THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON[/caption]
David France’s The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a deeply compelling look at the murder of a transgender legend, known as “the Rosa Parks of the LGBT movement” has been acquired by Netflix, for release later this year. The powerful, haunting film is France’s follow-up to his Academy Award(R) nominated How to Survive a Plague.
When Marsha P. Johnson, the beloved, self-described “street queen” of NYC’s gay ghetto, was found floating in the Hudson River in 1992, the NYPD refused to investigate. Instead, they chalked it up to suicide, a widely dismissed conclusion, and left the mystery to fester for decades. Having played a pivotal role in the Stonewall Riots of 1969, Marsha and fellow icon Sylvia Rivera went on to form the world’s first trans-rights organization, STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) in 1970. And despite their many challenges over the years – harassment, homelessness, alcoholism – Marsha and Sylvia ignited a powerful and lasting civil rights movement for gender nonconforming people.
Now, 25 years after her untimely death, at a time of unprecedented visibility for, and escalating violence against, the transgender community, veteran crime-victim advocate Victoria Cruz has taken it upon herself to reexamine what happened to Marsha and measure the challenges that still face the community. The film follows as this intrepid champion pursues leads, mobilizes officials, and raises troubling new questions about a famous cold case. Along the way she burnishes the political legacy of a celebrated historical figure.
“Almost single-handedly, Marsha P. Johnson and her best friend Sylvia Rivera touched off a revolution in the way we talk about gender today,” said David France. “Their names should be household words. But Marsha’s life was cut tragically short and Sylvia died shortly thereafter, the victim of a broken heart. Getting to know their story through the investigation undertaken by Victoria Cruz, a seminal activist in her own right, has been one of the great honors of my career. Now, with Netflix as our distribution partner, I am confident the legacy of these tremendous women will never be forgotten.”
“We are honored to bring much deserved recognition to the dynamic life of Marsha P Johnson,” said Netflix VP of Original Documentary Programming Lisa Nishimura. “Her effervescent spirit and pioneering leadership of the LGBT movement is illuminated with an eloquent force by director David France and is a true testament to the power of documentary films.”
Documentary
-
The LGBT Documentary THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARSHA P JOHNSON to Debut on Netflix | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_22039" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON[/caption]
David France’s The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a deeply compelling look at the murder of a transgender legend, known as “the Rosa Parks of the LGBT movement” has been acquired by Netflix, for release later this year. The powerful, haunting film is France’s follow-up to his Academy Award(R) nominated How to Survive a Plague.
When Marsha P. Johnson, the beloved, self-described “street queen” of NYC’s gay ghetto, was found floating in the Hudson River in 1992, the NYPD refused to investigate. Instead, they chalked it up to suicide, a widely dismissed conclusion, and left the mystery to fester for decades. Having played a pivotal role in the Stonewall Riots of 1969, Marsha and fellow icon Sylvia Rivera went on to form the world’s first trans-rights organization, STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) in 1970. And despite their many challenges over the years – harassment, homelessness, alcoholism – Marsha and Sylvia ignited a powerful and lasting civil rights movement for gender nonconforming people.
Now, 25 years after her untimely death, at a time of unprecedented visibility for, and escalating violence against, the transgender community, veteran crime-victim advocate Victoria Cruz has taken it upon herself to reexamine what happened to Marsha and measure the challenges that still face the community. The film follows as this intrepid champion pursues leads, mobilizes officials, and raises troubling new questions about a famous cold case. Along the way she burnishes the political legacy of a celebrated historical figure.
“Almost single-handedly, Marsha P. Johnson and her best friend Sylvia Rivera touched off a revolution in the way we talk about gender today,” said David France. “Their names should be household words. But Marsha’s life was cut tragically short and Sylvia died shortly thereafter, the victim of a broken heart. Getting to know their story through the investigation undertaken by Victoria Cruz, a seminal activist in her own right, has been one of the great honors of my career. Now, with Netflix as our distribution partner, I am confident the legacy of these tremendous women will never be forgotten.”
“We are honored to bring much deserved recognition to the dynamic life of Marsha P Johnson,” said Netflix VP of Original Documentary Programming Lisa Nishimura. “Her effervescent spirit and pioneering leadership of the LGBT movement is illuminated with an eloquent force by director David France and is a true testament to the power of documentary films.”
-
Watch Trailer for Chris Burkard’s Documentary UNDER AN ARCTIC SKY on Surfing in Iceland
[caption id="attachment_22549" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Under an Arctic Sky[/caption]
Here is the trailer for “Under an Arctic Sky,” a documentary film that follows six surfers along with photographer Chris Burkard on their journey to Iceland’s north coast in search of perfect waves during the largest storm in 25 years. The film first premiered this past April at the Tribeca Film Festival to a sold-out crowd.
If you are in New York City, next Thursday, June 8th, Adorama, one of the world’s largest photography, video, audio, imaging and electronics retailers, will be hosting a film screening of “Under an Arctic Sky.”
The film follows six surfers along with adventure photographer Chris Burkard and filmmaker Ben Weiland as they seek out unknown swell in the remote fjords of Iceland’s Hornstrandir Nature Reserve. Chartering a boat, they depart from Isafjordur on the cusp of the largest storm to make landfall in twenty-five years. With the knowledge that storms bring legendary swell the crew are optimistic, but face failure when the storm forces them back to shore. Making the decision to carry the expedition on by road they experience the brutality of Iceland’s winter and begin to question if searching out the unknown is worth risking their lives for. Despite setbacks the team pushes on and finds that uncertainty is the best ingredient for discovering the unimaginable.
-
THE REAGAN SHOW, A Doc Look at the First TV President, Opens June 30 in NY & LA | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_22526" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
THE REAGAN SHOW[/caption]
Pacho Velez’s and Sierra Pettengill’s THE REAGAN SHOW is an all-archival documentary about the original performer-president’s role of a lifetime: Leader of the Free World. A hit at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, the movie will open in New York at the Metrograph Theater and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica Film Center on Friday, June 30, with a national rollout to immediately follow. It will also become available on VOD on July 4.
Teasing apart the spectacle at the heart of finger-on-the-button global diplomacy, THE REAGAN SHOW follows Ronald Reagan’s rivalry with charismatic Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, tracing how the Communicator-in-Chief uses his public relations chops to overcome Soviet mistrust, the objections of a skeptical press corps and the looming threat of WW III. Chock full of wit and political irony, and told solely through 1980s network news and videotapes created by the Reagan administration itself, the film explores Reagan’s made-for-TV approach to politics as he faced down the United States’ greatest rival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07BHVGm-Y6s
-
Award-winning LGBT Documentary POLITICAL ANIMALS will be Released on DVD and VOD on June 6th | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_14305" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Political Animals[/caption]
The award-winning LGBT documentary Political Animals, directed by Jonah Markowitz (Shelter), and co-directed by Tracy Wares (DP: Bomb It, Gay Republicans), will be released on DVD and VOD on June 6th in the U.S. and Canada via Gravitas Ventures.
Documentary Political Animals is an inspiring portrait of four defiant California politicians – all out women – who bravely fought hatred and homophobia through pioneering legislative efforts in California to make political history, paving the way for success in the fight for Equality, and to create lasting and significant social change.
Political Animals celebrates the legendary civil rights victories of the first four openly gay elected California state politicians – who were all women: Carole Migden, Sheila Kuehl, Jackie Goldberg, and Christine Kehoe. An inspiring portrait of four defiant politicians who refused to let hatred and homophobia stop them from making history and achieving legal recognition for LGBT people throughout California and the United States.
Political Animals documents the tough struggles they endured together, and celebrates their pioneering success in the fight for Equality and the sweet victories these unforgettable women created to pave the way for lasting and significant social change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9jikA5Ip4
-
FilmRise to Release Ramona S. Diaz’s Sundance Winning Documentary MOTHERLAND | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_22502" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Motherland[/caption]
Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary Motherland which world premiered earlier this year at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, will be released in the Summer by FilmRise.
Motherland, which won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Commanding Vision at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, takes us into the heart of the planet’s busiest maternity hospital in one of the world’s poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. The film’s viewer, like an unseen outsider dropped unobtrusively into the hospital’s stream of activity, passes through hallways, enters rooms and listens in on conversations. At first, the surrounding people are strangers. But as the film continues, it’s absorbingly intimate, rendering the women at the heart of the story increasingly familiar. Three women—Lea, Aira and Lerma—emerge to share their stories with other mothers, their families, doctors and social workers. While each of them faces daunting odds at home, their optimism, honesty and humor suggest a strength that they will certainly have to summon in the years ahead.
Diaz said: “I’m very much looking forward to partnering with FilmRise on the release of our film after successful premieres at festivals both in the U.S. and abroad. We feel strongly that the film will strike a chord with viewers, all the more so in today’s political and cultural climate.”
-
Award-winning Documentary, A CAMBODIAN SPRING to US Premiere at Brooklyn Film Festival | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_22492" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
A Cambodian Spring[/caption]
The award-winning documentary, A Cambodian Spring, from UK video journalist/filmmaker Chris Kelly, will have its US premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival.
The film won the Special Jury Prize earlier this year at 2017 Hot Docs in Toronto.
A Cambodian Spring is an intimate and unique portrait of three people caught up in the chaotic and often violent development that is shaping modern-day Cambodia. Spending 9 years on the film (shooting for 6 of those years) the film charts the growing wave of land-rights protests that led to the ‘Cambodian Spring’ and the tragic events that followed. This film is about the complexities – both political and personal, of fighting for what you believe in.
“A Cambodian Spring is for me a deeply personal film, which took 9 years to complete,” says director Chris Kelly. “It is an exploration of what motivates us, what gives our lives meaning, and what happens when our personal desires colour and shape our actions. It is an unapologetically subjective portrait of my time in Cambodia, of the people who shared their lives with me and of the shifting landscapes, both physical and emotional, that I found there.”
The film also includes a riveting original soundtrack by the UK’s best known electronic music artist James Holden.
2017 Brooklyn Film Festival Screening Time and Location
showtime: 7:30 pm | Wednesday June 7 | Wythe Hotel
showtime: 8:30 pm | Sunday June 11 | Wythe Hotel
-
Bill Morrison Unearths a Treasure Trove of Silent-Era Cinema in DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME | Trailer
[caption id="attachment_22483" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
First Avenue in Dawson City, 1898. – DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME[/caption]
Bill Morrison’s mesmerizing new film, Dawson City: Frozen Time will open in New York on Friday, June 9 at the IFC Center with a national rollout to follow.
Dawson City: Frozen Time pieces together the bizarre true history of a collection of over 500 nitrate film prints from the 1910s and 1920s, which were lost for decades until being discovered buried under a hockey rink in a former Klondike gold rush town. Using these rare silent movies and a rich sampling of newsreels and historical photographs, fused with an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator Alex Somers (Captain Fantastic), this haunting cinematic mosaic depicts the unique history of Dawson City by chronicling the life cycle of a singular film collection through its exile, burial, rediscovery, and salvation. In telling this story of “one of the most astonishing and unexpected bonanzas in cinematic history” (Lawrence Weschler, Vanity Fair), director Bill Morrison conjures the forgotten ties between the fledgling movie industry and Manifest Destiny in North America.
The films of Bill Morrison combine a documentarian’s thirst for uncovering hidden histories with an archivist’s obsession for recovering lost cinematic treasures. Morrison’s Decasia (2002) was heralded by Errol Morris as “the best film ever made” and critic J. Hoberman called it “the most widely acclaimed American avant-garde film of the fin de siècle.” His other notable films include The Miners’ Hymns (2011), a document of the early 20th-century coal mines of northern England, and The Great Flood (2013), a collaboration with Bill Frisell inspired by the Mississippi River Flood of 1927.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxrwpvQZIs
-
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Drops First Official Trailer for CANT’T STOP WON’T STOP: A BAD BOY STORY
Last night Sean “Diddy” Combs took the stage at the Billboard Music Awards to drop the first official trailer for the highly anticipated documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story, that world premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story, produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Heather Parry, alongside executive producers Michael Rapino, Andre Harrell and Alex Avant, explores the passion and personalities of Bad Boy and will be available on Apple Music on June 25.
Directed by Daniel Kaufman, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story is an exclusive look behind the scenes at the history of Bad Boy through a complex portrait of the label’s mastermind, Sean “Diddy” Combs, as he tries to reunite his Bad Boy Family in the course of a frantic three week rehearsal period. As they prepare to celebrate the label’s 20th anniversary, the film traces Bad Boy’s emergence in Harlem and Brooklyn, follows it’s meteoric rise, explores the tragic killing of Biggie Smalls, and celebrates Bad Boy’s influence in reshaping music, fashion, marketing and culture.
“I knew this was a story that should be shared with the world. Heather Parry and Live Nation Productions, and Director Daniel Kaufman, helped create this very special documentary,” says Sean Combs on the making of the film. “Now I’m blessed to also be working with Apple Music to showcase the film and share Bad Boy’s history and impact with fans. The support Live Nation, Apple Music and everyone on the team has given to this project is a true testament to the Bad Boy legacy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtqIL4L8HmE
-
ON A KNIFE EDGE Coming of Age and Activism Doc on American Indian Young Man to World Premiere at SF DocFest
On A Knife Edge, from director Jeremy Williams, a documentary film five years in the making, follows Guy Dull Knife and his son, George, as George comes of age on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. The film will world premiere June 10 and June 15 at the 16th annual San Francisco Documentary Film Festival.
“On a Knife Edge” is a father-son story about Guy and George Dull Knife that unfolds over the course of George’s coming-of-age journey. Under his father’s guidance, George becomes an activist and organizer, and begins identifying with the role of traditional Lakota warrior, which he views as his family legacy. He commits himself to the fight for social justice, but struggles with adapting the old ways and his father’s expectations to the modern-day realities of growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Told largely through George’s eyes, the film offers a privileged glimpse into the youngest generation of the American Indian Movement, as well as George’s own evolving notions of Native identity, manhood, and duty.
His story is interwoven with animated sequences that depict five generations of family history, narrated by his father and based on paintings he has created to explore the continuum of their fight through the generations.
-
Margaret Byrne’s Award-Winning Documentary RAISING BERTIE Opens June 9
RAISING BERTIE is a six-year portrait of three young African American men coming-of-age in North Carolina’s rural Bertie County. Like MOONLIGHT and BOYHOOD before it, the intimate portrayal of these young men interconnects narratives of family, youthful innocence, and isolation with the will to succeed in the face of formidable odds.
The feature-length documentary RAISING BERTIE, winner of Best Documentary Feature at Atlanta Docufest, is produced by Kartemquin Films and executive produced by Jermaine Cole aka rapper J. Cole.
This powerful vérité film delivers an authentic and tender portrait of the lives of three young boys – Reginald “Junior” Askew, David “Bud” Perry, and Davonte “Dada” Harrell – as they face a precarious coming of age in Bertie County, North Carolina.
Director Margaret Byrne brings audiences deep into the emotional lives of these young men as they try to find room for themselves in a place where life is dictated by a slow pace, opportunities are limited and tenuous family ties simultaneously offer comfort and heartache. Shot over the course of six years, RAISING BERTIE is an experience that asks us to see this world through their eyes: boys navigating between finishing high school and an elusive first job, as millions of young Americans similarly take their next step into an inherited idea of adulthood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1iNY7Fh3PA
Set in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina, Raising Bertie offers viewers an authentic and tender portrait of the lives of three young boys – Reginald “Junior” Askew, David “Bud” Perry, and Davonte “Dada” Harrell – as they face a precarious coming of age.
Rural minorities like the youth in Bertie represent some of the nation’s most vulnerable and least visible. Like many rural areas, Bertie County struggles with a dwindling economy, a declining population and a high school graduation rate below the state average. The Perdue chicken processing plant is Bertie’s last major employer, and the 27 prisons that lay within a 100 miles of Bertie cast a long shadow. Bertie County is predominately African American – its challenges compounded by generations of economic and educational discrimination and exclusion.
Bertie also is the home of Junior, Bud, and Dada, three engaging young men with difficult pasts attending high school at The Hive, an alternative school for at-risk boys. There, we meet Vivian Saunders, a passionate community activist from Bertie County. At The Hive a combination of respect, socio-emotional learning, and mentorship helps to put these young men’s lives on track. The Hive is a beautiful model of effective, supportive, and innovative interventions that help to improve opportunities and the quality of life for African-American boys and young men in Bertie.
But, when budget shorgalls lead the Board of Education to close The Hive, Junior, Bud, and Dada must return to Bertie High School and a system that once failed them.
This raw and starkly poetic Kartemquin vérité documentary weaves the young men’s stories together as they navigate school, unemployment, violence, first love, fatherhood, and estrangement from family members and mentors, all while trying to define their identities.
Intimate access depicts an honest portrayal of the boys’ perspectives and the caring adults in the community who understand what it means to take care of their own. The film is an in-depth look at issues facing many of rural America’s youth of color and what happens in the everyday lives of young people caught in the complex interplay of generational poverty, economic isolation, and educational inequity. Raising Bertie is an experience that asks us to see this world through their eyes and incites recognition and understanding of lives and communities too often ignored.
-
Civil Rights Doc THE FREEDOM TO MARRY will be Released Digitally on June 6th
[caption id="attachment_20769" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
THE FREEDOM TO MARRY[/caption]
THE FREEDOM TO MARRY, the untold story of how same-sex marriage became law of the land, will be released digitally on June 6th via Ro*Co Films in the U.S. and Canada.
THE FREEDOM TO MARRY follows Evan Wolfson, the architect of the marriage movement, attorney Mary Bonauto, and their team through their decades long battle, culminating in a dramatic fight at the United States Supreme Court. More than the saga of one of the most importnant civil rights stories of our time, this is an inspiring tale of how a real change occurs, even against the biggest odds.
Directed by veteran doc filmmaker Eddie Rosenstein, produced by Jenni Olson & Amie Segal. After a successful national theatrical run this spring, THE FREEDOM TO MARRY will now be available digitally in June, timed to national LGBT pride celebrations this summer.
-
THE SKYJACKER’S TALE, Documentary Opens in NY on June 30
THE SKYJACKER’S TALE from award-winning Canadian filmmaker Jamie Kastner gives unprecedented access to one of the top five most wanted US fugitives in Cuba. The documentary film, an official selection of 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, will open in New York on Friday, June 30th at the Village East with a national release to follow.
Ishmael Muslim Ali (formerly LaBeet) is the American convicted of murdering eight people on a Rockefeller-owned golf course in the US Virgin Islands. After years of trying to get his conviction overturned, he took matters into his own hands and hijacked an American Airlines plane full of passengers to Cuba on New Years Eve 1984, and got away with it. Until now.
Thirty years on the FBI’s most wanted list and against the backdrop of his looming extradition to serve eight consecutive life sentences in the US, the film recounts the hijacking that got him here, re-examines his original trial and reveals a gross miscarriage of justice. In a story that is more relevant than ever with racially charged police brutality and injustice constantly in the headlines, THE SKYJACKER’S TALE captures LaBeet / Ali’s first interview since the hijacking and includes never before seen footage.
Is he a heartless criminal or a victim? The audience must decide. But what emerges is a picture of American government and law enforcement attitudes and actions toward their own population that are shockingly similar to the headlines of today.