Here are brief reviews of some of my favorite films from this month's DOC NYC festival.
"My Sweet Land" is a briskly paced, beautifully edited portrait of an 11-year-old Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian boy caught with his family in the series of wars against Azerbaijan which have greatly reduced the land that was once part of Armenia. The boy is remarkably positive given the circumstances and follows...
"Soundtrack for a Coup D'etat" is a fascinating and highly entertaining study of the unexpected relationship between some famous Jazz musicians and the C.I.A.-backed 1960 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It opens at the Film Forum Friday, October 25 and will also be screened at the upcoming DOC NYC festival. A Q&A with director...
"Modernism, Inc." is a new documentary about legendary American designer and architect Eliot Noyes. You don’t have to be a fan of mid-century modernism,...
Anytime Martin Scorsese talks film I’m glued to the screen. If you’ve seen his own documentaries “A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American...
The 17th edition of our continent’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese film, “Japan Cuts: Festival Of New Japanese Film," kicks off July 10. There...
Two documentaries about the coal industry’s ruthless exploitation of workers and natural resources in the Appalachian mountains are required viewing for anyone who cares...
34-year-old Lucy Kerr’s fascinating debut feature film “Family Portrait” (which won major awards at the recent Locarno Festival in Switzerland) is a “portrait” in...
The two main characters in Joel Potrykus’s “Vulcanizadora” were introduced ten years ago in his hilarious 2014 film “Buzzard.” Once again Potrykus plays Marty...
“Emergent City” documents the struggle of longtime residents of the Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York to stop the Jamestown investment group from...
There are so many documentaries which profile a single person–an artist, musician, writer, politician–or group of allied people that I find it useful to...
When Americans think of cheese it is usually cheese burgers or those horrible cellulose “cheesy poofs” beloved by Cartman in “South Park.” Orange, mild...
