Actor Saffron Cassaday (Pete Winning and the Pirates: The Motion Picture) gives audiences an up close and personal perspective of her experience with ulcerative colitis and invites the viewer to tag along on her biohacking journey in her documentary Designer $hit.
The smoke sauna tradition of Vőromaa, in southern Estonia, is nearly a thousand years old. On UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage of the world, smoke sauna practices include the building and maintenance of saunas, smoking meat, making bath whisks, and bathing and cleaning rituals.
Denny Tedesco’s Immediate Family is the ideal spiritual sequel to his doc debut The Wrecking Crew, and a great example of a comfort film. I’ve seen this documentary twice now: once to review it, the second just to revisit the groovy atmosphere.
By: Trevor Chartrand Directors Steve Kozak and Jeremy Coon explore a relatively uncharted galaxy in the Star Wars universe with A Disturbance in the Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened, a documentary that examines the television variety show that never was: The Star Wars Holiday Special.
Andrew Jenks’ documentary Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids will obviously appeal to fans and collectors of the famous toy brand, but it should also reel in viewers who are obsessed with streamable studies on snowballing catastrophes (Tiger King, Fyre, Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?, Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99). This nichey flick doesn’t boil over with ridiculous, jaw-dropping climaxes, although it is a shock and a hoot to watch ‘80s video footage of…
Nick Broomfield (Marianna & Leonard: Words of Love) returns to musical subject matter with his sympathetic and tragic doc The Stones and Brian Jones.
David Farrier is an intrepid journalist and documentarian, but he may have met his match with Mister Organ, an unconventional film that changes its purpose almost as often as its subject changes his personality.
Silver Dollar Road, the latest documentary from Oscar nominatee Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro), sets out to make an example of the Reels’ family. Currently residing in Adams Creek, North Carolina on valuable property sought out by developers, members of the Reels family recount the harassment and drawn out legal battle that they’ve experienced trying to keep their ownership and generational ties to their land.
By: Jolie Featherstone Jen Markowitz’s documentary Summer Qamp follows several teens as they attend Camp fYrefly – a camp in rural Alberta where queer, non-binary, and trans teens get to be themselves, surrounded by peers and counsellors who can relate to their experience. From the moment the campers arrive, the camp implements a framework of care. Whether it’s coming out as trans or climbing a rock wall, the campers are supported.
The discussion about which older movies wouldn’t be made today because of current sociocultural identities and relations is occasionally debated, but chats about which contemporary movies couldn’t be made “back then” are not discussed enough. I’m grateful for D. Smith’s Kokomo City, a revealing documentary that belongs in the latter exchange, because of its progressive existence. It challenges transgressive opinions and uses the medium to address, and bring awareness to, important issues of personal representation…