Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Premiering tonight, Monday, July 31 on POV (and streaming at POV's website) is Cecilia Aldarondo's Memories of a Penitent Heart, an investigation into the life of the filmmaker's uncle, who died of AIDS-related complications in the Eighties. The Village Voice calls it "exceptional" and "profoundly affecting."
Available on DVD vua Kino Lorber and all streaming platforms beginning August 1 is Vanessa Gould's Obit, a documentary about the obituary team at The New York Times. NPR calls the film "heartfelt and unshakable."
Currently streaming on Filmstruck is Craig McCall's Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, a portrait of one of the screen's greatest cinematographers, whose career spanned nine of the moving picture medium's first ten decades. The Washington Post says the doc "should be required viewing for anyone interested in becoming more visually literate in an ever-more-media-drenched age."
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime is Noah Baumbach and Jake Kasdan's De Palma, an illuminating look at legendary Hollywood director Brian De Palma. The Chicago Sun-Times writes: "De Palma is a deceptively simple documentary film: Director Brian De Palma sits in front of a fireplace for nearly two hours and talks about his life and career. If you love movies, it's time well spent."