Interview: ‘Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer’ Directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin
This interview was originally published during the Sundance Film Festival on January 14, 2013. It is being reposted today as the film makes its television debut tonight on another network and will be screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which begins Thursday. One of my most anticipated documentaries of this year’s Sundance Film Festival is Pussy Riot – …
Read MoreThese Could Be the Best Documentaries of 2013
It’s really time to put 2012 behind us already. Searching for Sugar Man won the Producers Guild Award in the Documentary Motion Picture category Saturday night, and while the PGA winner hasn’t matched the Oscar since 2009, I’m still pretty certain this film is a lock for the Academy Award. So, let’s move on to 2013. Many of the documentaries …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Interview: ‘Gideon’s Army’ Director Dawn Porter on the Importance of the 6th Amendment and Courtroom Access
One of the documentaries I keep hearing about at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival is Gideon’s Army, which has reportedly been receiving standing ovations from audiences all week. I previously wrote about the film, which follows three public defenders in the South, in a posting of its two trailers, and since then I’ve had the chance to see it and …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Exclusive Clip: ‘The Stuart Hall Project’
There is no official trailer for The Stuart Hall Project, a new documentary from John Akomfrah (The Nine Muses), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend. But we’ve been given a clip — or extract — from the film to share with you all. First, a bit about the whole: The Stuart Hall Project is an archive-heavy portrait …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Trailer: ‘Muscle Shoals’
If you’ve heard of only one documentary about a famous recording studio premiering at Sundance this year, that film is probably Dave Grohl‘s Sound City. But there’s another, and it’s called Muscle Shoals, named for the small Alabama town that’s home to legendary combination of FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Its own first-time director, Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier, may not …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Trailer: ‘Narco Cultura’
Update: We’ve been asked to remove the old, unofficial trailer for Narco Cultura that had been embedded below. But you can still read about the film here, and I’ll hopefully have a clip and official trailer soon. I’d never heard of it before this film came to my attention (I guess I missed POV’s 2006 airing of Al Otro Lado), …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Trailer: ‘Google and the World Brain’
“Google could basically hold the world hostage.” That’s a quote from UC Berkeley law professor Pamela Samuelson from the film Google and the World Brain, which will premiere at Sundance this month in the World Documentary Competition. It’s a heavy statement, and it’s no wonder why it was chosen to close out the doc’s trailer, which you can watch below. …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Trailer: ‘Gideon’s Army’
Yet another documentary about the problems of the American judicial system is heading to Sundance this month. They’re just going to keep being produced as long as the problems persist and as long as there are interesting and/or necessary stories to tell. This one is called Gideon’s Army, and instead of the usual focus on a specific case, it’s about …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Trailer: ‘The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear’
Today’s trailer for a Sundance 2013 selection offers a very intriguing look at… well, it’s difficult to tell from the video alone. Even though there are words spoken and there are titles stating that “people come to share their stories” … “at the turning point in their lives,” there’s not a lot to go on. But the images of a …
Read MoreSundance ’13 Trailer: ‘American Promise’
Here’s a trailer that seems fitting to watch on the eve of the U.S. opening of Michael Apted’s 56 Up. However, unlike the Up series, which has revisited a number of English individuals every seven years since they were aged 7, the new documentary American Promise follows its characters straight through their primary education years, from 5 to 18. That’s …
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