Doc Corner: 'Homeroom' and 'Bulletproof' take us to school

By Glenn Dunks

I think it’s fair to say that when Frederick Wiseman directed High School in 1968 he wouldn’t have expected the modern version of education with its prevalence of technology and virtual teaching. Charles Guggenheim, too, who in 1984 also made a documentary titled High Schools, that time an Oscar nominee, surely could not have perceived of metal detectors and mass field trips for teachers dressed in chinos to shooting ranges where they learn how to shoot an armed gunman.

But 50 years after Wiseman captured debates over skirt length and observed awkward sexual education classes, Homeroom and Bulletproof both offer very contemporary looks at what it is like to be a student in 2021...

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Doc Corner: NYC film history in 'Searching for Mr. Rugoff'

By Glenn Dunks

The nostalgia is strong in Searching for Mr. Rugoff, a delightfully cinephile-oriented documentary from director Ira Deutchman. It is an affectionate dive into a beloved segment of New York City’s film culture of the 1960s and ‘70s—one that no longer exists and is built around a figure who remains little known by those who didn’t work directly alongside him. His name is Donald S. Rugoff. A pioneer of the global exhibition and distribution market who bought international, experimental, and acclaimed cinema to a chain of upmarket boutique arthouses in New York from his office decked out in modern furniture and art, he steered successful Academy Award campaigns for the likes of Z and Seven Beauties, and was a gimmick superstar who would make William Castle kick himself that he didn’t get there first.

Does that make Searching for Mr. Rugoff a great movie, though? Not exactly...

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Doc Corner: (Belated) Shark Week — 'Playing with Sharks' and 'Fin'

By Glenn Dunks

Sally Aitken’s Playing with Sharks and Eli Roth’s Fin are two very different documentaries but share common ground. Not just in that they are both about sharks, but because they each want to use their platforms to advocate for the preservation of the ocean’s perfect predators. Neither film reaches the heights of other better, similarly themed films (in recent years, I stump heavily for Karina Holden’s Blue), but it’s something of a sad indictment that their very existence is important as the environmental crises happening in our oceans appear so far from being solved.

Aitken’s film chooses to focus its lens on Valerie Taylor, a famed Australian diver whose role in some prominent Hollywood productions (you may know of one called Jaws, but also Blue Water, White Death in 1967) led to being a conservationist. Fin on the other hand is a most unexpected non-fiction diversion for Roth; a film more akin to The Cove than the gory horror features that he is better known for.

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Doc Corner: 'No Ordinary Man'

By Glenn Dunks

In No Ordinary Man, a groundbreaking biography emerges out of the tragic throes of history. Populated almost exclusively by the voices and experiences of transgender individuals, this riveting and decidedly trans-positive documentary from co-directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt has the power and the depth to deserve a place in the queer canon (if such a thing exists). It dismantles the very politics of disclosure, and tells its story of self-discovery with empathy and tenderness while utilising film craft in a way that offers genuine inclusive insight.

It tells the story of Billy Tipton, an acclaimed jazz musician, husband and father who, upon his death, was discovered to have been assigned female at birth. At first mocked on the daytime talk show and tabloid entertainment circuit as a ‘unimaginable’ fraud who deceived his family and society for personal gain (women had little access to the jazz scene), No Ordinary Man charts how Tipton’s story was just one of many in a society that was woefully ill-prepared for the complexities of human behaviour. And how Tipton inspired a generation to live authentically.

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Doc Corner: 'End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock'

By Glenn Dunks

The politics of protest are always going to provide filmmakers with the sort of loaded emotions that make for good movies. Even when peaceful, the fractured dynamics of a society that continuously pits side against side in the fight for progressive ideas have long produced the sorts of anger and fierce determination that explode on camera. Racial equality (and more recently, Black Lives Matter), queer rights and women’s liberation have all been seen in compelling documentaries for decades.

But as environmental issues become more engrained as a fixture in the political and societal landscape, the street-battles to protect the only Earth we have are just as pertinent even if they perhaps lack the more personal connections that so many of us find in narratives of struggle and protest. In fact, Shannon Kring’s End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock finds much of its power in the way race, gender and the environment overlap in the fight for our planet's future.

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