
Exclusive: Poster for ‘The Kill Team’ Starkly Highlights the Bravery of Its Subject
The Kill Team is a film that sticks with you. I saw it at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, where it picked up the Grand Jury Prize for documentary. That was over a year ago, but some of its images rema…
‘Showfolk’ is a Shoo-In for the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short
It’s too early to be making Oscar predictions. It’s especially too early to talk about Best Documentary Short, a category that is generally regarded as impossible to predict at least until the eight-f…
The 7 Best Documentaries of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival
It seems to be common knowledge among critics that the best stuff at the Tribeca Film Festival is found in the documentary programs. This year was no different, especially when you compare the very st…
‘The Final Member’ Review
A documentary about one man's quest to complete his collection of penises.
The 10 Most Anticipated Documentaries of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival
The best kept secret of the Tribeca Film Festival, year in and year out, is the documentary selection. Sure, there are plenty of exciting narrative premieres with star-studded indie casts to fill up t…
Art of the Real’s Sprawling Program Will Change the Way You See Nonfiction Cinema
There is no such thing as purely nonfiction cinema. The corollary is, of course, that there is no such thing as purely fiction cinema either. Every film ever made has elements of both. The theoretical…
‘The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden’ Review
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. When Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch arrived on the island of Floreana in 1929…
‘The Unknown Known’ Review
This review was originally published during DOC NYC on November 14, 2013. It is being reposted now that the film is opening in theaters.Two ghosts hover over The Unknown Known, Errol Morris’s new film…
5 Women Documentary Pioneers You Should Know
Women filmmakers have been instrumental to the documentary mode since the beginning.
ND/NF 2014: ‘Mouton’ Review
Saying that an art house narrative feature has a “vérité” style means comparatively little these days. It seems as if every festival-bound European drama is shot like an observational documentary, sim…
‘Anita’ Review
The image of Anita Hill, a lone African-American woman being questioned by an entirely white and male Senate Judiciary Committee, has only become more striking with time. Things are different now, at …
‘The Missing Picture’ Review
This capsule review was originally published during the 51st New York Film Festival on October 8, 2013. We are reposting it because it opens in theaters today.The Missing Picture, Cambodian filmmaker …
SXSW 2014: ‘Song from the Forest’ Review
Louis Sarno went to Africa in pursuit of his dream. 25 years ago, he followed a musical tradition into the jungles of the Central African Republic, where he found the Bayaka people. He never left. Acc…
‘Campaign’ and ‘The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On’: Two Mirroring Masterpieces of Japanese Documentary
Kenzo Okuzaki and Kazuhiko Yamauchi are two men who spend a lot of time riding around in colorfully decorated automobiles, shouting at passersby over loudspeakers. Separated by two decades, they could…
SXSW 2014: ‘Que Caramba es la Vida’ Review
Mexico City’s Plaza Garibaldi is the epicenter of mariachi music. Bands flock to the historic square, especially on weekends, to sell their songs. It’s been this way for a century, though its heyday h…
True/False 2014: ‘Cairo Drive’ Review
From above, Cairo looks like a city populated almost entirely by vehicles. Taxis, buses, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, microbuses and pedestrians all come together in enormous traffic jams. Getting around is …
The 8 Best Films We Saw At the 2014 True/False Film Fest
The 2014 True/False Film Fest has come and gone, like a strange and wonderful whirlwind. Every film festival wants to be a physical incarnation of the love of cinema, but a lot of them wind up taken o…
True/False 2014: ‘Killing Time’ Review
Whether through the eyes of Swedish filmmakers in The Black Power Mixtape: 1967–1975 or Werner Herzog in Into the Abyss, foreign documentarians have time and again drawn new ideas out of American soci…
True/False 2014: ‘The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga’ Review
The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga is, at times, something of an inscrutable film. Loaded with philosophical voiceover and weighty poetic quotations, scenes of profound silence and a great many en…
True/False 2014: ‘Sacro GRA’ Review
Gianfranco Rosi is not the first filmmaker to try capturing the spirit of Rome, capital of the Italian Republic. The Eternal City is a cinematic icon, up there with Paris, Vienna and New York. And per…
2014 Oscar Prediction: Best Documentary — Short Subject
It’s a mediocre year for the Best Documentary — Short Subject category. It had been having a pretty good run, too. The Academy’s recent picks have included some remarkable little films, from simply to…
Our 5 Most Anticipated Films of the 2014 True/False Film Fest
The True/False Film Fest kicks off this week in Columbia, Missouri, and I couldn’t be more excited. Entering its 11th year, the festival brings the best of international nonfiction cinema together in …
‘Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me’ Review
“It’s hard enough to remember Sondheim’s lyrics if you don’t have diabetes.”In a single quote, that is Elaine Stritch. It pokes fun at her own medical condition, the principle stress on her health as …
‘The New Black’ Review
It looks like we’ll be reliving the 2012 election for an awfully long time, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’ve already gotten at least one excellent documentary out of it, AJ Schnack’s charact…
Oscar Documentary Shorts Review: Hardly a Standout Among the 2014 Nominees
The 86th Academy Awards are just over five weeks away, and we’re about to get the opportunity to go see the most obscure nominees of the lot: the short films. Again thanks to Shorts International, all…
‘My Prairie Home’ Review
Chelsea McMullan’s debut feature documentary, My Prairie Home, is a different sort of trip through the Canadian West. It’s a nonfiction portrait of a musician, singer/songwriter Rae Spoon, but it goes…
‘Tim’s Vermeer’ Review
Editor’s note: this review was originally published on October 7, 2013, as part of our NYFF coverage. It is being reposted today for its initial theatrical opening.Tim Jenison is a bit of a nut. Of co…
‘Cousin Jules’ Review
About midway through Cousin Jules there is a moment of absolute tranquility. A long shot of a stream shows a group of birds, presumably ducks, drifting along in the pale light of morning. Here, in the…
‘Tiny: A Story About Living Small’ Review
Tiny: A Story about Living Small is a documentary about the small house movement. In the film, one of the leading proponents of these mini-dwellings explains that the cap on such a building is probabl…
‘Touba’ Review
A pilgrimage is an immensely beautiful act. A long journey, on foot through the wilderness, in pursuit of faith is a compelling thing to watch even if you yourself don’t understand that kind of devoti…
‘Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?’ Review
Michel Gondry makes an animated documentary about Noam Chomsky.
‘Town Hall’ Review
The Tea Party is not in great shape these days. In the wake of last month’s government shutdown, national pollsters found that their unfavorable rating was the worst in their four-year history. In the…
‘Toxic Hot Seat’ Review
Toxic Hot Seat is, first and foremost, an excellent work of journalism. It’s also an “issue documentary,” a genre that these days has a bit of a bad reputation among some critics. Yet, as this new fil…
‘Hungry’ Review
If you have ESPN, you can watch the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on the 4th of July. Think about that for a second. An eating contest is now broadcast annually on the nation’s premiere sports netwo…
‘The Armstrong Lie’ Review
In 2009, Alex Gibney followed Lance Armstrong to France to make a film about his triumphant return to professional cycling. It was an act of great naivete, an especially interesting move for a directo…
Snow, Sex Chairs and the Hadron Collider: The Films of Peter Mettler
Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler’s newest film, The End of Time, begins with a fall from the heavens. The footage is from Project Excelsior, in which Captain Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air …
‘People of a Feather’ Review
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. In 1913, almost a decade before the release of Nanook of the North, Robert Flahe…
‘Musicwood’ Review
“Forests are not quiet,” says Tom Abel, a member of the Haida Tribe who is the first to speak in Musicwood. He’s right in the most traditional sense, of course. The ecosystem of the Tongass National F…
‘I Am Divine’ Review
In 1972, the world came to know Divine (born Harris Glenn Milstead) as the “Filthiest Person Alive.” Pink Flamingos, the breakthrough film for both John Waters and his drag queen muse, proclaimed both…
‘The Human Scale’ Review
There is an urban revolution coming, and we need to be ready. Actually, it’s already here. 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and that will rise to 80% by 2050. The math is grand enou…
City Symphony Primer: 3 Essential Films to Watch Now
Is poetry fiction or nonfiction? The best answer is probably “neither.” Yet we spend a lot of time pretending that such a clear distinction exists for cinema, despite the fact that it is, in essence, …
‘Burning Bush’ Review
Jan Palach’s role on the world stage was brief. On January 16th, 1969, five months after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he committed suicide by self-immolation in Prague’s Wenceslas Square. Th…
‘Abuse of Weakness’ Review
Catherine Breillat is brutality’s greatest filmmaker. Romance, Fat Girl, and Anatomy of Hell are firebreathing, occasionally contemptuous works that expose violence, hypocrisy and misogyny. Yet for th…
NYFF 2013: ‘Afternoon of a Faun’ Interview: Director Nancy Buirski on Crafting a Narrative from the Ephemeral Beauty of an Artist
Afternoon of a Faun both is and isn’t your typical biographical documentary. Destined for American Masters, it tells a fairly complete story of a great artist, ballet dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq. Yet be…
‘Afternoon of a Faun’ Review
Afternoon of a Faun begins with, well, “Afternoon of a Faun.” Nancy Buirski’s new biographical documentary on famed ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq opens with a performance of Claude Debussy’s famous ton…
A Lesson in Historical Storytelling from ‘Touching the Void’ and ‘The Summit’
Last night, Neil DeGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to complain about Gravity. It turns out that various pieces of satellite debris orbit the earth in the wrong direction, the space stations aren’t in the…
‘The Empire Project’: One of the Best Parts of the 2013 New York Film Festival is Available Online
The most interesting selection of the New York Film Festival this year isn’t a feature. It isn’t quite a short film either, not really. It’s interactive, and the best bits of it are available for you …
‘A River Changes Course’ Review
In Cambodia there is a beautiful species of migratory butterflies. According to certain village elders, these creatures fly north to Laos for part of the year and return with stunning new patterns on …
Québec’s Cinéma Direct Primer: What Films to Watch Now
Nonfics is now a newsletter! Please support documentary criticism by subscribing here: nonfics.substack.com. You’ve heard of cinéma vérité. You’ve probably heard of Direct Cinema. Have you hear…
‘Blue Caprice’ Reminds Us Why We Need a Documentary About the DC Snipers
Blue Caprice is the first significant theatrical film about the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002.Isn’t that strange? The tragic, shocking events of that October remain hard to grapple with. On the one h…
‘After Tiller’ Review
Dr. LeRoy Carhart is looking for a fight. He admits as much himself. He’s an abortion provider sick of being run out of town, tired of watching the anti-abortion movement achieve political victories. …
‘When Jews Were Funny’ Review
When Jews Were Funny is not so much a title as it is a complaint. Alan Zweig’s new documentary, named the Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, gathers a whole bunch of Jew…
New Chinese Documentary Primer: What Films to Watch Now
Welcome to the first of a new bi-weekly series where we take a brief look at an international documentary scene or movement. Two of last year’s most exciting American documentaries came from China.…
Years Later, Nonfiction Cinema Makes and Breaks Our Mythology of 9/11
The most defining moments of our age often become separated from history. Wednesday will be the 12th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. It has been over a decade, and yet we still have not entirely u…
‘Out of the Clear Blue Sky’ Review
Is it really possible to capture the true scope of a tragedy in a single film? Moreover, is such an undertaking especially difficult if the filmmaker is operating from within that very tragedy? These …
‘99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film’ Review
When Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell built the Kickstarter page for 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film in October of 2011, the project seemed borderline impossible. At the time, Film Scho…
James Franco, BDSM and Sexual Performance
From NewFest 2013, a look at Franco's LGBTQ documentaries 'Interior. Leather Bar' and 'Kink.'
Centennial Tribute to Helen Levitt: The Most Important Documentary Filmmaker You Haven’t Heard Of
Meet Helen Levitt, a crucially important documentary filmmaker who never directed a movie and who is primarily known for another art form. Born 100 years ago last Saturday, she spent most of her caree…