Doc Corner: 'Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation'

By Glenn Dunks

I think it is fair to say that Lisa Immordino Vreeland has a preoccupation with the upper class. Beginning with her feature debut in 2011—Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel about the famed French-American fashion editor (also her own grandmother-in-law)—and on through other titles about more mid-century well-to-dos, Vreeland has carved a niche out of documentary portraits that tend to coast on the infamy of the rich and famous. I have enjoyed some (2017’s Love, Cecil) more than others (2015’s Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict).

Her latest is Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation, which finds Vreeland more or less still pre-occupied with high society. A slick twist to the structural formula casts Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto as unseen mouthpieces for the words of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams...

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Doc Corner: 'Summer of Soul' opens Sheffield DocFest

Sheffield DocFest runs from June 3-14. There are virtual selections available at their website. This is their opening night film.

by Glenn Dunks

“The Black Woodstock” goes the elevator pitch for Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), a high-spirited documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969. “The Black Woodstock” was also the last-ditch effort of a title given by Hal Tulchin to a film he had made about the festival as he attempted to sell it to distributors and networks that had repeatedly turned it down even in the wake of the Oscar-winning success of Woodstock. Nobody wanted Tulchin’s film, which is a ridiculous idea in hindsight. Of course, it is hardly a surprising one for all the reasons you would expect.

Tulchin passed away in 2017 at age 90 and so never got to see Summer of Soul, the final product that has been directed by Ahmir-Khalib Thompson (aka Questlove). That is a shame. I suspect he would have loved it...

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Doc Corner: Sundance hit 'All Light, Everywhere'

By Glenn Dunks

For an essay film, it makes a lot of sense for All Light, Everywhere to be full of ideas. It’s been a long time since my essay writing days, but I generally think that a lot of ideas is a good place to start. But also like an essay, it could probably have used another go around the editing block. There are a lot of promising threads in Theo Anthony’s film, but the director of Rat Film can’t quite weave them together into something that transcends its (very smart in theory) concept.

In many ways, Anthony’s film comes across as a traditional documentary about the rise of technology in community policing—predominantly bodycams and surveillance drones. At least initially. This segment, the doc’s most prominent through-line, is often very interesting if maybe a little repetitive...

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Doc Corner: Jia Zhangke's 'Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue'

By Glenn Dunks

Jia Zhangke is one of my favorite working directors. His dramatic features about contemporary Chinese life in the face of widespread modern upheavals are frequently works of masterful elegance. As rich in political and social context as they are well-acted and beautifully crafted. His works of non-fiction present something dramatically quieter; naturally a bit harder to engage with; like his 2007 garment factory doc Useless, modest and observational.

In many ways, his latest film shares that lack of narrative flare. Something that no doubt added to its quieter festival reception in 2020. But Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue nonetheless has something of a keener eye and so, even when the importance of its subjects may be lost on a western audience, it finds burrows of ideas that flourish through a veil of unexpected stylistic choices.

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Doc Corner: The art of restoration at TCM Classic Film Festival

By Glenn Dunks

Do you ever think about what career path you may have chosen in retrospect? You know, the one you would have selected had you been able to make such a life-changing decision after having actually experienced life? Maybe you already have your dream job, but even then—there’s often a niggling part of us that imagines something else. If I could turn back time, I think I would love to have gotten into film restoration and archiving. They are each fascinating professions that play to my niche interests including preservation and exhibition of celluloid, not to mention pretty, curated shelves. (I was the guy who would visit the video store and ensure the cases were in alphabetical order.) What's this go to do with anything though?

I bring this up because playing at this month’s TCM Classic Film Festival (May 6–9) is a new documentary called The Méliès’ Mystery about the efforts to conserve and restore the 520 films by the French pioneer, Georges Méliès. Yes, he of A Trip to the Moon had burned the original print negatives of all his movies as his career faltered at the start of the 1910s. His fairy tale excursions of light and magic were out of vogue and his production house of Star Films, with French and American studios, shut up shop.

Méliès’ story is not new to audiences, of course...

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