Doc Corner: 'City of Ghosts'

Consider it the Spider-Man: Homecoming effect. One of the smartest things that director Matthew Heineman does in his film City of Ghosts is do away with any sort of Syrian primer for the audience. Far too many movies do not trust their audience to already know a thing or two about the subject at hand and in this documentary, ostensibly about the Syrian citizen journalist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), knows that we already have the basic gist of this conflict filed away and instead dives right into its story.

Like I said, it’s a smart move, and one that already marks this as an improvement over the director’s last film, the Oscar-nominated, but sloppy Cartel Land. Still, while it does indeed have a keener focus on the subject at hand, the frustrating elements of that earlier film nonetheless remain in Heineman’s repertoire.

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: 'The Reagan Show'

Ronald Reagan was the most videoed President by the time he left office in 1989. As told to us in The Reagan Show, there was more video taken of Reagan than the five Presidents before him combined. Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez’s documentary is a compilation of this footage, taken by personal videographers as he filmed televised addresses, walked the grounds of the White House and attended events, as well as news footage from the era. Whether one agrees with the controversial President or not – and, fair admission, I do not – there’s something interesting in the cinematic trawling through this video content and through this film’s early passages, I was pleasantly enthralled by the backstage pass to an old Presidency.

However, the title “The Reagan Show” suggests something that the film ultimately does not deliver. Across its brief 75-minute runtime, The Reagan Show veers away from a broad path of general observation, and instead focuses almost exclusively on one subject...

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: 'Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press'

Get ready to hear the words “Bubba the Love Sponge” way more than you ever thought possible. As somebody who isn’t especially knowledgeable about Z-grade American radio celebrities, this came as quite a shock to me, but I guess that is keeping in theme with the film in general. This is a documentary that covers such a salacious and outright bizarre story that nothing should really shock. A film about serious issues that plays at times like an absurd comedy. A film that sadly reflects the gutter within which we live.

Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press is the latest documentary by Brian Knapperberger. Like his last film, The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, which looked at the life of the late Reddit co-founder, this Netflix streaming doc examines a part of the online world that often goes unseen. Knapperberger’s demonstrates a weightier sense of confidence here, but like that earlier film, he has a keen ability in finding the central beating heart of a story that could easily confuse and confound audiences – whereas before it ones and zeroes, here it is legal jargon and the first amendment.

Click to read more ...

Pride Month Doc Corner: 'No Dress Code Required'

We have been looking at LGBTIQ-themed documentaries for Pride Month. We conclude this mini-series with No Dress Code Required, which just played the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Right off the bat, director Cristina Herrera Borquez has a leg-up on other LGBTIQ civil rights documentaries by focusing on a (presumably) little-known fight for marriage equality in the Mexican state of Baja California. Queer stories from this region are not surprisingly few and far between. In No Dress Code Required we follow a gay couple – Victor Fernando Urias Amparo and Victor Manuel Aguirre Espinoza (“The Victors”) – who are withheld from marrying in spite of Mexican law.

What starts as Borquez simply documenting the seemingly minor court case, eventually leads to her having a front row seat in a national media frenzy that shines a necessary light on the dynamics of Mexico’s complicated relationship with the gay rights movement...

Click to read more ...

New to Netflix: Heymann Brothers Double Bill

by Seán McGovern.

Filmmaker brothers Tomer (director) and Barack (producer) Heymann have two documentaries available on Netflix. Mr. Gaga (newly arrived) and (in time for Pride) Who's Gonna Love Me Now?. Though quite different films, Israeli brothers have a distinct knack for getting to the center of their subjects. 

Mr. Gaga details the life and artistry of Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, whose voice is just as deep and intense as the work he creates. Staged reconstructions of his work, interviews and reels of footage from his youth bring him to the screen. (Sidebar: Am I the only one who thinks it's amazingly coincidental when documantary subjects have years of home movies?). Docs about dance can often be high in concept but distancing, but Tomer Heymann captures the otherworldliness of the dancer, as well as issues of cultural censorship and the impact of loss. And there's lots of cute Israeli boys dancing. Let's be honest.

Who's Gonna Love Me Now? (available in the USA on Netflix and to rent on the BFI Player in the UK) is truly moving. And while you may be wary about having all the emotions watching, it's a perfect heartwarmer for any queer person who has made their friends their family. After being expelled from his kibbutz aged 21, Saar moved to London where he lived for the next twenty years. But his sexuality and his HIV diagnosis are not things his family know or can understand. The Heymann brothers choose to focus so succinctly on Saar's experience that you have to remind yourself that this is merely a story about someone trying to live his life. Bolstered by the love and support he receives from the London Gay Men's Chorus, Saar makes some changes.

Whatever your experiences of being your true self to your family, there's a universality in remembering that it's not you who changes, but the people around you who must. There are tears. But there are also camp choral classics. It's beautiful.