Anonymous blogging activist-turn-New York Times best selling author Aubrey Gordon is a joy to listen to. Her opinions regarding her size, as well as the personal experiences that have tangentially spawned because of her weight, have led to outlets allowing Gordon to discuss being fat. Her career path has also opened opportunities to educate others about various biases and complexities that come from inconsiderate assumptions and soured good intentions.
By: Trevor Chartrand The town of Quartzsite, Arizona hosts an eclectic mix of wanderers each winter, from senior snowbirds in RVs to homeless nomads, from drug addicts to nudist bookstore owners. You’d think the locale, with its bizarre amalgamation of citizens and a variety of worldviews, would be a melting pot for an inevitable conflict. However, as filmmaker Ryan Maxey demonstrates in his doc One Road to Quartzsite, the town is surprisingly tranquil – peaceful…
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.
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…