Matt Tannenbaum is all about stories. He loves telling them and living them, and for over 40 years, he has loved selling them through his beloved local institution, The Bookstore, in Lenox Massachusetts. Hello Bookstore pays homage to him and to his store. As far as recent economics are concerned, his is a common tale. …
When Isaac Mizrahi called Mrs. Kasha Davis a ‘workhorse queen’ on RuPaul’s Drag Race, those of us who know and love drag beyond RPDR knew what he meant. There is a whole country full of drag artists, from sea to sequin-sparkling, shining sea, that work without the benefit of national and international television. They hone their …
Perhaps you’ve heard about Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust-era graphic novel Maus, which has gotten a lot of press lately for being banned in Tennessee. That press probably made it even more famous and widely read. It’s a gorgeous, culturally valuable book, and it should be celebrated. So too, should Leben? Oder Theater? (Life? or Theatre?), an …
Director Sam Greene’s emotional and experimental documentary 32 Sounds makes the viewer or listener feel gloriously bathed in sound for over an hour and a half. It is a meditation on its power. The film allows and invites you to consider sound in ways perhaps, unless you’re a sound technician or sound artist, you haven’t considered it …
Whenever filmmaking team of Betsy West and Julie Cohen are slated to release a new documentary, I get excited. They have a way of being sensitive and hard-hitting in equal measure. What is most striking about their new documentary Gabby Giffords: Won’t Back Down is how, for most of the duration of the film, viewers will likely …
Anyone who thinks women have equality can look to continued the lawsuits and struggles for acceptance for equal pay in the sports world. It can be really depressing. Those who need a jolt of positivity can watch the new documentary Skate Dreams, the first film ever made about the rise of women’s skateboarding. It features profiles …
Australian writer/directors Hanna Barlow and Kane Senes bring mean girls, social media savagery, fear of being cancelled, the repercussions of childhood trauma, and gore, gore, gore to their comedy horror mashup Sissy. Aisha Dee is both luminescent and looney tunes as the title character Sissy, or as she has calls herself to her 200,000 IG followers, …
As a hybrid documentary, Sell/Buy/Date is one freaky little non-movie, or what ‘I-can-do-it-all’ poster gal, writer/director/producer/performer Sarah Jones calls an ‘unorthodoc’. Sell/Buy/Date considers how the sex industry is at the intersection of race, feminism, power, and money, through the lens of one Black woman with many voices seeking to better understand sex work. The Tony Award-winning playwright and performer …
If you’ve ever been to a Pride march, a rally for Human Rights Watch, or some other LGBTQ-centered public gathering, you’ve probably seen them: women of a certain age with tees that say “Free Mom Hugs”. If you’re gay, there’s a good chance at some point they actively tried to restrict your rights. They are …
Shown first at the Angoulême Film Festival in 2020, My Best Part (Garçon Chiffon in French) is finally opening in New York, LA, and on streaming services on February 25th. This film, which toured the fest circuit including TIFF, Newfest, and OUTshine, is the directorial debut of actor Nicolas Maury, best known in the US for his role …
