Deconstructing the machinery of cinema.
Matthew Barney is one of the USA's highest profile contemporary artists, primarily due to his internationally successful Cremaster Cycle of art films that were produced between 1994 and 2002. Over the course of his career he has worked with physical performance, sculpture, drawing, and photography. He has been both criticised and praised, but even those praising his ...
Dr Ruth Westheimer is a popular German-American sex therapist, whose radio and television programs caused a seismic shift in how 1980s America discussed sex, relationships, and sexual health. A talk show stalwart and lecturer, she is now 91 years old and the subject of a new feature documentary directed by Ryan White (The Case Against ...
In 1937 an occupying Japanese regime, in an effort to solidify its control over Korea, banned the teaching of Korean language in all schools. For children going through school at that time, it meant a lifetime of illiteracy. In the new documentary Granny Poetry Club, a group of women in the late eighties boldly return to ...
There seems to be a specific sub-genre of documentary film dedicated to rolling aerial vistas of landscapes. Slow drifting shots of mountains and fields, crashing oceans, lush forests, and so on. They are usually edited together with rich musical scores, often-times ones based around world music. These films can be quite pretty to watch, but ...
Alice Guy-Blaché, the French filmmaker widely credited as the world's first female director, falls under the spotlight in Pamela B. Green's widely celebrated new documentary. She is a creditable choice for a documentary subject: not just historically significant but immensely talented, and entertaining to learn about. She started off a secretary to film company founder ...
Enock is a Malawian teenager nearing the end of his high school studies. Since the age of six, he has lived inside a Taiwanese Buddhist orphanage - one of several built across sub-Saharan Africa. As his final examinations approach, Enock is forced to decide what direction he wants to take in his future. Chinese investment ...
In 2017 a widely promoted island music festival in the Bahamas collapsed, leaving a raft of rich young dilettantes and social media influencers trapped in a post-apocalyptic mess of soaked-through tents, inedible catering, missing transport, and broken promises. The Fyre Festival, launched by musician Ja Rule but ostensibly organised by entrepreneur Billy McFarland, was a ...
