This Is North Preston is a spinning top. One moment, you’ll have your mind made up about what the documentary is presenting only to have your opinion changed a few more times. I was so gobsmacked by the end that I was almost inclined to rewatch the film to see if my opinion would change again – I dare you to find a more riveting documentary than this.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple who were well-known for creating massive works by altering the environment around them, often by wrapping a giant structure in plastic or introducing new foreign elements into an established setting. Their works were equally celebrated and ridiculed by the artistic elites and society at large. When Jeanne-Claude passed away from a brain aneurysm, Christo’s attempt to honour her came as a realization of a work they had planned…
Biohacking receives the Super Size Me treatment in Ann Shin’s trippy documentary Smart Drugs.
Assholes: A Theory (DIR. John Walker) After being inspired by Aaron James’ book Assholes: A Theory, documentarian/cinematographer John Walker set out to make a movie of the same name that would explore the lifestyle of the supremely arrogant. The results are fairly satisfying, more or less, but it’s hard to make a case that the film is focused.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted to watch an upbeat documentary about satanists. But, here we are: I have watched such a movie and, here I am, suggesting you do the same.
For Sama (DIR. Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts) For Sama is one of the heaviest documentaries I’ve ever seen – a true battle about staying hopeful in hopeless circumstances.
Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable is a slow burn. Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer, the documentary focuses on photography legend Garry Winograd whose unique approach to street photography captured the spirit of American life in the 1960s in New York and later, through the 1970s and 1980s, in Texas and California. As the film emphasizes, Winogrand’s method could be considered ahead of his time in that he shot using analogue technology without regard for…
Finding Hygge explores the Danish concept of hygge, which a quick Google search tells me has to do with comfort, wellness, and happiness. I was forced to Google, because at no point in this ninety-minute long documentary is the concept distilled or defined in a coherent manner.
Jazz doc A Tuba to Cuba has a structure that’s similar to the musical genre’s free-flowing essence – the film is informed and pleasant to take in, but it’s also suspiciously unkempt.
Circling back to the achievements he made wth his breakout doc Sharkwater, filmmaker/conservationist Rob Stewart checks in in the status of sharks in his final film Sharkwater: Extinction. The documentary, however, takes on a parallel meaning because it’s not only a swan song to an endangered species, it’s also a touching goodbye to Stewart and his career in activism.