Hate. It’s raw, visceral and, in the rising global craziness of 2018, we see it every day. We also see it on screens. Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016), inspired by James Baldwin’s writing, recently struck a huge chord with movie audiences. In one of many moving scenes, a camera floats around large trees
Sundance remains the preeminent birthplace for the year’s great works of non-fiction, and more than a few reviewed below will almost certainly be declared the finest works of documentary for 2019.
Goodness gracious, this year’s Oscar-nominated short docs are a dire bunch! They’re great, naturally, but, as the kids say, they’re depressing AF!!! The menu of the nominated shorts features death, racism, the migration crisis, women fighting the Patriarchy, and some good old-fashioned Nazis. In short, they’re an appropriate bunch to represent the cultural pulse of
The World Before Your Feet (USA, 95 min._ Dir. Jeremy Workman Not many documentaries out there can offer the in-the-moment perspective The World Before Your Feet can. Matt Green, the curious subject of this simple yet compelling documentary from Jeremy Workman, is on a personal quest to walk every street in New York City’s five boroughs, inhabited
The World Before Your Feet (USA, 95 min.) Dir. Jeremy Workman Not many documentaries out there can offer the in-the-moment perspective The World Before Your Feet can. Matt Green, the curious subject of this simple yet compelling documentary from Jeremy Workman, is on a personal quest to walk every street in New York City’s five boroughs, inhabited
That Higher Level (Canada, 75 min.) Dir. John Bolton This one time, at band camp, the NFB made a documentary. That Higher Level goes behind the scenes with the devoted flutists, tromboners, violinists, and other musicians in the National Youth Orchestra during the summer of 2017. Director John Bolton (Aim for the Roses) captures the passion and dedication
Tales from the Winnipeg Film Group (Canada, 80 min.) Dir. Kevin Nikkel and Dave Barber When the delirious, gnarled tale of Canada’s quixotic film history is properly told, much of its telling should be devoted to the film co-operative movement that swept across the country in the mid-1970s. From St. John’s to Vancouver, local collectives
Wonders of the Sea (UK/France, 82 min.) Dir. Jean-Michel Cousteau, Jean-Jacques Mantello Just this week, Arnold Schwarzenegger told CNN that Donald Trump was in the wrong for denying climate change and withdrawing the USA from the Paris Agreement. Schwarzenegger, the action star and former Republican “Governator” of California, advocated the need for communities and countries to rally together, look beyond
The Last Resort (USA, 70 min.) Dir. Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch Beaches, bikinis, parties and Art Deco architecture in vibrant colours make up Andy Sweet’s photographs of 1970s South Beach, Miami. It’s not that far removed from today’s South Beach—only in Sweet’s photographs, everybody is over 70, and overwhelmingly Jewish. They are a part
“It’s the eyes,” she said. “We enter into a relationship through the eyes. I have a relationship with this person, and she’s responding to me, and the person viewing the photograph has then all kinds of things they can learn about that person.” This is how the immensely influential Quebecoise photographer and editor Denyse Gérin-Lajoie—a
