Co-directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes remind viewers of the importance of knowing our collective history in their timely new documentary The Janes. The film profiles the Jane Collective, a fearless, radical group of underground activists that believed in reproductive freedom, and came together to aid women of the pre-Roe V. Wade era in getting safe …
There are some very smart filmmakers who would rather gnaw off their own hand than risk remaking a lauded classic, and then there are the filmmakers of Living. Director Oliver Hermanus and writer Kazuo Ishiguro have that rare mix of hubris, knowledge of film history, and love of subject that have led to adapting the screenplay …
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 …
Premiering at Sundance is director Abi Damaris Corbin’s feature film 892, based on the true story of Marine war veteran Brian Easley and the series of events that left him at the brink of homelessness, leading him to walk into a Wells Fargo in Atlanta, declare he had a bomb, and hold two women hostage for …
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 …
In the year 2021, films have been influenced by so many things, not least of which are a pandemic and a worldwide grief from loss of life, the climate change crisis, the continued erasure of Black history from American education, the demand for an acceptance of a wider diversity onscreen to reflect societal diversity, a …
