Filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West make documentaries about extraordinary women. Their Oscar-nominated 2018 “RBG” followed around the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Cohen and West have returned with “Julia,” which traces the rise of Julia Child from her Southern California beginnings to becoming the world’s first celebrity chef. “Like a lot of people in my generation, I ... more >
NEWS
“It’s amazing because you don’t know what the story is going to be, and I love that risk”: Jesse Moss on MAYOR PETE
After making the documentary “Boys State,” about a Texas program wherein adolescent males practice what it might be like to experience a real electoral campaign, filmmaker Jesse Moss turned his attention to a man running for real. For several months he and his crew followed then-South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg on his ultimately unsuccessful bid to win the 2020 Democratic presidential ... more >
DOPESICK ON HULU: “This con was so outrageous that I thought we’ve got to dramatize this” (OUR INTERVIEW WITH DANNY STRONG AND BETH MACY)
Over a twenty-year stretch, half a million people have died from opioids, according to the CDC. And one of the crisis’s major killers is OxyContin, which earned the already-wealthy Sackler family billions of dollars. Even though the family’s firm, Purdue Pharma, is now in bankruptcy proceedings and ordered by courts to pay billions in penalties and compensation, members of the Sackler family ... more >
SMALL TALK WITH BIG PEOPLE | filmmaker Marina Zenovich of WHAT HAPPENS IN HOLLYWOOD
There’s what goes on in the film biz and then there’s what really goes on in Tinseltown. That’s what documentary filmmaker Marina Zenovich (director of last year’s “Lance,” about disgraced biker Lance Armstrong) was seeking to get at with her new film, “What Happens in Hollywood.” The documentary, which is now available on Roku, shows women, and some men, speaking candidly about the sexism and ... more >
BENTONVILLE FILM FESTIVAL : “Waikiki,” “A Fire Within,” “The First Step,” “The High Life” and “Workhorse Queen”
BENTONVILLE, Ark.—Among Geena Davis’s goals for the Bentonville Film Festival is the inclusion of lesser-heard voices. The films at this year’s iteration of the festival here in northwest Arkansas certainly align with that dictum. Among the films I watched l this week was “Waikiki,” a drama about a native Hawaiian woman’s struggles with employment, her boyfriend and family. Writer-director ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL : Cinefondation filmmaker AUDEN LINCOLN-VOGEL | INTERVIEW
Filmmaker Auden Lincoln-Vogel was in Cannes this year in support of “Bill and Joe go Duck Hunting,” which he's written and directed. In “Bill and Joe Go Duck Hunting,” a slow and contemplative film that was a part of the Cinefondation program, two friends go on a duck hunting expedition and much vexation ensues, the great outdoors the setting for an oppressive “huit-clos” film that's punctuated ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – “Titane,” machine-friendly gender-bending allegory, wins the Palme D’Or
Cinema is now synonymous with these two words: Julia Ducournau. She is the director of "Titane," a film, all savagery and tenderness, that won the Palme D'Or last night at the Cannes Festival here in France. Why these two words? Because contemporary cinema takes risks and it's prothean and it's in step with the times and it pays tribute to its past and I can't think of a better incarnation for it ... more >
