The Collection:

Short documentaries rarely get their due. Sometimes they pop up on HBO or PBS. The rare few that get Oscar nominations might get packaged together in a program that will play briefly at the local arthouse.

That's why the new DVD collection True New York is such a treat. It brings together 5 documentaries from the past decade or so, which all offer striking portraits of New York characters from diverse walks of life. The films are all twenty to thirty minutes in length, and thankfully there is not a dud in the bunch. If you enjoy the mini-portraits featured on the Humans of New York website, True New York offers a more fleshed-out variation of that kind of empathetic anthropology.

The disc starts off with Jordan Ro...Read the entire review

...Read the entire review

In 2006, upon the release of Michael Apted's documentary 49 Up, the late, beloved critic Roger Ebert, during an interview with the filmmaker (included in the extras on the collection reviewed here), called Apted's The Up Series of docs "the most noble use of film that I've been able to witness as a filmgoer." That's an impossible claim to quantify, of course, and Ebert being Ebert, "noble" means, specifically, warmly humanistic and individualist. But the revisit to Apted's series -- which began as a half-hour sociological documentary about an economically diverse group of Britis...Read the entire review

56 Up (2012) is the eighth in an ongoing series of remarkable television documentaries (most released theatrically in the U.S.), of which all but the first, Seven Up! (1964) were directed by Michael Apted, who did work on the first as a researcher. In that initial show, the intention was to contrast British schoolchildren from varying economical backgrounds, primarily privileged kids attending exclusive boarding schools, Liverpudlian middle class kids, and working class East Enders. "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is the often-quoted Jesuit mantra. The early Up films were obviously critical of Britain's class system, particularly in suggesting the children from poor, working class environments were fated to struggle in conditions similar to their fathers and their fathers' fathers, while those from wealthy families enjoyed by birthright lives of leisure alr...Read the entire review

A cinephile's mortality is measured in seven-year intervals, when the latest installment of Michael Apted's groundbreaking Up series is released, and we all step back and ask, "Is it really that time again already?" You can start measuring your own aging process by when you first joined the documentary's fanbase.

Apted began his project in 1964, when he made what is now called 7 Up for British television. In the program, he chose various seven-year-olds of different classes and backgrounds from around Great Britain, showcasing their differences and their similarities. Seven years later, he gathered them together again for 14 Up with the intention of seeing how they changed. The plan was, an...Read the entire review

William Colby may not be a name that pops up in history books at first glance, but as the documentary The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby suggests, this is by design. When Colby did his job right, he wasn't noticed, and his downfall came when he stepped out of the shadows and into the public spotlight. This film purports to be a son's search for all that was left unrevealed, though for as much as his old man was a master investigator, Carl Colby falls a little short of his goal.

The brief history of William Colby, as told by the film, goes something like this: Colby was a soldier in WWII who volunteered for special duty and ended up working deep undercover behind enemy lines as an agent of the OSS. After the war, Colby moved over t...Read the entire review

THE FILMS:

It could more accurately be called The Artists of Filmmaking, and even that might be something of a stretch. Personalities of Filmmaking, perhaps? That is not to say that The Art of Filmmaking doesn't contain some real nuggets of insight into the actual process of filmmaking and how the medium might be recruited to artistic aims. But make no mistake, none of the five almost entirely unconnected documentaries compiled, grab bag-like, in this entertaining set have much at all in common with great documentaries-about-filmmaking like Craig McCall's Painting with Light or Scorsese's Personal Journey Through...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Not since Fellini or Lola Montès has there been a cinematic representation of circus life with such a strong undertow of sweet sadness as Aaron Schock's Circo, the difference being that Schock's film, unlike Fellini's and Ophüls's delightfully artificial constructs, is a documentary that gives us a look inside a family-run travelling circus. The fact that this circus is a third-string provincial affair struggling to survive and preserve a long-running tradition and generations-spanning familial vocation as it travels through some economically troubled rural Mexican states only deepens the film's tribute to the...Read the entire review

The Movie:

While burlesque has made a bit of a comeback in recent years and is starting to get trendy again in certain circles (Don't believe me? Spend some time in NYC or Las Vegas), it's hardly a new thing. This wholly American mix of vaudevillian comedy and stripping rose to prominence in the thirties during the Great Depression but really hit its stride when the forties brought a lot of soldiers and sailors back to American shores.

Director Leslie Zemeckis' Behind The Burly-Q discusses the rise and fall of burlesque in America, from its early days in big cities like Chicago and New York to its spread to the west coast to cities like San Francisco through to expansion north into Toronto and various small towns throughout America. Most of this is done, and rightly so, through interviews with the people who were there and who made it happen. While most of the club owners a...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Danny Meyer is a powerhouse New York City restaurant owner with an impressive resume of properties to his name. He's a straight shooter, low to the ground, and demanding when it comes to the design and execution of his ideas. In 1998, Meyer faced a unique challenge: Opening two restaurants at virtually the same time, from construction to first service, hoping to create distinct dining experiences out of the same vast space.

"The Restaurateur" is a short documentary (56 minutes in length) about a very large idea. Using an extensive amount of footage from 1998, director Roger Sherman endeavors to pull the viewer into the middle of the chaos, observing the ideas, frustrations, and anxiety that comes with such an immense task. Eschewing reality show invention and drama to play creation with pleasing frost, Sherman simply presents the arc of restaurant development, ...Read the entire review

Kings of Pastry is a truly thrilling and informative look at the somewhat secretive and incestuous world of French patisserie - specifically, the pastry- and candy-making portion of the quadrennial Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF) competition among craftsmen in various disciplines. Acclaimed filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (Don't Look Back, The War Room) follow three competitors as they prepare and compete in this high-pressure contest whose winners will forever hold the highest distinction in their field.

The film highlights Jacquy Pfeiffer, a French-born but Chicago-based pastry chef, who has a great emotional and professional investment in the competition (although this could easily be said of every other c...Read the entire review

The blue, red, and white striped collar is worn by French chefs who have been awarded the honor of M.O.F. (Meilleur Ouvrier de France), after a rigorous and complicated competition that is only held once every four years. If the collar is worn by anyone who is not an M.O.F., they can go to jail. So yeah, they take it pretty seriously over there. Kings of Pastry, the new documentary by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, tracks three of the sixteen M.O.F. semi-finalists through the final days of their years-long prep for the competition, and walks with them through the fast-paced, nerve-jangling event.

The primary focus of the picture is Jacquy Pfeiffer, a Frenchman currently living in Chicago (where he co-founded the French Pastry School at City College of Chicago). Ja...Read the entire review

THE MOVIES:

Titles notwithstanding, the documentary films Before Stonewall and After Stonewall aren't actually about the Stonewall riots in June of 1969 that marked the birth of the gay liberation movement. Both begin with arbitrary mentions, but Before Stonewall doesn't return to the seminal event until 81 minutes into its 87 minute running time (and then it spends about a minute); After Stonewall doesn't dwell either. There are other films (like the recent, and terrific, Stonewall Uprising) that delve into the logistics and specifics of that event, but these are focused on how the gay movement arrived at that point, and where it went from there. These are perhaps the most literally-titled films imaginable.

Before Stonewall, directed by Greta Schi...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The press notes for The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers don't call it a documentary; they call it a "political thriller," and the description is apt. The film may engage in the most familiar trappings of doc filmmaking--sometimes to its own detriment--but the story it tells is so engaging and engrossing that we're swept right up in it. It's a film about a moment in history--a specific moment, right before the entire house of cards that was the Nixon administration came tumbling down--but it is also an intimate, candid portrait of a man who had a crisis of conscience, and decided to act on it.

The film, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, runs on two tracks: as a personal biography of Ellsberg and a historical snapshot of what he did. The second part is easy, and part of the record: a former Pentagon insider, Ellsber...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Erica says that people ask her, "How can she be your favorite teacher? She's so crazy!" They're talking about Wilma Stephenson, the tough-as-nails Culinary Arts instructor at Philadelphia's Frankford High School. Frankford is what tends to be politely called an "inner city" school; it's a little rough, and most of the students are black kids from lower-income families. Mrs. Stephenson doesn't cut anyone a break, though; she speaks distastefully of the "ghetto palate," she calls her students out (loudly) when they make mistakes, she expects them to come in before school and over spring break for extra class. She sounds like Jaime Escalante from Stand and Deliver with a whisk instead of a slide-rule; the stunning documentary Pressure Cooker is the story of her and a group of students that she helps find their way to a real future.

The thirteen students are ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Yoav Shamir's Defamation is a fascinatingly honest and open personal documentary that seldom steps wrong until its final moments, when he kind of blows it (more on that presently). Shamir, an Israeli director, takes on the broad and difficult concept of anti-Semitism--specifically, is it a prevalent and terrifying threat that could tip the world into another Holocaust, or a scare tactic used for purposes of guilt, fundraising, and attention to agendas?

The truth of the matter is, it's probably somewhere in between. Shamir's film is distinctively homemade (right down to the handwriting style of the on-screen text), but he certainly doesn't lack for ambition; he travels from Israel to America to Moscow to Poland to points in between, talking to school kids, fellow journalists, activists, professors, and his slightly crazy grandmother. He spends a great deal of time w...Read the entire review

Tales from the Script is documentary that consists solely of interviews with prominent (and a couple of not-so-prominent) screenwriters exploring the triumphs and tragedies of being a writer in Hollywood. The interviewees' comments are cut together in thematic groups that cover everything from making a pitch to working with superstars to the role of the writer on a film set. This compendium of anecdotes and insight is an excellent record of the writer's perspective on the film production process, and will be an invaluable document for those considering any kind of career in the movies.

Participants include Oscar-winners William Goldman, David S. Ward, and Bruce Joel Rubin; writers who have experienced huge commercial success such as Shane Black and Joh...Read the entire review

THE SERIES:

The electrifying 2005 documentary Street Fight introduced filmgoers to Cory Booker, the young underdog mounting an uphill battle for the Newark mayor's post against 16-year officeholder Sharpe James (a corrupt member of the political "old boys' network," later convicted of five counts of fraud). In 2008, filmmakers Mark Benjamin and Marc Levin (Slam) went to Newark to embark on a multi-faceted documentary portrait of the city in flux, focusing not only on Booker's progressive administration, but the attempts to change the city's fates from within the police department, school system, and gangs.

The resulting miniseries, Brick City, is a fast-paced, fascinating look at the complexities of city government and urban life; multiple critics dubbed it a nonfiction version of <...Read the entire review

Albert Schweitzer: Called to Africa:
Might as well play it straight with you, as if this were some kind of bloggy New Year's Resolution. I wasn't super keen to spin this disc. It's essentially a period piece doc from the early 1900's about a religious man who answers the need for doctors in Africa. I picked it to review because it's short and I thought to challenge myself. Result: the sad tale of a disc left to sit on my desk for a month before I finally deigned to watch it. Representing the living embodiment of this doc's purpose, I find my apathy and antipathy turning to inspiration on viewing. While not exactly rising above made-for-TV performance quality and production values, Called to Africa represents modestly interesting viewing of a powerful story.

Essentially a reenacted true-life drama, Called to Africa begins its 42-minute run with a flashback framing device. Schwe...Read the entire review

Yoav Shamir's Defamation is a fascinatingly honest and open personal documentary that seldom steps wrong until its final moments, when he kind of blows it (more on that presently). Shamir, an Israeli director, takes on the broad and difficult concept of anti-Semitism--specifically, is it a prevalent and terrifying threat that could tip the world into another Holocaust, or a scare tactic used for purposes of guilt, fundraising, and attention to agendas?

The truth of the matter is, it's probably somewhere in between. Shamir's film is distinctively homemade (right down to the handwriting style of the on-screen text), but he certainly doesn't lack for ambition; he travels from Israel to America to Moscow to Poland to points in between, talking to school kids, fellow journalists, activists, professors, and his slightly crazy grandmother. He spends a great deal of time with Abe Foxman, the h...Read the entire review

Having reviewed well over one hundred documentaries for DVD Talk, and many others elsewhere, I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect on what makes for an engaging documentary. One thing that most definitely doesn't is too many talking heads covering too many topics in too little time. Take for example Cinematographer Style (2006) in which director Jon Fauer interviews 110 cinematographers in 86 minutes about their craft. Not only is each cinematographer given less than a minute of total screen time on average, but most reappear multiple times, necessitating that each segment be only a few seconds. With so many taking heads presented in so little time, the sound bite observations necessarily came off as inconsequential, shallow, repetitive, or artificially constructed through the editing process. Any attempt by the viewer to distinguish one cinematographer's style or personality from anoth...Read the entire review

Fish raised in captivity do not taste as fine, we are told, as those who lived free; the idea is that only those of the open water had to fight their way upstream to mate, and their amorous adventures give them a courage and strength those bred at a farm could never achieve.

It's a clever, romantic notion - and a clumsy, strained metaphor for the characters of "When Fish Fall in Love" ("Mahiha ashegh mishavand," also released internationally as "The Fish Fall in Love"), the screen debut from Iranian theater veteran Ali Rafii. The film shows us the upstream struggle of two couples, both working their way through lies and misunderstandings that come off as a little too pat, even if you take into account the Iranian political climate.

Perhaps it's all to sidestep the nation's censo...Read the entire review

The Set:
&nbsp;
Todd Robbins was profiled in the interesting documentary AmericanCarny: True Tales from the Circus Sideshow.&nbsp; He'sa performer and promoter who was tryingto keep the tradition of sideshow acts alive on ConeyIsland.&nbsp; Todd wasentertaining and compelling in that film, so when I heard that therewas a setof instructional videos he created on simple cons and tricks, I jumpedat thechance to watch it.&nbsp; Modern Con Man is a hit andmiss collection but the set as a whole lands firmily in the 'hit'catagory.
&nbsp;
Made in 2007, Robbins bills himself as "Americ...Read the entire review

I've certainly criticized films for not being original, and as the remake craze continues to ramp up, I can't deny I've complained at length about a few of them. Unoriginality is a growing problem, and viewers have been slowly turning to foreign films to pick up the slack. Yet, the element most commonly missing from American movies is actually joy. The US film industry is such a business, focused on numbers and demographics and advertising potential that even when a film is great, it rarely feels as celebratory and free as many of the foreign films I've seen. Absurdistan may not be the most original or clever movie I've seen this year (at one point, the characters actually invoke the extraordinarily sitcommy cliche of painting a line in the middle of their village to separate one half from the other), but it's certainly one of the most exuberant, the performers seemingly thrilled by the mere fac...Read the entire review

In the history of art, "Outsider Art," is a newer category. The term basically applies to people who were never formally trained, often were unrecognized or barely recognized during their lifetimes, and additionally consist of types who live on the fringes of society, people who are largely isolated/outside the norm due to affliction, disorders, choice, or some amalgam of all of the above.

James Castle (1899-1977) was a deaf Idaho based artist. While Castle could make rudimentary noises, he could not speak. Attending a school for the deaf through the fifth grade, Castle's skills of communication remained limited to a few very basic signs and some comprehension of written language but nothing that would be considered literate. This adds an unanswerable wrinkle to Castle regarding ...Read the entire review

Gendun Choephel was born in 1903, the year Tibet was invaded by Great Britain. He died in 1951, the year Tibet was invaded by China. During his lifetime he assumed many identities: monk, traveler, researcher, author, translator, painter, journalist, philosopher, agitator, husband, prisoner, and alcoholic, but he would probably want to be remembered foremost as a Tibetan nationalist. The life and legacy of Gendun Choephel is the subject of Swiss filmmaker Luc Schaedler's 2005 documentary Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet.

A Buddhist monk from the age of 14, Choephel excelled at theological debate. Although recognized as the reincarnation of a high Llama, Choephel left the monastic life in 1934 to see the wider world first hand. He became fast friends with a British Chri...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Films:
 
In the silent era, Germanywas a moviepowerhouse.  The state-owned (until 1921when it was privatized) studio UFAreleased some of the most impressive movies in the years before theNazis tookpower including The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari, Metropolis, The Last Laugh, Dr.Mabuse, and The Blue Angel,among many others. As Hitler came to power however the studio became little morethan apropaganda machine and the quality of its output fell. After WWII, a new studio was set up in theSoviet controlled EastGermanyRead the entire review

Most of us are in careers that we selected when we were in college or that we otherwise took up as adults, but this isn't the case for professional ballerinas. Like paid athletes, they knew what they wanted to do at an early age, showed immense talent, trained rigorously, remained dedicated, and avoided injury to have a shot at a career that's over by early middle age. French filmmaker Bertrand Norman takes us into this rarified world in the unvarnished 80-minute documentary Ballerina (2006).

Saint Petersburg, Russia's elite Vaganova Ballet Academy and world-renowned Mariinsky Ballet, formerly known as the Kirov Ballet, provided Norman with extraordinary access to their dancers, instructors, practice studios, and performance spaces. Before eventually focusing on five...Read the entire review

This engaging, illuminating, but ultimately depressing film by Beth and George Gage chronicles the struggles of the Western Shoshone Nation in general, and the Dann sisters in particular, against the impenetrable force that is the United States government.

American Outrage asserts that, beginning in the 1960s, the US Government began seeking ways to seize Native American land in Nevada to pave the way for the sale of private mining rights there. In the course of pursuing this goal, the Bureau of Land Management ran afoul of Carrie and Mary Dann, Shoshone sisters and ranchers whose livestock grazed in places that made the BLM uncomfortable. A series of bureaucratic clashes led to the USA suing the Danns for trespassing on public land. This documentary focuses on the decades-long fallout of that lawsuit, which stretches over the last 25 years and continues to this day.Read the entire review

Though in the west we're more apt to interpret the Arabic word "Jihad" as holy war, the more common meaning among Arabs is "a personal struggle in devotion to Islam especially involving spiritual discipline." Hence, the title of openly-gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma's 2007 documentary A Jihad for Love is not hyperbole, but rather an accurate description of the personal struggles of the gay and lesbian Muslims he interviewed to reconcile their homosexual practices with their religious devotion.

Produced by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, the director of Trembling Before G-d, the 2001 documentary portrait of homosexual Orthodox Jews attempting a similar reconciliation of their homosexuality and religious devotion, A Jihad for Love is an ambitious attempt to document a diverse group of devout gay and lesbian Muslims in South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, France and India. ...Read the entire review

The Movie
In the fall of 1995, I spent a semester away from college for an internship in Colorado Springs. That Halloween, I went to a local Walmart to buy supplies for my costume: yellow face paint, a yellow swim cap, black pipe cleaners, yellow dishwashing gloves and giant blue sweatpants. I was Homer Simpson, and I looked killer--although the cheap paint left a yellow glow on my face a few days afterward (my friend went as Spider-Man, and he had a blue hue).

I hadn't thought about that Walmart since, but there's a troubling story in Sole Journey involving anti-gay sentiment that brought the store's memory back to my mind. To think this could be the ex...Read the entire review

The Movie:
It's probably easy to take for granted how completely ingrained The Bible is in most of our consciousnesses. Everything from everyday language to almost subliminal folklore to characters, whether actually historical or not, that most of us grew up with, are part and parcel of most of our lives, whether or not we as individuals are particularly "religious." The Bible Unearthed, an astoundingly interesting four part French-Israeli coproduction, looks into the connections between Biblical texts and archeological investigations, and comes away with some surprising conclusions.

Based on a book of the same name by Israel Finkelstein (Professor of Archeology at Tel Aviv University) and Neil Silberman, both of whom appear in the documentary, The Bible Unearthed doesn't go the route of some biblical archeology--it's not out to prove the existence of, say, Abraham. What it...Read the entire review

The Movie:
For some people, getting out of bed is an accomplishment. Sure, it doesn't reflect well on her mothering skills when Florence can't get her daughter to school on time, but the way she lives, it's a wonder Eugenia ever makes it to school at all. All the credit, however, is owed to the plucky young girl.

The curious, smart, free-spirited nine-year old played by Lucia Snieg is the driving energy of Kept and Dreamless, a sometimes false but nevertheless fascinating film that studies the lives of a mother and daughter who've swapped the traditional roles of who nurtures who. Young Snieg gives a great young performance as a girl who is smart and knows the kind of care she needs and isn't getting, but is still very much a child.

Eugenia doesn't expect much--and usually gets less--from her coke-addled mother, played by Vera Fogwill, who also wrote the screenplay and co-directe...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Bunny Chow is an intimate movie. It brings the viewer very close to the three protagonists and the world they inhabit in post-Apartheid South Africa. The humor of the film flows from what the viewer comes to know, like and dislike about these friends. It comes from our knowledge of them and how they react to their world and to each other. This is not a fast moving film or a laugh a minute clown fest, but for those with some patience it is very rewarding.

The story, and there really is not much to the story, of Bunny Chow revolves around three friends: Kagiso, Joey and Dave, played respectively by Kagiso Lediga, Joey Yusuf Rasdien and David Kibuuka. (The common names of actors and characters plus the fact that Rasdien and Kibuuka are co-writers adds to the impression that the film is more than just a little autobiographical, a fact borne out by review of the extra ma...Read the entire review