Winner of the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: US Documentary at this year’s Sundance, Homeroom is the final piece in Peter Nicks’ Oakland Trilogy. The vérité project began with 2012’s The Waiting Room and continued on through 2017’s The Force, which notably provided Documentary with the chance to chat with the Oakland Police Department’s Deputy Chief LeRonne Armstrong for this very column. Interestingly, the OPD—specifically the battle over where and how it should be deployed—also figures quite prominently in Homeroom. Embedding with Oakland High School’s class of 2020, Nicks and his team
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Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. When filmmaker Ayo Akingbade finished making Tower XYZ (2016), she wrote a manifesto “for the underdog, the unsung, the pissed off and the tired.” Three of her films―hybrids of documentary, experimental cinema, and personal essay― Claudette’s Star, Fire in My Belly, Dear Babylon are now streaming on MUBI. Also on MUBI, The New York Stories: A Jackie Raynal Double Bill features two of Raynal’s films― New York Story (1981) and Hotel New York (1984). Raynal, who edited Eric
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! The new Locarno Film Festival artistic director, Giona A. Nazzaro, speaks to Variety’s Nick Vivarelli about his plans to make the festival more “audience friendly.” My idea is that a festival can be quite highbrow and entertaining at the same time. That is why in this year’s lineup we have three comedies––or sort of, it depends on your idea of humor––we also have some
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Even if you aren’t a sports enthusiast, chances are that you have been reading or hearing things about the Olympics lately. Keeping a tally of scores and medals might not be your thing, but a lesson in the history of the sporting event is always enlightening and enriching. Jean De Rovera’s The Olympic Games in Paris 1924 is playing on the Criterion Channel. It follows American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller and Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi whose performances in Paris in 1924 turned
An unapologetically progressive fest since its 2003 inception, CPH:DOX has never been content to merely showcase films. From the start, it set out to push the parameters of the documentary format, to redefine the festival ecosystem itself (while always questioning and challenging its own role in the process). Perhaps reflecting founder Tine Fischer’s own interest in contemporary art (Fischer is a partner at Copenhagen’s Andersen’s Contemporary), CPH:DOX was the first fest to take heat for thoroughly embracing artistic experimentation, for coloring outside the accepted lines between fiction and
Essential Doc Reads is our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! On July 29 2021, one of the warehouses of the Brazilian Cinematheque in São Paulo caught fire. The Cinemateca Brasileira has dealt with a fire in 2015 that destroyed 500 prints, and a flood caused by heavy rains in 2020 that damaged many additional materials in the collection. In solidarity with the workers of the Cinematheque, we urge you to read their statement. The
On a very hot day earlier in June, I made my way to New York City’s Hudson River Park, one of the many new homes for this year’s Tribeca Festival. The festival, in its 20th year, presented a hybrid edition, with the in-person screenings taking place in venues in each of the five boroughs of the city. There was also an online portal, called “Tribeca At Home,” which audiences could use to bring the festival lineup home. In March 2020, the Tribeca Film Festival was one of the first festivals to shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, and in 2021, it re-emerged in its hybrid avatar with a
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is celebrated not only as America's “cultural ambassador to the world” but for its wide array of jaw-dropping feats of resplendent athleticism, steeped in deep spirituality. But, despite the group’s many triumphs in bringing “Blackness” to the stage, the story of its founder, Alvin Ailey, remains shrouded in mystery. Part of that is because he died 32 years ago, at the age of 58 from an AIDS-related illness. Though even before his death, the mercurial choreographic genius was a notoriously elusive man, even to those who knew him best. That much becomes
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. We start off with a slightly different entry this week. In the light of the rising anti-Asian assaults, The Action Project has launched a PSA, directed by Freida Lee Mock. Watch it, share it, Be A Good Neighbor #StopAsianAssaults. July 29 is Chris Marker’s 100th birthday! Over at OVID.tv, they are hosting a fantastic retrospective of Marker’s works, including documentaries like Remembrance of Things to Come, Le Joli Mai, and The Case of the Grinning Cat. Episodes of Marker’s
Valerie Taylor has lived a life rife with unintended consequences, contradictions and double-edged swords. A pioneer in both shark research and underwater filmmaking, the champion spearfisher-turned-apex-predator-protector often made headlines as much for her bikinis and “Bond girl” looks as she did for her fearless talent. Which allowed the intrepid Australian to bring more attention to her emergence as a sort of Jane Goodall of the seas. Taylor likewise became a media sensation—along with her husband and lifelong collaborator, Ron—for having created the work that inspired both the book Jaws