Doc Corner: Riotsville, U.S.A.

By Glenn Dunks

Sierra Pettengill’s Riotsville, U.S.A. begins so strongly. It makes a striking first impression with the usage of an old government film taken of a fake town built on a military base that is being used to train soldiers on how to handle a riot. The entire film, we are informed in an opening title card, will be told using such archival government footage as well as television news coverage. This particular footage is from the 1960s as protest and activism began to take hold of the public, particularly those in predominantly African American communities. In one of the more depressing sights, black soldiers are regularly shown in such footage throughout portraying such (so called) rioters; asked to loot and threaten. The humiliation they must have felt is palpable...

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Venice at Home – Day 8: Who Are We?

by Cláudio Alves

Before either film had been screened to the public or press, there was already buzz surrounding Alice Diop and Florian Zeller's newest films. Many called Saint-Omer, Diop's first narrative feature after many documentaries, a likely contender for the Golden Lion. Lo and behold, the picture has receiving glowing reviews, which is unsurprising. In contrast, this eighth day of competition at the Lido saw a shocking development with Florian Zeller's follow-up to The Father. Defying expectations The Son has received mixed reviews, some of which lambast it unsparingly. Not even the cast is above reproach to the naysayers. Even so, Hugh Jackman remains mostly unscathed, keeping those Best Actor dreams alive.  Let's not forget that Zeller directed Anthony Hopkins to his second Academy Award. So let's take a look back at The Father and Alice Diop's last documentary before Saint-Omer…

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Venice at Home – Day 3: From Galleries to Gangsters

by Cláudio Alves

Day 3 at the Venice Film festival finds a nonfiction master dipping his foot into the murky waters of fictionalized narrative. Frederick Wiseman's A Couple purports to dramatize the correspondence between Leo Tolstoy and his wife, starring Nathalie Boutefeu, working from a script made from documented letters. Elsewhere in the official competition, Luca Guadagnino helms Bones & All, a cannibal romance starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell. Finally, Romain Gavras brings Athena to the festivities, working alongside Ladj Ly, who co-wrote the film.

As we wait for these movies to become more readily available, let's consider their directors' previous works, including an ode to museums, a fashionable short, and a Scarface revision…

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Venice Diary #02 - BARDO and other self-reflecting movies

by Elisa Giudici

Two men focusing on their own identities. Two women speaking to their relationship with their husbands. For day two of the Venice film festival it was a quartet of movies featuring personal intimate stories...

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Doc Corner: 'Free Chol Soo Lee'

By Glenn Dunks

Whether he liked it or not (most certainly the former), Chol Soo Lee was a pivotal figure in the history of the Korean people within the United States—as well as for the broader Asian community. His name came to symbolise many things, most significantly the inherent racism of anybody who wasn't white that was found within the justice system. His story was a tragic one, struggling as he did to overcome the lasting effects of what happened to him. But his plight as a man wrongly jailed for a crime he didn’t commit brought Asian and Asian-American people together and to the political forefront in ways that meant things wouldn’t be the same ever again.

In Free Chol Soo Lee, Julia Ha and Eugene Yi’s quietly damning documentary about his life inside (and perhaps even more importantly, outside of) prison, we get to reflect on a case that many may have forgotten or which they never knew about in the first place.

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