Documentary
At the Tribeca Film Festival: Directors of 'In God We Trust' on Eleanor Squillari, Madoff-scandal heroine
In the film, Squillari’s involvement with the FBI is so thorough that I assumed her generous efforts were rewarded with some kind of paycheck. But Kubicek and Anderson confirmed that, in fact, she wasn’t paid for her work. “That’s part of why we have major respect for her, because it was not easy and it was not beneficial for her to do this. She did this anyway.” More
'56 Up,' the latest in Michael Apted's series, confronts middle age and what it means to make a life
The Up project was conceived to render and compare a small group in broad strokes. Some Victorian residue clings to the idea that a life should be determined by accidents of birth or the marriage one makes. But there is also something of the modern fondness for defining life in terms of milestones nailed and five-year plans in the structure of the series, which mixes pop philosophy (“Give me a child until he is seven,” the voice-of-God narrator intones in the first program, “and I will give you the man”) and social studies with a healthy dose of voyeurism. More
Oscar shortlisting for Alison Klayman's documentary on Ai Weiwei opens new frontiers
Although any award (the film has won a few, including the Sundance Special Jury Prize) is noteworthy, Klayman says that international recognition from the Academy would take the conversations around the film to a different level. “Everyone in China has heard of the Oscar,” she said, “and if it were to reach that level it does open up conversations.” More
Finding Ginger Baker: First-time filmmaker Jay Bulger traces his journey into the heart of rock & roll darkness
"He's the master timekeeper, and original rock & roll junkie, superstar, lunatic," Jay Bulger said of Ginger Baker, the subject of his debut documentary, Beware of Mr. Baker, showing this week at Film Forum. "He was living at the end of the world, he was a little bored, he wanted to tell his story, and I happened to be the person who showed up and convinced him to tell it. And it wasn't that easy. He's a really, really, really difficult person to work with, and I'm not special in any means, I just happen to be kind of preconditioned to this type of person. It was like sitting there with my grandfather; his grumpiness, his cantankerousness, I related to it and I'm really attracted to it." More
The Yes Men, well into their second decade, find new ways to fund their elaborate satires
ince the late ‘90s, the Yes Men have pulled off dozens of stunts that demonstrate their gift for building media attention around cases of geopolitical corruption. Their enduring popularity suggests that, if nothing else, their actions are in sync with the sentiments of a large and left-leaning portion of the country. So far, Vamos and his coconspirator Jacques Servin, a.k.a. Andy Bichlbaum have impersonated spokesmen for Dow Chemical, Halliburton, McDonald’s, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The amusing fallout of these spoofs has a tendency to wind up on the websites of CNN, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal. More
(1)Dancers from 'Flex Is Kings' get their first mainstream notice via the 'Times'
Deidre Schoo, who directed the film with Michael Beach Nichols, said in a phone interview that the article may have been the first to truly validate flexing as a dance form. “A number of flex dancers are on tour with Madonna and have performed on shows like 'America’s Best Dance Crew,'” she said. Jonathan George, a.k.a. Jay Donn, is currently touring with Big Bad University, the artist and songwriter collective launched by Sky Blu of the band LMFAO. “But flex is still pretty underground." Schoo said. "It was great to see it acknowledged by a dance critic for the Times.” More
'How To Survive a Plague,' a film at the intersection of AIDS, video cameras, and rage
David France, director of the simple and powerful AIDS activism documentary How To Survive a Plague, out now, considers it important that news of the H.I.V. virus first appeared in medical journals just months before the first generation of camcorders became available, immediately broadening the definition of “mass media.” The bulky camcorders enabled a multipurpose agenda: establishing accountability in a leaderless mass movement; documenting the struggle for the sake of posterity, so that future generations could not say that no one fought; and, of course, memorialization. More
A documentary on Diana Vreeland, goddess of 20th-century fabulousness
Although the first line of her 1983 autobiography proclaims her loathing for nostalgia, in The Eye Has to Travel Vreeland is shown reveling in her own good timing, from being born before Europe fell (“It was the Belle Époque!”) to coming of age just as women were bobbing their hair and their skirts for the first time in modern history (“It was the Roaring Twenties!”) to reaching her professional, taste-making pinnacle during a decade of social and cultural revolution (“I loved the Sixties—that was the youthquake!”). It feels telling that the last coinage is Vreeland’s own, a term she used to accompany a 1965 profile of young Edie Sedgwick from her high priestess perch at Vogue. More
(1)Remembering Chris Marker, famed French filmmaker [Updated]
French president Francois Hollande said in a statement that Marker's most famous film, La Jetée, “will be remembered by history," while the Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras told the French newspaper Le Monde Monday that Marker “was a profoundly honest man, both politically and cinematographically.” In an email, Karen Cooper, the director of Film Forum, where many of Marker’s films have been screened throughout his career, called Marker a "genius." “He was one of the first documentary-essayists who could make seemingly casual personal musings the subject of his movies," she wrote. "But what musings! Sans Soleil is but one example of his brilliance, originality, humor, and humanity. A great light has gone out.” More
(1)What Ai Weiwei means here, and at home
His work is unarguably brave and commendable, but how does it fit into contemporary Chinese life, society, and activism? It's hard to tell, even in Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a new documentary on the Chinese artist and activist, out today. More
In 'The Queen of Versailles,' the one percent fall on hard times
Greenfield chose as subjects David and Jackie Siegel, he the billionaire CEO of the Orlando-based timeshare empire Westgate Resorts, she his wife and would-be queen of "Versailles," their unfinished 90,000-square-foot mega-mansion. Even given such details, Greenfield had no way of knowing that they would, over the course of filming, lose their bearings and a significant chunk of their finances in the 2008 economic collapse. More
In a new documentary, Marina Abramović's presence is up for debate
If you were one of the lucky estimated 750,000 visitors who made it to the event—and its central exhibit in the atrium, in which Abramović sat immobile in a chair for seven and a half hours each day, silently gazing into the eyes of audience members who waited in long lines to take turns sitting across from her—you understand that her project of pure-presence-and-nothing-else performance art is built to resist the disembodiment of adaptation. Matthew Akers’ film, whose two-week Film Forum engagement comes in advance of its airing on HBO, is necessarily a watered-down simulacrum of the real thing. More
Margaret Atwood on debt, an old Tasmanian prison, a new documentary, and why she's not an activist
All the more reason why Atwood is a refreshing presence. She's a reflection of what the country once had, and, living over our northern border, she is, according to the American tendency, easy for us to lay claim to as practically one of our own. And unlike the British fraternity of Amis, McEwan, and Rushdie, Atwood rarely, if ever, sticks her foot in her mouth. Perhaps it's because, rather than speaking off the cuff about the latest cultural dustup in the War on Terror, she presents herself as an empiricist, speaking with the rigor (and armed with the data) of an amateur scientist. She's familiar with the latest news about dangerous fungi growing in the warm waters around coral reefs or a strange allergy caused by ticks. She presents these findings in a low monotone, interrupting herself with an occasional flush of laughter. More
With 'Marley,' director Kevin MacDonald sees the life and work of a music god, through the haze
It’s unfortunate, since the realities of Marley’s life and career are far weightier than the screening date implies. More than anything, Marley actually feels like a long-awaited, much-needed counterpoint to the prevailing 4/20-loving, dorm-poster-sized distillation of the reggae legend. More
In 'Gerhard Richter Painting,' a rare look at the German artist's secretive process
Richter explains the images hung on his studio wall for inspiration. One is of a classical sculpture, headless and armless. He speaks of the brutality inherent in these ravages of time, and then examines a photo of the death camps, an image he notes as appearing remarkably serene until one examines it more closely. Such are the power of captured images, and images that recall a history that seems inherently personal for Richter. Yet in another scene, looking at family photos, he notes their inability to communicate a true past, to be whole documents, to fully mean something. More
