rolling documentary thread 2011

saw The Interrupters tonight, cried.

That's how you're going to start this thread, is it?

With tears. In August.

heartless basterd

OK Well I saw the Bobby Fischer movie. It was interesting, if flawed. And then I read this for a while:
http://www.anusha.com/pasadena.htm

I haven't seen this, I'd like to. have you?

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/neither-point-a-nor-point-b-allan-sekula-noel-burchs-the-forgotten-space

Also I'd love for someone to write about Emmanuelle Demoris' Mafrouza films in light of the Tahir Square protests. I saw (and really liked) "The Art Of Speaking":
http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-45/spotlight-paraboles-emmanuelle-demoris-france/

I would track down this Chinese doc wherever you can:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/petition/5236

in a different style feel but if u like this u might check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tie_Xi_Qu:_West_of_the_Tracks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO4W3KfXrGk

oh yeah play it casual, 'oh perhaps you might like 'west of the tracks'' & then boom, it's nine hours later and you're still in the cinema. have enthused elsewhere but i loved DISORDER, a chinese doc from the guys who put some of the above out. the interrupters opens here in a week & i'm psyched, & also curious for beetle queen conquers tokyo the week after.

I've seen West Of The Tracks, keep hearing about Disorder (like, a lot!). I had never heard of Petition until I read that exquisitely written review. Things to check out!

By the way, I recently sat through a hefty chunk of Christian Marclay's "The Clock". Not a documentary (or is it), but seeing as we are talking about extreme long form viewing...did anyone else see it?

one of my LA tasks that fell by the wayside, alas

saw Senna earlier, twas quite good. Would have fit in nicely in ESPN's 30 for 30 series.

god the interrupters is excellent. feel like i'd be playing if i started getting too into how well it was made or anything, it just feels besides the point compared to how it's very moving & how much it makes you think. every moment spent with the girl called vanessa, sister of a guy not much older who'd been killed, slayed me.

I saw the Bernie Madoff film last night. Great story, but the director really gimmicks everything up--more mediocre than it should have been, I thought.

anyone seen The Inheritors? (Mexican child labor)

& also curious for beetle queen conquers tokyo the week after.

i liked this btw-- thought it was a confusing thing to watch given that you're primed for a 'documentary about insect culture in japan', which isn't irrelevant to the film - it's the lens through which you get a look into each other area of society; the collectors, families, experts, convention-attending-fans, &c - but which isn't especially central. thought its fast, digital, cut-up tapestry of japan was usually really effective, though i was in one of those v receptive, totally beat after-work states that can make watching huge moving images instantly very gratifying whatever they are.

i'd love to have seen the clock. & i maybe sounded dismissive of west of the tracks before, when i'm not; just resigned that i probably am not about to sit down and tackle it.

anyhoo, The Inheritors is a transfixing thing, and probably direct-cinema enough for Tape Store.

yes, that's a brilliant film. also his earlier film tropic of cancer is also something very special. one of my favorite directors working right now.

i'm drinking so i said also twice, i'm not saying anything very intelligent right now

but polgovsky, he's a hero, yes

as is ms. oreck!

i started a website btw

nonfiction
cinema
dot
com

what can you recommend that I will see in NY this year? what else has Polgovsky done?

oh yeah, T of Cancer, I've read about it just now.

i believe nw film forum was booking a national tour of YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS, which is quite lovely (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/05/you-are-all-captains.html). I imagine it will end up at Anthology again for a weeklong run.

You might not be a big fan of EL SICARIO ROOM 164, but I think it's special (I bet you would dig his essential earlier film BELOW SEA LEVEL (http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-25/film/below-sea-level-is-the-best-of-the-international-fest/))

did you catch LA BOCCA DEL LUPO?

i've been mostly watching old stuff recently! and bad bad new stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwvxQlKhNmI

Peleshian - A+

I've never heard of LA BOCCA DEL LUPO

Barely needs to be said again, but "The Interrupters" is some kind of movie. Like watching a powerful piece of fiction filmed on another planet, made all the more amazing/shocking/sad knowing this is our country, or in my case, my city, and filmed mere miles from where I live (and mere blocks from my favorite donut shop). Just a reminder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS5Hjhy1RhM&feature=player_embedded#!

Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz live in Oak Park, so they were both on hand at a local screening for a Q&A, along with one of the Ceasefire guys but also Eddie the interrupter, who made a heartfelt plea to all those in attendance to lobby friends, businesses and politicians to give ex-cons a chance to make good when they get out of prison. He told this amazing story of being let out of prison, after taking advantage of every last educational opportunity, every last rehabilitation option. He gets home and his young nephews, little kids, are fighting, and he's so unused to the sound of kids playing/yelling/laughing that his first reaction was to want to go to the other room and give them a beat down. But cooler heads prevailed. His pointed this out to show how even a guy with a support network, family, education and all that stuff has a hard time readjusting to civilian life. Imagine a guy who goes home to still more drugs and violence?

I saw all three Gary Hustwit films--Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized--for the first time this weekend. Seeing them together like that is impressive. I liked the middle one the best of the three. A lot to take in at once, and a reminder, like I needed one, that I just don't think about the world around me enough. (I mean, I think about seven or eight things a lot, and the rest I'm oblivious to.) There's a pattern with films like these--I'll throw in Gore's film, Whatever Became of the Electric Car?, stuff like that--where they end in this great wave of optimism about the future. Just as a change of pace, I'd like to see one sometime where it ends by basically saying "Give up--it gets much worse from this point forward."

a bit late, but saw Bill Cunningham New York last week, cried.

saw Page One last night, did not.

Urbanized makes the mistake of ending with a shot of perhaps the worst train in the NYC subway system, the G.

I am not even convinced that El Sicario is a documentary.

I am not even convinced that El Sicario is a documentary.

um what??? it absolutely is

Urbanized makes the mistake of ending with a shot of perhaps the worst train in the NYC subway system, the G.

lol yes. thought this was p bad after a satisfying first half hour; it got way too 'local'; i couldn't believe it handled all of "energy issues" by DRAW A CUTESY GRAPH ON YR STREET. the start, though, there were those nice pictures of brasilia, & the fun dispatch from that great mayor who'd cycle paved his city.

Just as a change of pace, I'd like to see one sometime where it ends by basically saying "Give up--it gets much worse from this point forward."

tbh i think the fatal flaw w/these docs in general is that they end very vaguely - cf an inconvenient truth or whatever the one leo narrated was: it's frustrating to leave such a thing with only some hazy sense of hippyish optimism, rather than concrete, quantifiable info on what might feasibly improve things (go put your legislator in a headlock).

i was a lil disappointed by page one, maybe mostly in response to how psyched for it i was though.

The Interrupters on PBS tonight

now streaming gratis here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interrupters/