Documentary

Check out the new trailer for the documentary film “THE UNKNOWN KNOWN,” directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker Errol Morris which opens April 2, 2014. The film offers a mesmerizing portrait of Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense whose career will cast a long shadow over the 21st century. 

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure) continues his exploration of post-9/11 American imperialism with this riveting, feature-length interview with notorious former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.Donald Rumsfeld has never been at a loss for words. As the US Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006, Rumsfeld wielded words both to charm and to bully. His press conferences were lopsided battles where he controlled the flow of information and rarely left time for follow-up questions. In The Unknown Known, he gives in to a different kind of interview with the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris. Whether you think Rumsfeld is a patriot or a liar, he’s never less than mesmerizing. His dialogue with Morris is like a verbal duel, retracing controversial flashpoints such as the invasion of Iraq, accusations of torture, and the revelations of Abu Ghraib.

“The unknown known” is a phrase that Rumsfeld defined in a memo as “things you think you know that it turns out you did not.” As a self-avowed “obsessive,” Morris has carefully studied Rumsfeld’s blizzard of memos (which he calls “snowflakes”) to ask: what did he know and when did he know it? He traces Rumsfeld’s career path from Illinois congressman to the youngest Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford to the oldest Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush — a background critical to understanding the shaping of his alliances and ideology. Morris has the support of a first rate crew, including cinematographer Bob Chappell and composer Danny Elfman.

Rumsfeld will go down in US history as one of the dominant figures of the twenty first century’s first decade. Now that we’re into the second decade, it’s incumbent upon us to reflect on what that period meant, and how it’s shaped us. In the words of Rumsfeld, “Everything seems amazing in retrospect.”  [ via Toronto International Film Festival ]

http://youtu.be/qbz9I-x00RY

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Wayne Wang’s documentary film SOUL OF A BANQUET, is not yet completely finished but it has already been snapped up by Oscilloscope Laboratories for a late 2014 release. Wayne Wang is the director of more than 20 films that include THE JOY LUCK CLUB, MAID IN MANHATTAN and A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS.

In SOUL OF A BANQUET, Director Wayne Wang (THE JOY LUCK CLUB) takes us into the world of Cecilia Chiang, the woman who introduced America to authentic Chinese food. Chiang opened her internationally renowned restaurant The Mandarin in 1961 in San Francisco and went on to change the course of cuisine in America. The film is equal parts a delectable showcase of gastronomy and a touching portrait of Chiang’s journey from a childhood in Beijing before the Cultural Revolution to accidental restaurateur on the west coast of the United States. SOUL OF A BANQUET features interviews with Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, and Cecilia Chiang herself.

Filmmaker Wayne Wang said, “Cecilia not only changed the face of American cuisine when she opened the Mandarin, she also made the very best potstickers when I arrived in San Francisco from Hong Kong. I’m looking forward to partnering with Oscilloscope to introduce Cecilia’s story and her sumptuous cooking to a new generation of foodies.”

image l to r: Cecilia Chiang, Alice Waters in Soul of a Banquet via San Francisco Film Society

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The documentary REMOTE AREA MEDICAL, directed by Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman, has set a Spring 2014 release date courtesy of Cinedigm. Remote Area Medical documents three days in April 2012, nearly 2000 Americans waited in the parking lot of Bristol, Tennessee’s massive NASCAR speedway to receive free medical, dental, and vision care provided by the volunteer organization Remote Area Medical, the pioneer of no-cost pop-up health care clinics. 

By many estimates, more than 45 million Americans are without health insurance, which means they don’t get access to basic preventative medical care, much less coverage for catastrophic health events. Problems that should be easily rectified under regular care go untreated for years and become chronic, affecting quality of life and sometimes leading to serious illness.

Remote Area Medical follows a group of volunteer healthcare providers who organize a pop-up clinic of the same name at a NASCAR speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. Over three long days in April of 2012, the dedicated staff attempts to give treatment to 2,000 folks from the surrounding communities who cannot otherwise afford it, for conditions ranging in magnitude from new dentures to diabetes and cancer. Throughout the film, it remains clear that while the Remote Area Medical team is making a big difference, many of the treatments rendered are just scratching the surface. While some folks receive life-changing new prescriptions for eyeglasses and crucial diagnoses of life-threatening illnesses, others are forced to triage the most immediately painful of their ailments and hope they can hold out until the next free clinic, or until they can scrape together some kind of coverage. However, without this effort, these working poor Americans would be left to completely slip through the cracks, helpless in the face of outrageous and ever-escalating healthcare costs.

Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman’s film forces us to confront a crisis in our own backyard, but eschews the politics of greed behind the crisis for a moving portrait of those affected. This heartfelt and carefully crafted film immerses us in this weekend-long struggle to make a difference for those who need it, and take a small step towards rectifying a tragic injustice. (J. Scott Braid) [ via Maryland Film Festival ]

http://youtu.be/fP4bQ7U0BW8

via Indiewire

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Pan Nalin’s feature documentary FAITH CONNECTIONS which had its World Premiere at the 2014 Toronto FIlm Festival, and the U.S. Premiere scheduled for this week at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, will be released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber. In Faith Connections, filmmaker Pan Nalin travels to Kumbh Mela, one of the world’s most extraordinary religious events. There, he encounters remarkable men of mind and meditation, some facing an inextricable dilemma; to embrace the world or to renounce it. FAITH CONNECTIONS explores such diverse and deeply moving stories as a young runaway kid, a Sadhu, a mother desperately looking for her lost son, a yogi who is raising an abandoned baby, and an ascetic who keeps his calm by smoking cannabis – all connected by one faith against the spectacular display of devotion.

A spectacular exploration of varied paths of devotion that converge at one of the world’s most extraordinary religious events — the Kumbh Mela — Pan Nalin’s thoughtful documentary is a genuinely spiritual journey.Precious few films bring genuine curiosity and reverence to the subject of spirituality. Fewer still approach the subject with anything like the diligence of Faith Connections, a spectacular, openhearted documentary that explores the frontiers of devotion.

Kumbh Mela is a sprawling religious event that occurs once every three years at one of four rotating locations. It is the world’s largest gathering, a destination for some 100 million Hindu pilgrims. Indian director Pan Nalin visited Kumbh Mela and found within that impossible throng of travellers the stories that make up Faith Connections. Nalin’s many subjects include naked holy men, taciturn policemen, desperate pilgrims in search of missing family members, a yogi ascetic who took it upon himself to raise an abandoned baby, and another who explains the usefulness of pot-smoking as a method of renouncing the world. But no single subject is more compelling — and heart-rending — than nine-year-old Kishan Tiwari, a tobacco chewing runaway who sometimes half jokingly claims he wants to grow up to be a Mafia Don. In more serious moments, Kishan says his real ambition is to be a sadhu, or wandering monk.

Nalin complements his collection of personal narratives with images rife with mystery and beauty: portraits of hands and faces, vistas of busy footbridges receding into the hazy distance, and bodies performing seemingly impossible contortions. Faith Connections gives us glimpses of lives lived in pursuit of closer proximity to God — and each of those glimpses is itself a startling vision to behold.  [ via Toronto International Film Festival ]

http://youtu.be/eGKOLvyPl1U

via Screen Daily

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Tom’s Restaurant was the locale that inspired Suzanne Vega’s 1987 song “Tom’s Diner” but it is probably more known for its exterior which became famous worldwide thanks to the popular sitcom Seinfeld,  since Jerry Seinfeld’s and his friends regularly gathered to eat and chat at the diner. However, Tom’s Restaurant is a diner located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Frequented by artists, musicians, comedians, students and faculty of nearby Columbia University, it has been owned and operated by the Greek-American family of Minas Zoulis since the 1940s.

The documentary highlights past and present owners, clientèle and pop culture references. When President Barack Obama was a student at Columbia, he frequently used to eat at Tom’s Restaurant, and Senator John McCain often ate at Tom’s when he visited his daughter Meghan when she was a student at Columbia. 

http://youtu.be/7mphrlxJl5k

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Netflix has released the trailer for the Mitt Romney documentary, “MITT,” scheduled to premiere exclusively online on Friday, January 24, 2014. The Netflix original documentary,  provides an intimate, rarely seen, behind-the-scenes look at a candidate running for the presidency.

From director Greg Whiteley (“New York Doll,” “Resolved”) and executive producer Seth Gordon (“Undefeated,” “The King of Kong”), “Mitt,” which will make its feature debut at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival as the Salt Lake City Gala on Friday, January 17th, follows Romney’s presidential aspirations beginning Christmas 2006 to his initial run to become the Republican nominee in 2008 and through his Presidential concession speech in 2012. Given unprecedented access by Mitt and his family, Whiteley travels alongside the campaign through interactions with potential voters, preparations for the debates, personal moments with his family, and concluding with final presidential election night results.“It feels like a full circle moment to premiere this movie at Sundance,” said filmmaker, Greg Whiteley. “I first met and filmed the Romney family in Park City in 2006 as they gathered to discuss whether Mitt should run for President. Over the next 7 years I couldn’t believe I was filming inside rooms and situations I had no business being in. Now that I’ve finished I couldn’t be more pleased to share this experience with audiences around the world through Netflix.”

http://youtu.be/rLHxbemvpxY

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Netflix has released the trailer for its original documentary, “THE SQUARE,” described as a riveting, deeply human chronicle of the Egyptian protest movement from director/producer Jehane Noujaim (“Control Room”; “Startup.com”; “Rafea: Solar Mama”) and producer Karim Amer (“Rafea: Solar Mama”). THE SQUARE is set to premiere exclusively on Netflix territories on January 17, 2014.

Winner of this year’s Best Documentary Award at 2013 International Documentary Awards, the Best Documentary at the Dubai International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival Documentary People’s Choice Award and the Audience Award at the Montreal International Documentary Festival, “The Square” is an epic documentary that tells the behind-the-headlines story of the Egyptian Revolution through the eyes of young activists who have sought for the last two years to build a better Egypt.  An earlier version of “The Square” won the Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film was also an Official Selection at the 2013 New York Film Festival.

The film captures the immediacy and intensity of the protests in Tahrir Square from the 2011 overthrow of military leader Hosni Mubarak through the ousting of Mohammed Morsi in 2013, providing a kaleidoscopic, visceral portrait of the events as they unfold before Magdy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khalid Abdalla, an Egyptian actor who played the lead in “The Kite Runner” and the charismatic Ahmed, whose poetic storytelling carries the narrative. Armed with nothing more than cameras, social media, deep consciousness, and a resolute commitment to change, these young revolutionaries give us a front-line perspective of the ongoing struggle fought with new weapons.

http://youtu.be/6eWBmVprInQ

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Amir Ramses’ award-winning controversial documentary film JEWS OF EGYPT from the 21st Annual New York African Diaspora International Film Festival, will be released in the U.S. by ArtMattan Films.  Banned in Egypt for a year by Egyptian authorities, JEWS OF EGYPT is described as a documentary that captures fragments of the lives of the Egyptian Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century until their second grand exodus after the tripartite attack of 1956 

With this film, director Amir Ramses attempts to understand the change in the identity of the Egyptian society that turned from a society full of tolerance and acceptance of one another to a rejection of the minorities. 

The film asks the question: “How did the Jews of Egypt turn in the eyes of Egyptians from partners in the same country to enemies?” 

http://youtu.be/cYFwtgeOypQ

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Oprah Winfrey recently held a private LA screening of a documentary she’s executive producing called RUNNING FROM CRAZY, directed by two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, American Dream). The film, which goes behind the long history of mental illness and suicide in the famed Hemingway family, is currently in theaters in select cities and will air on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network in 2014. 

Hailed as one of the most distinguished families in American literature, the Hemingways have always exposed their brilliance while often living in the shadows of deep emotional struggle. Two-time Academy Award winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple’s newest documentary focuses on Mariel Hemingway, a granddaughter of the legendary writer Ernest, as she explores her family’s disturbing history of mental illness and suicide. As a child, Mariel grew up on the Hemingway family farm in Idaho, the same place her famous grandfather took his own life months before she was born. The youngest of the three sisters, Mariel followed her older sister Margaux into acting and modeling, while her oldest sister Muffet struggled with mental illness and drifted in and out of mental hospitals. Kopple’s bold film intertwines haunting archival footage of the three Hemingway sisters with scenes from Mariel’s life today as she seeks to live a rigorously healthy lifestyle to combat what appears to be a difficult family birthright. Mariel’s courageous journey of introspection and reflection allows her to view her family that has shaped her life through new eyes and, for the first time, strive for peace and acceptance.

Image: (L-R) Sheri Salata, president of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network and Harpo Studios; Oprah Winfrey, chairman and CEO of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network and Harpo Studios; Barbara Kopple, filmmaker and Mariel Hemingway at the LA premiere screening of “Running From Crazy.”

Courtesy: OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network

http://youtu.be/kfGYqdTAxEk 

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DOCUMENTED, a feature-length film that explores the life – and journey out of the shadows – led by undocumented immigrant and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas, will premiere on CNN/U.S. in the second quarter of 2014 following its World Premiere at the  2013 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) and its theatrical distribution in the United States.  DOCUMENTED is written and directed by Vargas, with technology entrepreneur Sean Parker, Matthew Hiltzik (“Paper Clips”), Scott Budnick (“The Hangover” series), and philanthropist Liz Simons as executive producers.

“Immigration, to me, is not a political issue, it’s not a Latino or Asian issue – it’s an American story,” said writer-director Jose Antonio Vargas.  “The film is in honor of 11 million undocumented immigrants – many of us Americans in all but papers.  And, the film is dedicated to parents everywhere who dream of better futures for their children.  It is a privilege to be associated with CNN Films in bringing DOCUMENTED to television,” Vargas said.

Filmmaker Vargas began working on the documentary shortly before “outing” himself as undocumented in a ground-breaking New York Times Magazine essay, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.”  Vargas then traveled around America, telling his story in solidarity with the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.  As he connected with his subjects through the similarities of their journeys, particularly those who, like Vargas, came to the United States as children, his personal reflections compelled him to reconnect with his mother, whom he had not seen in 20 years.

In 2008, Vargas was awarded a Pulitzer as part of the team of Washington Post journalists who reported on the 2007 shooting massacre at Virginia Tech University.  His own immigrant journey began at age 12 when he was sent to the United States from the Philippines by his mother to live with his grandparents in Mountain View, Calif.  After attending San Francisco State University, he pursued a print journalism career – landing jobs at newspapers in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, DC for the Post – all the while, managing to keep his true citizenship status a secret.

“We have followed Jose’s story closely since 2011 and are very pleased we will be able to offer U.S. viewers a window into the experiences of recent immigrants through his story.  Jose also reports this story from a journalist’s point of view – which makes it a great fit for distribution on our network,” said Amy Entelis, senior vice president for talent and content development for CNN Worldwide.

 http://youtu.be/w7F8uw9hw_A

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The basketball documentary LENNY COOKE which World Premiere earlier this year at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival will open in theaters on December 6th, 2013.   In the documentary, filmmaking brothers Joshua and Benny Safdie take a candid look and track the unfulfilled destiny of a man for whom superstardom was only out of reach.

 In 2001, Lenny Cooke was the most hyped high school basketball player in the country, ranked above future greats LeBron James, Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony. In an era when high school stars were forgoing college hoops in favor of the potential multi-million dollar contracts promised in the NBA draft, Lenny was supposed to be the next superstar. He had the world at his fingertips. But over a decade later, while his peers are taking home MVP awards and championship trophies, Lenny has never played a minute in the NBA. What went wrong? 

With incredible access to Lenny’s story as it unfolded over the past decade, filmmaking brothers Joshua and Benny Safdie follow Lenny from his run-down home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to the New Jersey suburbs where he spent his high school career through to the present day, with the friends and family who shared in his dreams and aspirations. Lenny Cooke is a quintessentially American story about dreaming big, the fickle nature of sports celebrity and the unfulfilled destiny of a man for whom superstardom was only just out of reach.  

LENNY COOKE marks the first feature length documentary by the Safdie brothers, who received the John Cassavetes Award at The Independent Spirit Awards for DADDY LONGLEGS.   DADDY LONGLEGS premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as did their first feature THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED.  

The film was executive produced by two time NCAA champion and Chicago Bull Joakim Noah.

http://youtu.be/ne61w4R20QE

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LETTERS TO JACKIE: REMEMBERING PRESIDENT KENNEDY, the acclaimed documentary about JFK’s presidency which premiered at 2013 AFI DOCS film festival, will air at 9/8c on Sunday, November 17, 2013 on TLC. Directed and written by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Bill Couturié, the film features 18 stars, including Anne Hathaway, Bérénice Bejo, Michelle Williams, Kirsten Dunst and Chris Cooper, reading from letters sent to Jacqueline Kennedy in the days following the loss of John F. Kennedy. 

LETTERS TO JACKIE: REMEMBERING PRESIDENT KENNEDY is based on the book “Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation” by Ellen Fitzpatrick. For two months after President Kennedy’s assassination, the White House received more than 800,000 letters for the first lady, who lost her husband and the father of her children. In this special two-hour event, selections from this collection are read by celebrities to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. Readers include: Berenice Bejo, Demian Bichir, Jessica Chastain, Chris Cooper, Viola Davis, Zooey Deschanel, Kirsten Dunst, Anne Hathaway, Allison Janney, John Krasinski, Melissa Leo, Laura Linney, Frances McDormand, Chlo Grace Moretz, Mark Ruffalo, Octavia Spencer, Hailee Steinfeld, Channing Tatum, Betty White, Michelle Williams.

http://youtu.be/YYeV-F5IMi8

 images via TLC

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