Giving you our points of view on the latest docs in release and on the circuit.
9to5: Story of a Movement is a fiery feminist essay about equality and labour—a fitting mark for Reichert to leave in a career devoted to giving voice to women and unions alike.
The Last Out (USA, 88 min.) Dir. Sami Khan, Michael Gassert With his Oscar-nominated short St. Louis Superman, Sami Khan confirmed that a great character often makes for a great documentary. The film, directed with Smriti Mundhra, followed Ferguson resident Bruce Franks III on his growth from Black Lives Matter activist to state representative. Khan’s first feature doc The Last Out, directed with Michael Gassert, amplifies the number of key characters by three and the formula holds. The Last Out gives sports documentaries a unique spin by chronicling the journey that Cuban athletes take with hopes of securing their dream to play baseball professionally in the USA.
The Two Sights (Canada/UK 87 min.) Dir. Joshua Bonnetta In a 1998 paper entitled The Ghost in the Machine, engineer Vic Tandy drew a line between infrasound and paranormal activity. According to his research, low-frequency sound waves inaudible to humans could inspire a sense of oppression and dread. Remove the source of the sound, and suddenly the haunting disappears. Further research noted that the impact of the low-frequency noise was exasperated by changes in temperature, which could affect the speed of sound waves. In the natural world, infrasound can be produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types
Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President (USA, 93 min.) Dir. Mary Wharton Bill Clinton often gets credit as the USA’s musical President since he plays the sax, but nobody rocked out like Jimmy Carter did. Mary Wharton’s film Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President argues that Carter’s love for music might have clinched the deal for his election. The film offers a rollicking look at the role of rock in shaping Carter’s image, humanising him, and making him accessible to a new demographic of Americans. Wharton’s doc illustrates how Carter used the power of music to break out of the shell of
Outremont and the Hasidim (Canada, 52 min.) Dir. Eric Scott What is the Yiddish word for NIMBY? A quick Google search doesn’t quite yield a perfect translation, but “schmuck” captures the term justly. NIMBYs, or “Not in my backyard” naysayers often cherry pick strange rules to preserve an idealised nature of their communities. Moreover, NIMBYism often entails dynamics of inclusion or exclusion. It flares up when demographics shift in a neighbourhood. NIMBYism, however, doesn’t quite adequately define the situation that Eric Scott observes in Outremont and the Hasidim. As the title suggests, the film chronicles a conflict between a Montreal neighbourhood and a specific
Shared Legacies: The African-American Jewish Civil Rights Alliance (USA, 97 Min.) Dir. Shari Rogers In these divisive times, when political rhetoric has led to a rise in anti-Semitism and hate crimes, director Shari Rogers reminds us of what can be achieved when people come together. If history can provide a roadmap to a better future, then her documentary Shared Legacies: The African-American Jewish Civil Rights Alliance aims to be the GPS that helps society get back on the right path. Focusing on the coalition between the African and Jewish American communities during the Civil Rights era, Rogers’ documentary explores how shared experiences of discrimination
One of the smartest documentaries I’ve seen in years, The Viewing Booth is a visual and intellectual experiment that slowly but inevitably asks an important question: do we really see the same thing?
Herb Alpert Is… (USA, 113 min.) Dir. John Scheinfeld Baby Boomer nostalgia turns the dial up to 11 in Herb Alpert Is… This celebratory portrait of the famed trumpeter sits comfortably with the seemingly endless cavalcade of music docs about the greatest hits from the 1960s and ’70s. Director John Scheinfeld deserves ample credit for delivering a thorough overview of Alpert’s career. The film assembles a who’s who of music icons and Alpert’s peers to pay tribute to a man who outsold the Beatles in 1966 and reinvented himself in unexpected ways. Whether one knows every Alpert song by heart, or only
Shadow of Dumont (Canada, 88 min.) Dir. Trevor Cameron The challenge of connecting personal history and collective history can be tricky. Director Trevor Cameron offers a feature documentary about his great-great uncle, Gabriel Dumont, a Métis leader in the 1885 uprising. Cameron says that he knows little about his ancestor and that Canadians more broadly know even less. When it comes to Métis culture, the history books are scant, so Cameron embarks on a road trip from Toronto to the prairies to learn more about Gabriel Dumont and, in turn, his family legacy and himself. What ensues is a comedic journey
The Unseen (Iran, 62 min.) Dir. Behzad Nalbandi In Iran, people refer to the homeless as “cardboard sleepers.” Knowing this name evokes a disquieting sense of melancholia, as we gaze out a car window at the urban landscapes of Iran’s capital, Tehran, reconstructed entirely out of cardboard in The Unseen, which received the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Film. The city’s native artist and documentary filmmaker, Behzad Nalbandi, spent years fabricating the handmade set of his film entirely out of cardboard, glue, and ripped papers—or Kaghaz-Pareh Ha, the film’s title in Farsi. Driving past a bright billboard proclaiming that more
