Tag Archives: documentary

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Hometown Hero

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Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

by Rachel Willis

When you think of a city, what is the first image that comes to mind? Great buildings rising into the sky or masses of people living, working and playing on the streets and sidewalks?

These two ideas form the diametrically opposing viewpoints of city planning and urban development at the heart of the documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City.

The focus of Matt Tyrnauer’s doc is Jane Jacobs, a writer who studied urban development and the negative effects of urban renewal on formerly vibrant city centers. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, highlighted the ways the “top-down” approach to urban development ruined cities. Jacobs’s observations were based on her own experiences living in Greenwich Village, and on the large urban planning projects helmed by New York’s city planner, Robert Moses.

Using extensive archival footage, Tyrnauer paints the history of New York’s reconstruction starting at the end of World War II. Coming out of the Great Depression, the leaders of New York were eager to revive the city. For them, Moses was the man to undertake the massive project.

Citizen Jane highlights the detriment Moses’s plans brought to the people living and working in New York. Unfortunately, New York wasn’t the only city affected. Across the United States and the world, Moses’s vision was replicated.

Jacobs believed in a “bottom-up” approach to city development. Rather than taking a macro view, she advocated talking to the people who made up the city’s neighborhoods and using their input to move forward.

The documentary’s many interviews with architects, city planners, and historians back Jacobs’s views. Scenes of empty apartment buildings, desolate streets, and cities dissected by sprawling highways underscore the failure of Moses’s plans. On paper, the cities look vibrant, but in reality, they’re empty shells.

The cinematography blends well with the story Tyrnauer tells. Cities are portrayed as living, breathing ecosystems, emphasizing Jacobs’s writing. It’s clear that Tyrnauer understands the city as Jacobs saw it.

For both, the city isn’t a lifeless collection of buildings; it’s the vibrant heart that beats in the people who live there.

Verdict-5-0-Stars

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Girlhood

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All This Panic

by Rachel Willis

Director Jenny Gage’s documentary offers its audience an unflinching look at the behavior of American teenagers.

Gage spent three years following a few girls in Brooklyn, including Lena, Ginger, Dusty and Sage. On the cusp of leaving high school for college, the girls are in some ways remarkably mature and in other ways, still very much children.

They snipe at each other over shared memories, bicker with their parents, and talk to each other about boys, school and the future. As the girls enter their first years in college, they mature in leaps and bounds. Their friendships deepen, they enter into relationships, and they can talk about themselves with insight that many adults lack.

They also have parties – with alcohol and a lack of parents – that those of us who are older likely recognize from our own high school days.

At one point, Lena talks of “hooking up” with a boy in her room during a party, though her definition of hooking up seems to be restricted to kissing. It’s the kind of naivety that is touching to see.

As they age, the parties have more alcohol, drugs come into play, and “hook ups” mean sex. It sometimes feels that kids these days grow up too fast, but the reality, as seen through the camera’s lens, seems a lot like it always has been: kids have the same hopes, fears, and goals that they’ve always had.

Watching All This Panic is like reading a diary. The girls are open, raw, and familiar. The film is crafted so it feels that the young women are speaking directly to you. You are on this path with them: a friend and confidant. It’s a technique that works well, and Gage knows how to draw the audience into this world.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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When They Go Low, We Fly High

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The Eagle Huntress

by Cat McAlpine

The documentary opens on a man standing on a snowy ridge. With him are three animals: a horse, a goat, and an eagle. The man sacrifices the goat, sets the eagle free, and then slowly trots into the distance on the back of his horse. Cut to a school classroom, where we find 13 year old Aisholpan in braids.

Director Otto Bell deftly handles his Mongolian setting with equal care to the rich history, steeped in tradition and the modern life that the people now lead. He never patronizes the culture – a nasty habit of film makers delving into a new setting. Nomads, how quaint! Traditional regalia, how mystic! Instead, Bell simply shows life as it is today, a culmination of everything that came before.

Aisholpan is a young girl who boards at school during the week, and goes home on the weekends. She likes giggling with her friends, helping her dad with the family livestock, and wants to be an eagle hunter. A woman has never been an eagle hunter before, let alone a girl, but this doesn’t seem to phase Aisholpan.

There are, however, many old men who have quite a few grievances with a woman becoming an eagle hunter. “Who would make the tea?” “Women are too weak,” and “She’ll have to get married eventually.”

It’s a great use of the “talking heads” trope of documentaries. A series of men sitting in a tent, talking about how women can’t and shouldn’t hunt. Meanwhile, Aisholpan is doing just that.

Bell produces a film with a clear narrative and story arc, but the tale never stops feeling organic. The style of the film seems to shift seemlessly with need. Distant contemplative shots are evenly mixed with tight close-ups. Sometimes an eagle’s eye view shows off the vast landscapes. Sometimes the camera is literally strapped to an eagle. This ever-changing style, fluid to capture each moment at its best, suits the world Aisholpan lives in.

One of the best shots of the film is not a beautiful snowy mountain or a dramatic slow motion shot of an eagle in flight. It’s Aisholpan herself, having just fed her eaglet bloody, raw meat, now painting her sister’s nails a shade of purple. The eaglet sits beside them, on a stump, while the two girls chatter away. Aisholpan’s world is not just about dualities, but multitudes. Her desire to become an eagle huntress is not just an affront to the men who uphold the noble sport today, but all the generations that came before them.

Aisholpan never seems too threatened by the grumblings of old men, though. In fact she hardly raises the matter. She simply wants to be an eagle hunter like her father, and her father’s father. Because her father and grandfather support her, she imagines few other obstacles. The most inspiring bit is, becoming an eagle hunter is not Aisholpan’s highest aspiration, it’s just what she wants to do right now. When she grows up, she wants to be a doctor.

And I’m sure she’ll be a great one.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Shiver and Sing

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Gimme Danger

by Hope Madden

Quick, who said this: “I went to Detroit with a tab of mescaline and a shovel.”

Who but Iggy Pop?

Effortlessly odd and forever fascinating, Pop and his band, the seminal punks The Stooges, are the subject of Jim Jarmusch’s new documentary, Gimme Danger.

Rock docs forever champion their subjects, frequently making a case for someone’s misunderstood and underappreciated genius. The fact that this kind of treatment could possibly be needed for arguably the first ever punk band, a group who influenced The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, David Bowie and dozens of others – well, it’s just disheartening, isn’t it?

While the story – from Ann Arbor trailer park to punk stardom to Ann Arbor trailer park – fits with the traditional “Behind the Music” approach, it’s never wise to expect the expected with Jarmusch.

Sure, the filmmaker pieces together vintage Stooges performances with interviews, but Gimme Danger is awash in the kind of wry cinematic mastery that has become Jarmusch’s trademark. Interviews with Pop take place in his home, the singer sometimes perched on a golden throne bedecked by skulls, sometimes barefoot in the laundry room in front of a washer/dryer set.

Likewise, on-again, off-again Stooge guitarist James Williamson sits through his interviews, guitar in hand, in a public men’s room.

Why? Why not?

Jarmusch has always brought an unusual perspective to his films, and The Stooges are an unusual subject. The pairing works, and for all Jarmusch’s droll use of animation, Three Stooges bits and vintage advertising as backdrop to Stooge insanity, his own affection and respect for the band is always evident.

Indeed, very early in the film, he proclaims The Stooges, “The greatest rock and roll band of all time.”

Jim Jarmusch is a native Ohioan who loves The Stooges.

Oh my God – we have so much in common!

His relationship with Pop goes back decades, since the singer co-starred in Jarmusch’s Dead Man and an early Coffee and Cigarettes short. In both, Pop (billed here as Jim Osterberg as Iggy Pop) haunts and bewilders with his sinewy frame and enormous eyes.

Oddly enough, Gimme Danger neglects some of the more jarring and lurid details of the Pop life. Jarmusch remains reverent throughout the film, focusing exclusively on The Stooges’ musical history. Almost quizzically missing is detail of Pop and crew’s self-destructive behavior, Pop’s infamous stage antics, or any mention of his solo musical or dramatic career.

Nope, Jarmusch wants you to realize that the world’s first punk band – as infamous record scout Danny Fields notes – reinvented music as we know it.

Truth.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJhABiPQ4AU

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Zappa Plays Zappa

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Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words

by Hope Madden

“There is no word nor any sound that you can make with your mouth that is so powerful that it will condemn you to the lake of fire at the time when you hear it. Any word that gets the point across is a good word.”

So says Frank Zappa – a singular, curmudgeonly, cynical voice that echoed around the fringes of American culture for far too short a time. Known more for his personality than his music – each of them equally ingenious and caustic – Frank Zappa became a peculiar kind of icon. He was associated with a hippie culture he disdained, linked to extreme liberalism though he was a conservative, and for many he stood for the hedonistic rock star lifestyle that would corrupt our youth, though he was a loyal family man.

Frank Zappa was a conundrum.

Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words underscores every seemingly inconsistent element of that mad genius, sharing nothing but interviews from the musician over the course of his career. Documentarian Thorsten Schutte crafts a portrait free from the analysis of others – no friends of the family, no insights from the director himself. Zappa is best understood – if he can be understood at all – on his own terms.

Whether it’s archival footage of a young, clean shaven Frank appearing on the Steve Allen Show to play a symphony of dissonance on a bicycle, the iconic mess of hair and cynicism that marked his most productive time with The Mothers of Invention, or the bitter elder statesman dealing with Tipper Gore’s PMRC, you see Zappa as he saw himself.

There’s something appropriate about Schutte’s structure. Why should we care about someone else’s opinions on Frank Zappa? He certainly didn’t. And Schutte doesn’t try to paint a pretty picture. These aren’t one-sided images set to glorify. Frank Zappa was a dick. Geniuses often are.

Like Bob Dylan, Zappa was disinterested in the effects of his artistic decisions on his fans. He alienated at will, forever cursing the American public’s lack of discernment. “People are not accustomed to excellence,” was one of his more generous statements about his lack of popularity at home.

“The thing that sets Americans apart from the rest of the cultures of the world is we’re so fucking stupid,” is one of his less generous thoughts.

Pulling an even-handed, honest documentary that sheds light on this particular individual could not have been easy. It must have been tempting to pick and choose – Zappa the wild man, Zappa the political mind, Zappa the underappreciated genius. But Schutte balances those, throwing in the ugly with the funny with, in one especially uncharacteristic and moving segment, the tender.

Frank Zappa had a larger effect on American culture than you may realize. Have you seen those tee shirts – So Many Books, So Little Time? He said that. You should get to know him. Here’s how.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Barr and/or Bust

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Roseanne for President!

by Matt Weiner

You can’t argue that Roseanne Barr has lost her timing. As we enter what political scientists call the “Holy mother of God there isn’t enough whiskey in the world” phase of the election season, Roseanne for President! looks back at the comedian’s 2012 attempt to run for president as the Green Party nominee.

Spoiler alert: Roseanne Barr did not win the 2012 presidential election. What’s frustrating though is how Barr — and the film, directed by Eric Weinrib — never really settle on what the point of it all was. She claims it’s a serious run at the presidency, which quickly turns into a half-hearted battle for the Green Party nomination, which finally becomes a successful attempt to qualify as the nominee of yet another third party. In three states. Yes, three. (The surest sign that even Barr gave up on everything has to be when she freely admits to voting for Barack Obama due to convoluted write-in rules.)

And yet all of this could have still been fertile material for a comedian as gifted as Barr. Instead, we see her literally phoning in her efforts throughout the race: Barr might be the first presidential nominee to campaign almost entirely via Skype. Be prepared for lots of awkward video conferences from a computer in her Hawaii home, peppered with anti-capitalism rants that sound genuine but disjointed.

While short on introspection, the film allows some moments of inspiration. It’s hard not to want to reach out and hug Farheen Hakeem, Barr’s campaign manager keeping things running in the Mainland. Hakeem is comically undaunted by the challenges of running a third party campaign with no staff and a candidate who doesn’t campaign in person.

Hakeem is also Exhibit A for anyone trying to argue that Barr’s run had merit. The documentary constantly undercuts its own seriousness, though, by landing way more in Christopher Guest territory than Michael Moore. (This is especially odd because director Weinrib has worked on multiple Moore films, but here deploys none of Moore’s visual diversions that could have helped add some context around the nomination process instead of more Skype rants.)

The real tragedy is that talking heads like Sandra Bernhard, Rosie O’Donnell and Tom Smothers aren’t being used for a documentary about Roseanne herself. Barr’s brother, Ben-David, also talks movingly about the family’s outsider upbringing as Jews in Salt Lake City. These all-too-brief scenes show how Barr’s subversive and genuinely radical comedy career deserves a better showcase than this.

Verdict-1-5-Stars

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YouTube Royalty

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Presenting Princess Shaw

by Hope Madden

Raw talent is a rare find. Ophir Kutiel, or Kutiman as he’s known, realizes this. That may be why he spends countless hours scouring YouTube, pulling this guitar solo and that piano concerto to mash into one of his globally admired compositions.

With Samantha Montgomery he found more than the usual diamond in the rough. Her YouTube feed oscillates between confessional monologues and heartfelt, powerful acapella songwriting. What she posts as Princess Shaw to her small online audience is vulnerable and emotionally fearless, her story of artistic and emotional struggle becoming both timeless and utterly of this moment.

Following the two artists as their work collides is Ido Haar’s documentary Presenting Princess Shaw. It’s a refreshingly unadorned look at the lonely life of an artist.

The core story contains everything that makes a documentary wonderful. There are things here you probably did not know existed – like Kutiman’s truly wonderful art, for instance, a form of composition that is fascinating to watch being made.

There is also the secret admirer angle, the underdog tale, the story of an artist being discovered, all of which are themes that can be easily manipulated into a compelling film regardless of form.

And so Haar is to be congratulated for his craftsmanship, utilizing all the themes available to him to compel the audience’s attention while simultaneously creating a raw aesthetic that matches Princess Shaw’s own material.

How authentic is his film? It’s hard to know how Haar ended up filming the songstress at the exact moment she learns of Kutiman’s intervention, but if her emotional response is faked, she’s as strong an actor as she is a songwriter.

As impossible as it is to watch this film without rooting for success and riches to find Princess Shaw, the film itself is more of a celebration of artistry as its own often painful, internal, and emotional reward – catharsis or therapy, even. It’s also a beautiful tribute to artistic camaraderie.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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Rise of the Phoenix

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A Ballerina’s Tale

by Hope Madden

Misty Copeland has a fascinating story to tell. Unfortunately, director Nelson George is the one telling it. From the title to the structure, from the focus to the finale, A Ballerina’s Tale is a needlessly homogenized package of what could have been an amazing film.

Earlier this year – this year! – Copeland became the first African American prima ballerina in the 75 year history of the American Ballet Theater.

Why did it take so long? What did Copeland possess to not only reach the absolute height of her craft, but to overcome classical ballet’s longstanding prejudices about body type as well as skin color? Where did she come from? How did she get here?

If you’re looking for answers to those questions, well, this is not the film for you.

To a certain degree, George seems to understand the historical significance of Copeland’s achievement. He deserves credit for spending time talking with Copeland and even more insightful voices about the staunchly white face of ballet. He also devotes attention to the unhealthy physical aesthetic imposed on ballet dancers, as well as the punishment their bodies take. He just doesn’t really help us see how these things relate to Copeland or her struggles.

George meticulously avoids coverage of Copeland’s difficult childhood and rocky road toward dance, perhaps to keep the focus on challenges she faced once she’d made it to ABT, but in doing so he sketches too vague a picture of the courage and talent she needed to excel as she has. And though he mainly films during the period where she struggled to overcome a potentially career ending injury, he remains so removed from her trials that he sucks all drama from the events.

This is not really the story of a changing paradigm in classical ballet – there’s not enough history or enough documentation of contemporary impact to make that claim. It’s certainly not a clear version of Copeland’s personal journey toward the pinnacle of her career. It’s not even a dance movie – aside from a handful of snippets, we’re provided no real footage of Copeland’s skill as a ballerina.

The struggles, triumphs, and historical significance of Misty Copeland’s life story has all the drama of a great movie. Too bad A Ballerina’s Tale does not.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

Halloween Countdown

Day 16: The Nightmare

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The Nightmare (2015)

An effective scary movie is one that haunts your dreams long after the credits roll. It’s that kind of impact that most horror buffs are seeking, but even the most ardent genre fan will hope out loud that Rodney Ascher’s new documentary, The Nightmare, doesn’t follow them to sleep.

His film explores sleep paralysis. It’s a sleep disorder – or a label hung on the world’s most unfortunate night terrors – that’s haunted humanity for eons. Most sufferers never realize that others share their misery.

Sleep paralysis is the phenomenon that inspired Wes Craven to write A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a clear creative root for Insidious, Borgman, and scores of other horror movies. But it isn’t fiction. It’s a sometimes nightly horror show real people have to live with. And dig this – it sounds like it might be contagious.

Ascher’s a fascinating, idiosyncratic filmmaker. His documentaries approach some dark, often morbid topics with a sense of wonder. His films never seem to be pushing an agenda, he doesn’t seem to have made up his mind on his subject matter. Rather, he is open, which, in turn, invites the audience to be open.

It’s not all earnest sleuthing, though, because Ascher is a real showman. What’s intriguing is the way he draws your attention to his craftsmanship. His dramatic touches never feel amateurish, but they don’t really feel like a cinematic wink, either. Instead they seem intentional, as if he may just be playing.

Coyness suited his Shining documentary Room 237 pretty brilliantly. Here it feels almost like a way to release the tension, remind you that you are, indeed, watching a movie… a heartbreaking, terrifying movie.

We spend a great deal of time watching horror movies, and we cannot remember an instance in our lives that we considered turning off a film for fear that we would dream about it later. Until now.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

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A Life Extraordinary

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He Named Me Malala

by Christie Robb

Malala Yousafzai was a remarkable person years before becoming the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient at the age of 17. What is impressive about her is not her having survived a head shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012; it’s her courage and strength in speaking out in nonviolent protest. It is her continuing support of children’s right to an education despite the threats to her life and the lives of her family members.

Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) presents Malala’s story in his new documentary, He Named Me Malala.

As you might guess, the central relationship explored in the film is between Malala and the man who named her, her father Ziauddin. He named his baby girl after Malalai—a female folk hero that roused dispirited Afghani fighters to war against the British and was shot and killed in the attempt—quite something to live up to.

Ziauddin himself seems something to live up to. A rebel schoolteacher who refused to be silent under increasing Taliban restrictions, he fostered a love of learning in Malala and taught her to raise her own voice against oppression when the voices of so many women and girls were strangled.

The tension of Guggenheim’s film builds slowly throughout, even as the storyline bounces around from stories of the Yousafzai family, to the Taliban’s rise to power in the Swat valley, to Malala becoming an anonymous schoolgirl blogger for the BBC at age 11, to her present day activism, to Malala’s decision to break her anonymity and appear on camera in Pakistan speaking in support of girls’ education. Finally, the tension peaks with footage of the bus on which Malala and two of her friends were shot, not by a gunman, as her father says, but by an “ideology.”

However, the movie is not simply an encomium to an internationally famous humanitarian. Guggenheim shows Malala not just as the extraordinary public figure that she has become, but also as a teenage girl who tussles with her younger brothers, stresses about grades, and crushes on sports figures. Guggenheim also makes some effort to show the mixed response Malala gets in Pakistan, where some people think she’s just a mouthpiece for her father or an agent of Western Imperialism.

And he explores the question of whether Ziauddin, this man who slapped this famous name on Malala, really forced her into this public life without her buy-in. Twice Guggenheim includes Ziauddin’s worry that, upon waking from her coma, Malala would accuse him, “I was a child, you should have stopped me.” And Malala raises her voice to say that she’s made her own choices. That she, “…chose this life and now… must continue it.”

It’s an amazing life and one worth watching.

Verdict-4-0-Stars