By Matthew Fullerton. A welcomed addition to a wonderful run, in recent years, of international documentaries highlighting the experiences, struggles, and successes of LGBTQ people in countries not normally associated with sensitivity toward LGBTQ activism.” Queer Japan, from Canadian filmmaker Graham Kolbeins and Altered Innocence, an American distributor of artistic […]
Cherishing the Legendary Haruomi Hosono: No Smoking
By Matthew Fullerton. Charming in that it strikes a fine balance of chronology and intimate, and often amusing, interludes of today’s seventy-something Hosono.” Japan’s Brian Eno, Neil Young, and Mark Mothersbaugh are just a few of the allusions bandied about by diehard fans of musician, singer-songwriter, composer, producer, and all-round […]
American Decay, Viewed Through A Hometown – Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
By Michael Sandlin. ‘The election of President Reagan in 1980 initiated a mass transfer of wealth and power away from ordinary Americans’ intones Kristof in his voiceover; of course, what Kristof doesn’t tell you is that many of these ‘ordinary’ Americans voted for Reagan, thus essentially voting away their own […]
Frustration in Falfurrias: Lisa Molomot and Jeffrey Bemiss’s Missing in Brooks County
By Elias Savada. The film examines, sometimes in gruesome detail, the unfortunate migrant disappearances and deaths that have occurred in this eponymous region of Texas, about an hour’s drive from the Mexican border….” I’ve watched a lot of documentaries through the years. Among those that make me mad: Blackfish (2013), […]
Spectacle and the Deranged Landscape – Werner Herzog by Joshua Lund, and Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
John Duncan Talibird
September 9, 2020
Stroszek (1977): “Americans…believe that they are normal, that they make sense, and that the rest of the world is exotic. They do not seem to understand that they are the most exotic people in the world right now” –Werner Herzog By John Duncan Talibird. How do you write about Werner […]
What We Already Know, Too Well – Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump
By Michael Sandlin. Dan Partland’s well-intended but flawed documentary has at least done its democratic duty and created a forum for these previously silenced psychiatrists to outline just how much of a deranged wingnut Donald Trump really is.” In some ways, it seems almost unfair to single out Donald Trump […]
Saving Man’s (and Woman’s) Best Friends: Jesse Alk’s Pariah Dog
By Elias Savada. Pariah Dog highlights Alk’s ability as an extremely gifted, poetic, and even counter-culture filmmaker who has fashioned a labor of love for his debut feature.” A hazy dusk is arriving in Kolkata in West Bengal, India (the most far eastern part of the country, on the border […]
Few Wounds Examined: Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts
A Thousand Cuts doesn’t grapple with such global issues as much as it name checks them.” By Thomas Puhr. A sobering reminder that 21st-century demagoguery is not limited to the West, Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts (2020) focuses on two diametrically-opposed figures: Rodrigo Duterte, current President of the Philippines, […]
Art as Life Practice: Alejandro Jodorowsky on Psychomagic: A Healing Art
[Psychomagic] is an art, not a science. I make all the art.” By Gary M. Kramer. Chilean cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has always been a cine-magician. He made his feature debut with the surrealistic Fando and Lis (1968) and then achieved worldwide attention for his cult films, El Topo (1970) […]
Learning to Tell a Story: Scorsese Shorts (Criterion Collection)
By John Duncan Talbird. In 1974, soon after the splash of Mean Streets (1973), his first major directorial success, Martin Scorsese made a documentary about his parents, Italianamerican. Aside from still photos of the family and archival footage of Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood during the early 20th century, the film […]