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 …
The current state of the world suggests we’d be ill advised to watch a documentary about the loss of yet another majestic animal to extinction. The Velvet Queen, or La Panthère des Neiges, as it’s called in its country of origin, France, is absolutely nothing like that. This documentary is really a celebration of the grandeur and …
Though Cat Daddies sounds like the name of either a rockabilly band or a group you’d find in a kink dungeon, it’s actually the hashtag used online to describe feline-loving dudes, and as such is the perfect title for a new documentary from writer/director Mye Hoang, Cat Daddies. This joyful movie profiles a collection of 9 men, proud …
Are plants aware, and what does that even mean? Is it true using psilocybin in a controlled environment can actually alter understanding of self permanently? What is left of us, of our consciousness, when we die? These are just a few of the universal subjects being examined in the documentary Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness, from filmmaking …
Can you remember the first time you really knew you were going to die? You know, when you learned that every human and living being on the planet has an expiration date, including you? What if that date was Christmas, and everyone else was going to die, too? That’s the premise for writer/director Camille Griffin’s …
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 …
