1991: Madonna's Most Fascinating Movie Year

Team Experience is celebrating the 1991 film year for the next couple of weeks.

by Camila Henriques

1991 was an interesting year, movie-wise, for Madonna. The Queen of Pop had just come off of her Blond Ambition Tour and what was, arguably, her first movie to have a major awards breakthrough, Dick Tracy (with the caveat that Desperately Seeking Susan did get a Golden Globe for Rosanna Arquette). So, with that, she entered the decade with her feet dipping, once more, into the waters of film stardom.

Madonna’s cinematic year started - in the eyes of the audience, at least - on March 25, 1991, with an iconic performance at the 63rd Academy Awards. Dressed in a Bob Mackie gown that gave her an air of Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe. She also made headlines as she arrived at the awards gala. That happens when you’re Madonna and you step on the Oscars red carpet arm-in-arm with Michael Jackson...

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Emmy FYC Doc Corner: 'Country Music' and 'The Last Dance'

By Glenn Dunks

As a lover of non-fiction, you would probably assume that I naturally gravitate towards documentary series. That’s not always the case, though. In fact, as they gain more popularity, I often find myself struggling with them. Expanded running times make big omissions more frustrating, and just as elsewhere, some shows don't know when to stop. On top of that, Netflix has narrowed its house style to such a degree that it has become something of a private joke when the streaming service sends one of those “we’ve added a series we think you may like” emails.

In terms of 2020 Emmy contenders for the Nonfiction Series Emmy, we have already looked at several: I hated Netflix’s Tiger King, wavered on Hulu’s Hillary, and while I liked PBS’ Asian Americans a lot, I don’t think it made the eligibility deadline. Hopefully next year! Elsewhere, I gave up on the likes of The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez and How to Fix a Drug Scandal pretty early. However, there are bright spots among some of the other contenders: Ken Burns' Country Music and Jason Hehir's The Last Dance...

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Pride Month Doc Corner: Keith Haring, Curve magazine and Intersex

Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month where every week we focus on documentaries with queer themes. For the final edition (albeit on the 1st of July, sshhh), we are putting a brief spotlight on a few films that I have watched recently that should hopefully their way to audience’s over the coming months through queer film festivals (virtual or otherwise) and streaming.

by Glenn Dunks

Just by pure virtue of his being a central figure in New York City’s modern art scene of the 1980s, Keith Haring’s name comes up often in the films about the era. There are probably a dozen movies about him either as the central figure, or one of a whole scene that is easy to rhapsodize nostalgic about.

Perhaps after Ben Anthony’s Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, which is screening as a part of Sheffield Doc/Fest and streaming soon, there won’t be a need for that...

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Pride Month Doc Corner: 'Welcome to Chechnya' is brave, confronting cinema

Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month with a focus on documentaries that tackle LGBTIQ themes. This week we are looking at the latest film from the Oscar-nominated director of How to Survive a Plague.

By Glenn Dunks

We may find ourselves every June celebrating “pride”, but it is important to remember that it started from a fireball of anger. A fist of societal and cultural agitation that in a single moment decided it was going to fight back against oppression and violence. It may be more than 50 years later, but it’s an unfortunate fact that even in the most modern of societies, people who identify as LGBTIQ or non-binary still face the world with varying degrees of awareness about our otherness. And while many may not choose to dwell on it, there is the ever-present knowledge that those like us around the world are being bullied, harassed, targeted, punished, hunted and killed on a daily basis --and that’s before we get into when sexuality and gender identity intersect with race, religion and nationality.

It’s hardly hidden but it can be easily neglected, which is where a film like David France’s Welcome to Chechnya comes in...

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Pride Month Doc Corner: 'Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen'

Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month with a focus on documentaries that tackle LGBTIQ themes. This week a new documentary about transgender representation on screen, streaming on Netflix.

By Glenn Dunks

The Celluloid Closet casts a long shadow over queer cinema in the 25 years since its release when it became an arthouse box office and Emmy-nominated sensation. That film by Rob Epstein (a two-time Oscar winner) and Jeffrey Friedman opened the world of film to new textural readings that many LGBTIQ viewers had known and talked about for years but remained largely quiet in the mainstream while traversing through to the then budding space that queer filmmakers and stories had carved by 1995. And for those young enough to come to the film as a budding LGBTIQ cinephile, it made for a hell of an introduction to movies.

There are always going to be gaps in a film like The Celluloid Closet and the new Netflix documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen from director Sam Feder attempts to fill them. All that and add a quarter of a century of cultural and societal changes on top... 

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