Maker of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life of Beau Dick (Canada, 91 min.) Dir. LaTiesha Ti’si’tla Fazakas, Natalie Boll Beau Dick makes one heck of a mask, but he doesn’t wear one. The late Kwakwaka’wakw carver speaks plainly and truthfully in the documentary Maker of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life of Beau Dick and, for a
The bottom dropped out of the recorded music business some time ago, but box-office for performing arts documentaries has never been better. Films like Amy (2015), Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015), Muscle Shoals (2013) and Searching for Sugar Man (2012) are introducing audiences to music and showing them new ways to understand and appreciate it. The genre had a brief golden age
Catwalk: Tales from the Catshow Circuit (Canada, 77 min.) Dir. Michael McNamara, Aaron Hancox Is there any animal better suited to documentary than the cat? From the poetic felines of Chris Marker films to the box-playing furballs of Maru videos to the feral tabbies of Kedi, cats leave their paw prints of every generation
Love, Cecil (USA, 99 min.) Dir. Lisa Immordino Vreeland Nar: Rupert Everett Feat: Cecil Beaton Roy Strong, Leslie Caron, David Hockney, David Bailey, Penelope Tree, Hamish Bowles, Isaac Mizrahi Cecil Beaton was a wildly gifted English artist, who had a much-lauded career for over five decades. Although he’s mostly known as the Oscar-winning
Is Raymond Depardon a photographer who is also a filmmaker, or vice versa? The question arises as one contemplates the truly prodigious 60-year output of this enigmatic visual artist,
Love, Cecil shows an eye for beauty that looks beyond glamour as Immordino Vreeland shines a light on some of Beaton’s lesser known work, like his street photography and wartime portraits.
The most unsettling and painful scene in Resurrecting Hassan takes place at a Montreal metro station. There, the Harting family (Denis, Peggy and their daughter Lauviah, who have all been blind since birth) sing their busker act. On this day, their routine is marred by an escalating fight between mom and dad. They bicker about their
Michelin Stars: Tales from the Kitchen invites a chorus of top chefs to consider how what defines greatness is all a matter of taste.
Ulrike Ottinger: Nomad from the Lake by die-hard fan Brigitte Kramer doesn’t hide its esteem for Ottinger while celebrating her career.
When you think about documentaries, certain things come to mind: verité shooting, archival footage, interviews, narration. Embedded in this idea of what could be called the “well-made doc” is a set of assumptions that largely reduces documentary to fact and to narrative. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and most documentaries fit into that