Even in the US, death metal bands fronted by women are rare, so you can imagine Slave to Sirens, the Middle East’s first all-female metal band, have to contend with exponentially more misogyny and judgment. Writer/director Rita Baghdadi’s new documentary Sirens, which had its premiere at Sundance, profiles Slave to Sirens’ bandmates Shery, Maya, Alma and …
In director and co-writer Chase Joynt’s uniquely structured, hybrid documentary Framing Agnes, he uses the framework of a black and white 60s talk show to bring case file transcripts from a 1950s gender clinic to life. Expanding on the award-winning 2018 short film of the same name, Joynt plays the part of the interviewer and is …
Early on in the absorbing new documentary Nothing Compares, the film’s subject Sinéad O’Connor, recorded in a recent interview, is heard saying, “I didn’t want to be a pop star. I just wanted to scream.” It’s probably just as well, since her brand of brutal, often divisive honesty led to an exile from the mainstream almost …
At this point in the pandemic, most of us have become acutely aware of the relative saving graces and limitations of technology as a tool for communication and authentic interaction. We’ve learned isolation can birth intense loneliness and depression. There is no substitute for human physical interaction, and there likely never will be. This truth …
It’s called gastrodiplomacy, and it’s about expanding perspective and winning hearts through the stomach. Nowhere is it better exampled than in filmmaker Beth Elise Hawk’s documentary Breaking Bread, about the A-Sham festival. A-Sham is a three day celebration of Arabic and regional food that takes place every year in Haifa, the city where Jews and …
So many people think that the fight for equality is over, and women are welcome with open arms in all fields of endeavor. Yet, it was only in 2007 that The Conductor subject Marin Alsop became the first woman to hold the position of music director with a major American orchestra, becoming the 12th with the title …
One of my most powerful cinematic memories is from 1948’s The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing Virginia Cunningham. That movie, and the book it was based on, literally changed mental health in the United States. In it, Virginia has been sent to a state mental hospital after …
“Broken people save broken people.” That’s how Christina Vidal as Sgt Denise Wade explains Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Joe Baylor in Antoine Fuqua’s incredibly tense new film The Guilty. If the movie proves one thing, it’s that nothing is simple, and nothing is what it seems. Here, Fuqua teams up with Gyllenhaal in a pandemic-era story that …
What’s the worst that can happen? That’s not a question the voices inside your head will likely answer, because doing so might end the self criticism, judgment, and worry that play like a tape loop in your brain. That isn’t something studio executive Violet Calder (Olivia Munn) has figured out in the film Violet, from actor …
It’s quite the achievement to create a movie that feels as fluid as a dance. Writer/director Ewa Msangi achieves just that with Farewell Amor, a film that tackles the challenge of articulating reintroduction, second chances, and the risks and rewards of chosen intimacy for a family reuniting after 17 years. It is a rich character study …
