NYFF Doc Corner: Frederick Wiseman's 'City Hall'

By Glenn Dunks

The idea of ‘seeing ourselves’ on screen relates most often to race and sexuality, which is fair enough. Rarely is it spoken about in terms of occupation. But one of the my most unexpected experiences this past week was watching Frederick Wiseman’s latest institutional observatory documentary City Hall and seeing my other non-film life as a public servant on screen for four and a half hours.

The world of stakeholder meetings and budget discussions, community functions and office dynamics is more often than not the world of comedy (Working Dog’s Utopia being the best, if you ask me). But here Wiseman captures the daily grind and ticking realities of what goes into making a city—in this case Boston—keep moving with steely realism and refinement...

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Doc Corner: 'The Way I See It'

By Glenn Dunks

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that the grand ideal of America is a lie. It may then seem like the right time for a film such as The Way I See It, which appeals to the country’s more idealised image of itself through the (figurative and literal) lens of the man who was there to witness first hand one of its most historic moments. And yet watching Dawn Porter’s film is a bit like watching a fantasy film. All the money in the world may be able to create the most realistic dragons and wizardry, but it’s a total lie. This film is a fallacy of American idealism invented in the daylight among the most vile and hateful bigotry. Do I sound pessimistic? Well, I am.

If Porter’s film, as subtle as a sledgehammer, attempts to immortalize this myth of democratic optimism and goodness then she needn’t have bothered...

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Doc Corner: 'In My Blood It Runs'

By Glenn Dunks

It can be so good to see a filmmaker take a significant leap in their talents. Such a thrilling moment to realize that a director isn’t just capable of making good films, but great ones. I must say, I didn’t expect a film like In My Blood It Runs from Maya Newell. The Japanese-Australian filmmaker had previously made the cutely affecting Gayby Baby about the children of same-sex parents (Newell herself is a ‘gayby baby’), but nothing there would suggest a film of such cultural specificity as this.

It’s the sort of film that makes me so glad I watch Australian cinema more regularly than most (including my fellow nationals). I feel like I can easily say it’s one of the best documentaries this country has produced in recent years. A work of emphatic poignancy that speaks so much to this country’s institutionalized racism and its assimilationist ideals to the societal and cultural issues facing Australia’s indigenous populations.

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Doc Corner: The best of this year's virtual documentary festivals

By Glenn Dunks

Despite what may be happening across the rest of film distribution, the documentary realm has barely had a chance to breathe. Just as there ever was, there are so many titles coming out each and every week that it is impossible to keep up with in a weekly column. This includes not just new releases to streaming, VOD and virtual cinemas (and now, as lockdowns cease around the globe, theatrical), but also festivals.

In fact, I’ve been able to attend more than any before. Whereas I wouldn’t have had the time nor the access to ‘attend’ England’s Sheffield Doc/Fest or the United States’ AFI Docs or Canada’s Hot Docs, I was able to finish my day job in the afternoon and take a quick world tour of some of the finest documentary and non-fiction festivals around. And there’s still more of them to come (like DocNYC) because, folks? There’s just so.many.movies. 

I wanted to highlight the best that I saw across each of the three festivals and give a spotlight to movies that took me to a poisoned Martinique, the frontlines of the women’s liberation movement, and the underground dance scene of Baltimore...

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Doc Corner: Hubert Sauper's 'Epicentro'

By Glenn Dunks

White faces invading Cuba is one of reoccurring images in Hubert Sauper’s Epicentro. And this includes the director himself. It is surely not lost on him that in examining the country’s place as “the epicentre of the three dystopian chapters of history” he at least somewhat places himself among the throngs of white, stickybeak tourists who get their ethnic cultural kicks by swarming barbershops to photograph young black boys getting haircuts before retreating to their glamorous five-star hotels.

But this is what the Austrian filmmaker does, embedding himself within a place that has become a wrestling point of contention for lands beyond its borders... 

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