Honorary Oscars: Agnès Varda's "The Gleaners & I"

We will be revisiting work from this year's Honorary Oscar winners. Here's Chris on Agnès Varda...

Agnès Varda is getting some long-overdue recognition this year. With prominent profiles being written with the coming of her Honorary Oscar and the release of her documentary with photographer JR Faces Places, you could practically call her a cineaste’s It Girl. While this recent film is earning her new fans enamored with her unique point of view, they will find something equally as layered and holistic in 2000’s The Gleaners and I.

The documentary begins as a study of modern day gleaning, the ancient practice of searching harvested fields for leftover crops - but it quickly becomes so much more...

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Doc Corner: 'Dawson City: Frozen Time' is a Masterpiece 100 Years in the Making

by Glenn Dunks

If you have ever watched a Bill Morrison film, then you will have surely remember him for the way his films appear as if they are deteriorating before your eyes. Best known for works such as Decasia that are assembled out of weathered, beaten and sometimes even partly destroyed reels of film celluloid, Morrison’s films often play with the concept that film – the physical, tactile product of film itself just as much as the broad term for motion pictures as we know them – is not something we should ever be flippant about.

His movies are made out of parts of other movies, its true -- clips and excerpts taken from decaying reels that most could consider at home in a rubbish tip. Many may find his aesthetic challenging, but there is something so delightfully classical about the way he repurposes any image that sits atop a filmstrip. His work breathes new life into old, unwanted, and unused works so that they may be seen anew in a new light, a new form and allow somebody’s hard work to prosper once more...

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Mysterious, Adorable, Purrfect "Kedi"

by Nathaniel R

As a self-confessed crazy cat lady, I'm not sure why it took me so long to see the Turkish documentary Kedi. But it's fitting that I finally saw it late last night. I didn't even realize until this morning that I had ushered in National Cat Day with the streetcats of Istanbul. Since I am not a frequent documentary-watcher (unlike Glenn) I tend to only see them when the subject matter really intrigues me or if awards season comes calling...

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170 Documentaries to Compete for the Oscar (Yup, That's a Lot!)

By Glenn Dunks

Turkish cats, white supremacist terrorists, underground artists, climate change activists, controversial politicians, hackers, ballerinas and YouTube celebrities. These are just some of the subjects of the ONE-HUNDRED-AND-SEVENTY films that have been submitted for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award. Yes, that 170 figure is a record and no, you probably haven't heard of a lot of them. Not even I had, and I write a weekly column on the subject.

We have tried to cover as many as possible, but trust me there's only so much we can do! Of course, on one hand, the number of titles listed here is daunting and massive. On the other hand, I must admit that a number this large actually somewhat puts my guilt at not covering enough to rest. It's simply too many! And it ought to be even longer! It's disappointing to see award season-worthy titles like In Transit, All This Panic and Antarctica: Ice and Sky not even submitted, but that's how this thing always goes.

I have included links to any TFE reviews, but also included bite-sized snippets to give you a snapshot and even a few one-sentence reviews for films I have seen and will not be doing a full write-up on. Nobody can say we don't attempt to cover as many as possible!

The Academy's doc branch will soon whittle this list down to 15 soon before we find out, as always, what the five nominees will be on Oscar Nomination Morning...

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Doc Corner: 'One of Us' and 'Thy Father's Chair'

by Glenn Dunks

Not content to let scientology corner the market in controversial religion exposes, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady focus their attention on New York’s Hasidic community in their latest feature. A dramatic change of pace after last year’s celebrity bio-doc Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, the filmmakers return at least somewhat to the themes of their most famous film, the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp. Yet despite the potential cross-over to be found in the pair that seek to uncover the alarming practises of organised religion, One of Us is a much different beast.

Unlike that earlier film, which trained its cameras on the inner-circle of a camp for raising the next generation of evangelicals, One of Us observes from the outside, following the stories of three individuals who have attempted to extract themselves from the community and tell some often haunting and traumatic tales of their times within it...

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