Deconstructing the machinery of cinema.
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 ...
Women do not get the opportunities in film-making that men do. That is demonstrable fact, and to understand exactly how and why institutional sexism is harming the American film industry you couldn't do much better than watch Amy Adrion's admirable and engaging documentary Half the Picture. Through a well-considered and arranged series of interviews, it basically ...
There is a huge range of subject matters available for a good documentary. The best to my mind are those that showcase something very real, but which you would be unlikely to believe unless someone had spend years putting together a documentary about them. That is certainly the case with Chris Sievey, an aspiring pop ...
