Pages tagged “documentary”

Hometown: Winton-Salem, N.C.
Film: A Walk to Beautiful
For Fans Of: Born into Brothels, The Business of Being Born

A severe condition in which a hole develops between a woman’s rectum or bladder and her vagina, obstetric fistula results from obstructed labor and leads to chronic incontinence and sometimes nerve damage and infertility. This occurs predominantly in developing countries, due to insufficient obstetric care, and it affects at least two million women worldwide. Sufferers are often ostracized by their villages and even their own families. Mary Olive Smith’s first feature-length documentary, A Walk to Beautiful, chronicles five young African women as they travel to Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, seeking free treatment for their debilitating condition.

DVD Release Date: Nov. 11
Director: Benson Lee
Studio/Run Time: Elephant Eye Films, 98 mins.

Inspiring breakdance doc waves hip-hop flag

For the average person, breakdancing is merely a jocular piece of ’80s nostalgia. It calls to mind that sauced attention whore at every wedding reception who inevitably flops to the ground in the middle of a dance circle during “Billie Jean” and tries to spin on his back. But even though the b-boy phenomenon exhausted its 15 minutes in the pop-culture spotlight nearly two decades ago, it has thrived ever since in madly devoted pockets all over the globe. Benson Lee’s riveting, adrenaline-fueled documentary, Planet B-Boy, shows the unifying power of hip-hop culture by focusing on b-boy crews around the world who’ve qualified to compete in the esteemed 2005 Battle of the Year in Hanover, Germany. While it’s impossible to stress enough just how electrifying the dancing in the film is (you’ll be jumping off the couch and shouting “WHAAAT?!” every few minutes), the emotional impact of the dancers’ stories gives the film its real heft. Regardless of the language barriers between these crews, hip-hop provides a common flag to rally beneath and a place to seek a mutual (and thoroughly sweat-soaked) understanding. 

Watch the trailer for Planet B-Boy:

With a sensational ending now in tow, Edward Norton’s Class 5 Films has sold television rights for its unfinished Obama documentary to HBO for “low seven figures,” according to Variety.

The Wu-Tang Clan, the groundbreaking nine-member rapping troupe, will have its meteoric rise to fame documented in the Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang, set to debut on BET Nov. 13. The documentary, directed by Gerald K. Barclay, will be available on DVD Nov. 18.

[Above: The work of Shepard Fairey in Beautiful Losers]

Release Date: August 8
Directors: Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard
Cinematographer: Tobin Yelland    
Starring: Rose, Mike Mills, Jo Jackson, Harmony Korine
Studio/Run Time: Sidetrack Films, 90 mins.

An unexpectedly moving bohemian rhapsody

No one as interesting as the artists in this concise-yet-comprehensive documentary can afford storefront rents in the Lower East Side anymore, but once upon a time, in the early 1990s, they could. The ragtag assortment of creative misfits who coalesced around Ludlow Street’s Alleged Arts Gallery took a punk-inspired approach to designing everything from skateboards and record sleeves to railroad cars, rock videos and movies. Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) and Harmony Korine (Gummo) may be the best known, but design-heads already know about the late Margaret Kilgallen and her Mission District-inspired pieces, or Shepard Fairey’s spooky “Obey” street posters. Directed by Alleged founder Aaron Rose, Beautiful Losers traces a familiar path from adolescent discontent to pop sensation (often via some brilliantly vernacular work’s use as advertising) but foregrounds the artists’ often painful yet awkwardly sweet stories. As Mills suggests, it’s mostly about saying all the things your parents refused to hear. Ah, anomie! The fountain of art.

Release Date: Aug. 6
Director/Writer: Steven Sebring
Cinematographers: Phillip Hunt, Sebring
Starring: Patti Smith
Studio/Run Time: Clean Socks, 109 mins.

Gorgeously fragmented take on punk legend

"Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line," Patti Smith notes in Dream of Life, the debut documentary by fashion photographer Steven Sebring. And though biography is covered, it’s secondary to Sebring's infatuation with Smith, filling the screen with endless images of the punk/poet moving through the landscape, standing in corners and cutting across rooms. Besides Smith's natural magnetism, Sebring's footage—much in stunning black and white—is beautiful, sustaining itself over nearly two hours. Shuffling non-linearly through 11 years of filming, Sebring communicates Smith's mission of grace and ecstasy more than talking heads ever could. Still, more history—even a single interview with guitarist Lenny Kaye, with whom Smith has worked since 1971—would've intensified the plot. Even so, there’s something to be said for a film about Patti Smith that barely mentions the word "punk.”

Release Date: Aug. 22 (limited)
Directors: Tia Lessin, Carl Deal
Cinematographers: P.J. Raval, Kimberly Rivers Roberts
Starring: Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts
Studio/Run Time: Zeitgeist Films, 96 mins.

Intimate documentation of Hurricane Katrina

Like a Shakespeare adaptation, Trouble the Water’s plot will be unreassuringly familiar: levee breaches, failed bureaucracy, general awfulness. Even without adding to the well-covered Hurricane Katrina narrative, documentarians Tia Lessin and Carl Deal still get it completely right. Edited around home videos by Kimberly Rivers Roberts, a vivacious 24-year-old resident of New Orleans’ 9th Ward, and subsequent footage by Lessin and Deal, Trouble the Water is an intimate, necessary take on Katrina. Roberts shoots instinctively, portentously capturing the first windblown shingle as the storm builds. Though ignoring backstories until the third reel (and thumbnailing rich 9th Ward culture into the reductive bin of “poverty”), the filmmakers learn from the missteps of their sometime collaborator, Michael Moore, and keep the commentary implicit. (Kim’s reference to “this President Bush character, whoever he is,” is as scathing as it needs to get.) Trouble the Water doesn’t make sense of Katrina or the N’awlins diaspora, but it communicates them wholly.

Watch the trailer for Trouble the Water:

With a title like Died Young, Stayed Pretty, Eileen Yaghoobian's forthcoming documentary about indie rock's underground poster culture would seem to promise a packed punch of scandal and rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred wrasslin' in the art community. But the recently released trailer opens with two guys discussing octopus imagery—not exactly WWE.

The dicey politics of animatronics are no longer to remain ensconded in secrecy. This fall, a documentary will expose the truth behind the rise and fall of The Rock-afire Explosion, the animal-robot house band for Showbiz Pizza Place (most recently featured in MGMT's "Electric Feel" video) before Chuck E. Cheese and a sinister idea known as "concept unification" became its ruination.

Perhaps you were under the impression that making balloon structures was an act best suited for birthdays and Bar Mitzvahs. But like we discovered with the accordion, it turns out there's a whole lot more to it than what you might expect.

Whatever your feelings on muscle men Sylvester Stallone and Hulk Hogan, you're going to want to see this. And it's getting easier: over the next few weeks, Christopher Bell's documentary about steroid culture, Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, will be expanding from 19 to 51 screens around the country.

On Independence Day, a film exploring the life of one of the most staunchly independent thinkers in U.S. history will be released in theaters. Gonzo, the highly anticipated forthcoming documentary about the late journalistic and literary legend Hunter S. Thompson, is set to come out July 4. Written and directed by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney and produced by Graydon Carter, the film features appearances not only by entertainers like Johnny Depp (who narrates) and Jimmy Buffett, but also a good bit of political star power from the likes of Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan and George McGovern. Many more appear to comment on the massive legacy of Dr. Thompson, alongside lots and lots of cigarettes and sunglasses.

James Toback’s documentary on the career of infamous boxing legend Mike Tyson takes a sympathetic spin on the story. The film premiered at Cannes this month and has Sony Pictures Classics in talks of picking up the piece.

Michael Moore has picked up Madonna’s documentary I Am Because We Are for his Traverse City Film Festival. The piece premiered at Tribeca and also played at Cannes this month. The film was inspired by the icon’s own difficult experience adopting a Malawian child whose mother had died during childbirth. The AIDS epidemic has orphaned over one million children in Malawi, and with adoption laws seemingly nonexistent, they are left with few options.

If Space Jam satiated your desire to watch basketball movies for all time, especially those featuring Michael Jordan, bypass this here news item. But wait! This is a documentary. Spike Lee, illustrious maker of such films as Malcolm X, Summer of Sam and Inside Man is set to direct a full-length doc about His Airness himself, Variety reports. The film will be produced by Lee's 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks with financing from the NBA, which will also be providing camera footage from Jordan's 2001 to 2003 seasons, the final two of his basketball career.