There’s a great documentary you guys should all be watching out for, playing at the Melbourne Film Festival currently called Filmworker. It is the story of Leon Vitali, star of Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” who gave up his promising acting career to work for Stanley as his right hand man behind the scenes on subsequent projects. Check out the film’s website here! http://filmworker.com/

Huston’s U.S. Army produced, Let There Be Light (1946) follows twenty-seven ex-soldiers dealing with their psychological demons in a veteran’s institution. However, this is not exactly the tone of film that he was commissioned to produce. The army wanted Huston to make a film that would “convince business owners around the country that they had nothing to fear in hiring war veterans.” Instead, Huston delves deep into the question of trauma, exploring the notion of post-traumatic stress disorder before the term existed. As Harris puts it, “Huston wanted to counteract the crime stories that seemed to be transfixing the public with a set of case studies that would be grounded in compassion.” To honestly explore this question, Huston compiled over seventy hours of footage taken during therapy sessions of the soldiers, perhaps seeking to understand or get a handle on his own latent post traumatic stress disorder in the process. – from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock  

This excellent is coming to a theater near you. I can’t recommend it enough! https://www.facebook.com/FredRogersProductions/videos/10156853216275730/

In 2001, a former professor of mine, Kirby Dick, directed a documentary called Chain Camera. In the film he and his producers provided a number of high school students at John Marshall High School (in Los Angeles) cameras and told them to film whatever they wanted. The footage they got back was truly remarkable. The students were not afraid to film their most intimate and vulnerable moments, including discussions about sexuality, fears about their neglectful parents or dreams for the future, often unusual or even shocking (one girl confidently tells the camera that she wants to grow up to become a stripper, for example). One gets the sense that these kids were using the camera as a therapeutic device, telling it things that they would not tell adults, their friends or their parents. What led them to feel free to reveal these often embarrassing or potentially shameful things to complete strangers? Why didn’t they fear the judgment of the group? Being teenagers, they may not have completely thought through what they were participating in. They may not have imagined a large group of strangers sitting in a darkened theater or in front of their screens, listening and watching these most […]

PBS has a documentary peogram called POV, which showcases independent documentaries from around the world. One documentary that is showcased on POV right now is a film I saw in 2104 at the Sundance Film Festival called “The Overnighters” directed by Jesse Moss. I was able to meet Jesse and the film’s subject, Jay Reinke, and witness a great conversation with them at the Windrider Forum. It’s about a Lutheran Pastor who started an overnight program for migrant oil industry workers in Williston, North Dakota. Unable to help them find housing, and learning that the city had made it illegal to sleep in public, so he opened up his church parking lot and eventually the church itself to men down on their luck, having traveled to the town to find work in true oil boom. Hospitality like this often garners pushback from those who are fearful of outsiders. In the film, he gets opposition from church members, neighbors, the city counsel and local journalists. I rewatched it last night. Once again, I am VERY impressed with this film. When I spoke with Jesse after a question and answer session, I asked him how he was able to make the film, […]

There’s a documentary on the festival circuit right now that deals with some important issues in Nigeria, namely the struggle to provide electricity for all in the face of corruption and violence against anyone that would change the status quo. Check out their trailer at the website below. I’ll be watching for this one to come to theaters. https://www.takelightfilm.com/

There’s a very interesting website out there that’s a bunch of resources for documentary filmmakers: http://thedocumentarylife.com/2018/05/11/73-making-great-sound-for-your-documentary-with-jean-umansky/ Check out their podcast episodes and articles!

It’s springtime, which means it’s time for that esteemed festival across the pond, on the coast of France, at Cannes. Well there’s a little known documentary there that has been brought to my attention, that isn’t getting that much buzz, but should be. The film is called “Be Natural” and it’s about the very first woman director/producer/executive, Alice Guy-Blaché. It’s presented as a …“detective story wrapped up as a biopic and it all works in a movie that had me in tears by the time it ended.” Check out the review here! http://deadline.com/2018/05/be-natural-documentary-first-female-director-best-cannes-1202389720/

Walter Brueggemann says that the Old Testament prophets were often telling us that it is not okay, things are not going the way they are supposed to. Injustice, oppression, victimization, tragedy, sorrow, pain and suffering continue to befall us, and “the comfortable” need to wake up, hard and calloused hearts need to be enlightened, and the structures of power and abuse in our society need to be challenged. Houston’s films, in contrast to Capra, seem to adopt this prophetic voice. The prophetic narrative engages in “inversion,” or the challenging of the dominant narrative in society. In the process, celebration is replaced by lament, answers are replaced by questions, and comfortable beliefs, assumptions, attitudes and feelings are challenged.   – from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock

There’s a music video garnering a lot of attention right now for a song called “This is America” performed by Donald Glover, directed by Ibrahim Ake. You should watch the video and read this indiewire write-up about it’s meaning and significance. http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/this-is-america-meaning-donald-glover-normalize-blackness-1201962586/ In the article, Glover says that he hopes to normalize blackness, and he’s tapping into the tension between black cultural expressing such as dancing and music, and the conflict or dilemma embued by the fact that our culture has and continues to do violence towards that blackness. So there’s a risk inherent in the act of expression. This discussion calls to mind another black artist, a photojournalist who premiered his first feature documentary film this year at Sundance. His film is called Hale County This Morning, This Evening, and his name is RaMell Ross. I think it’s worth it to revisit my review of the film from back in January. Ross seeks to re-image the black experience, insofar as the images we have associated with the blackness have not come out of the community, but have often been provided by outside commentators or media influencers. His films is a quiet, slice of life rumination on the beauty of […]