Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Premiering tonight, Monday, July 24 on POV is Kahane Cooperman and Raphaela Neihausen's Oscar-nominated short Joe's Violin, in which a donated instrument forges an improbable friendship. Huffington Post calls it "a powerful testament to our potential as human beings to have a lasting impact for good."
Available to stream this week at Le Cinema Club is Albert and David Maysles' 1966 doc Meet Marlon Brando. The New Yorker's Richard Brody calls it "rare and essential."
Streaming on all platforms beginning July 25 is Lutz Gregor's Mali Blues, following four musicians in a country where dance and secular music are prohibited, musical instruments are destroyed, and musicians are forced to flee their homeland. The Los Angeles Times writes: "Music documentaries are thick on the land, and political ones are numerous as well, but Mali Blues is different in that it artfully combines hypnotic music with definite societal concerns."
Currently streaming on Filmstruck is Les Blank's Burden of Dreams, which follows the troubled production of Werner Herzog's mad Amazon jungle epic Fitzcarraldo. Roger Ebert called it "one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie."