Documentary

The documentary LEWD & LASCIVIOUS had its sold out World Premiere at the 2013 FRAMELINE LGBT Film Festival in San Francisco. LEWD & LASCIVIOUS directed by Dr. Jallen Rix documents police harassment and public abuse on New Year’s Day 1965 of a gay and lesbian Mardi Gras Costume Ball attendees and how it changed the Gay civil rights landscape in San Francisco.

According to the filmmakers, long before the rainbow flag, gay pride parades and even before “Stonewall” there was an incident in 1965 San Francisco that very few people know about. This critical event spotlighted in the film was actually what helped turned the tide on police brutality and gay bashing in the City By The Bay.

The filmmakers are seeking major distribution of the documentary so they can bring this timely piece about the LGBT struggle for equality, to the broadest audience possible. “Hopefully soon, we will be picked up by one of the giants like HBO, LOGOS, or BRAVO,” added Director Dr. Rix.

But first, the filmmakers are running a Kickstarter campaign to complete the production of the film. “Our friends and families have supported us in substantial ways up to this point,” said Director Rix. “We are confident with the exposure of Kickstarter and the ability it gives us to reach multitudes of people who understand how important our history is and what part this story played in the freedoms we enjoy today, we will raise the remainder of the funds we need by our deadline on July 23rd.”

Lewd & Lascivious plan is to be in as many festivals as possible and to share the story with as many people as possible.

http://youtu.be/ISmuXFsKSEM

via press release

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The punk roc documentary THE PUNK SINGER directed by Sini Anderson will be released in the Fall 2013 by Sundance Selects. The Punk Singer: The Documentary about Kathleen Hanna focuses on Kathleen Hanna credited as a founder of the third wave of feminism and Riot Grrrl movement.

Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the punk band Bikini Kill and dance-punk trio Le Tigre, rose to national attention as the reluctant but never shy voice of the riot grrrl movement. She became one of the most famously outspoken feminist icons, a cultural lightning rod. Her critics wished she would just shut-up, and her fans hoped she never would. So in 2005, when Hanna stopped shouting, many wondered why. Through 20 years of archival footage and intimate interviews with Hanna, “THE PUNK SINGER” takes viewers on a fascinating tour of contemporary music and offers a never-before-seen view into the life of this fearless leader. SXSW

http://youtu.be/xuhtI_Kgn3E

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Sundance Selects will release in the U.S., Hilla Medalia’s dance documentary “DANCING IN JAFFA,” which premiered earlier this year at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. Sundance Selects did not announce a release date, but a Fall 2013 date is expected.

DANCING IN JAFFA follows ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine as he returns to his hometown Jaffa, Israel expecting his old home but greeted by new racial animosity. A firm believer that dance can build self-esteem and social awareness, Dulaine brings his popular Dancing Classrooms program to 5 ethnically diverse Jaffa schools. Dulaine sends the best children to a dance competition, boldly pairing Palestinian and Jewish children and challenging the children’s and their family’s beliefs.

Executive producers of DANCING IN JAFFA include Morgan Spurlock & Jeremy Chilnick, La Toya Jackson & Jeffré Phillips and Nigel Lythgoe. 

http://youtu.be/DDBkUTHykoQ

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MISS YOU CAN DO IT directed by award-winning documentary director Ron Davis will premeire on HBO on June 24th. MISS YOU CAN DO IT chronicles Abbey Curran, Miss Iowa USA 2008 and the first woman with a disability to compete at the Miss USA Pageant, and eight girls with various physical and intellectual disabilities as the girls participate in Abbey’s Miss You Can Do It Pageant. Abbey founded the annual Miss You Can Do It Pageant in 2004 and girls and their families travel from all around the country to participate in this one night where their inner beauty and abilities reign.

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age two, Abbey Curran never accepted her physical limitations. She admits her disability comes with lifelong challenges, but none that hold her back, playing sports (she “just falls more”) and driving a car with a special steering wheel and brake. Curran’s resilience and determination to pursue her dreams led her to become the first woman with disabilities to compete in the Miss USA Pageant in 2008.

Miss You Can Do It highlights the extraordinary work Curran is doing with the pageant she founded. Curran and a team of enthusiastic volunteers give participants a chance to be celebrated for all they are inside, not just defined by what the world sees on the outside. For one special weekend the young girls, along with family and friends, some who have traveled far distances, spend time in an oasis of fun, femininity and celebration.

No one leaves the pageant empty-handed, with each girl receiving a special award. The real winners of the pageant might be the families and friends, who proudly cheer them on from the audience.

Among the girls and families profiled are:

– Five-year-old Tierney, who gleefully zips around in a powered wheelchair in excited anticipation of the pageant, while her mom explains that she’s never walked and will progressively lose movement throughout her body. Tierney has spinal muscular atrophy type II, a slow deterioration of all muscles.

– Natasha, 14, who was born with cerebral palsy and suffers from seizures, and Kenna, her younger sister, who has intellectual disabilities. Despite these challenges, “they are a happy-go-lucky family,” according to their proud parents.

– Precocious six-year-old Ali, who has four best friends, one mischievous and imaginary, and three in their 60s: Judy, Judy and Rock, who enjoy watching Ali’s physical therapy sessions on a horse, which helps with her balance. Ali was born with spina bifida, a hole in the spine that caused paralysis of her lower body.

– Teyanna, a smart and creative preteen, whose mother says that after she was born, a nurse suggested they put her in an institution, but they refused and raised her at home. Teyanna has speech difficulty due to cerebral palsy.

– Seven-year-old Daleney, whose parents say her biggest frustration is her lack of independence. Still, she never shows it, even if she takes 15 minutes to tie her shoelaces. Daleney is a quadriplegic with a spastic form of cerebral palsy, causing her to have too much muscle tone and making her limbs cross her midline when she walks.

– Tiny Meg, who is shy, except when she’s with her brothers. Wanting Meg to have a sister to connect with, her parents adopted Alina, a girl from Ukraine. Both Meg and Alina have Down syndrome.

http://youtu.be/LeKQRcyNuO8

via HBO Docs

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The filmmakers of a documentary about Venus and Serena Williams face a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Tennis Association. In the lawsuit filed Friday, the USTA claims copyright infringement after the filmmakers of VENUS AND SERENA allegedly used unlicensed video footage from the U.S. Open without permission.

The lawsuit states that because the filmmakers never signed the standard agreement or made any payment, the USTA was led to believe the “project had been abandoned..”

According to The New York Times, the unlicensed video footage included an outburst by Serena Williams in the 2009 Open when she yelled obscenities and used threatening language against a line judge.

The documentary was originally released on iTunes in April and in theaters in May. The film is also scheduled to begin airing on Showtime on July 1.

Filmmakers Maiken Baird and Michelle Major have dismissed the accusations, calling the lawsuit a shameful effort to interfere. “In trying to censor this film about the Williams sisters,” they told The New York Times, “the U.S.T.A. is simply making up an agreement that never existed — we shot footage at the U.S. Open with the U.S.T.A.’s permission and of course never agreed to pay them for our own work.”

http://youtu.be/YvMWjtQN5HU

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The Weinstein Company released the trailer for the upcoming documentary “SALINGER,” about the notoriously reclusive “Catcher in the Rye” author J.D. Salinger. 

Directed by Shane Solerno who co-wrote Oliver Stone’s 2012 “Savages,” SALINGER features interviews with 150 subjects including Salinger’s friends, colleagues and members of his inner circle who have never spoken on the record before as well as film footage, photographs and other material that has never been seen.  Additionally, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal and Pulitzer Prize winners A. Scott Berg and Elizabeth Frank talk about Salinger’s influence on their lives, their work and the broader culture.  The film is the first work to get beyond the Catcher in the Rye author’s meticulously built up wall:  his childhood, painstaking work methods, marriages, private world and the secrets he left behind after his death in 2010.

The Weinstein Company anticipates a September 6 release date.

http://youtu.be/5IPsCA6ttbc

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[caption id="attachment_4116" align="alignnone" width="550"]OXYANA[/caption]

Sean Dunne makes his feature-film-directing debut with the documentary, OXYANA which looks at the OxyContin epidemic in the West Virginia town of Oceana. OXYANA had it’s world premiere earlier this year at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, where the film received a Special Jury Mention in the World Documentary Competition, as well as a nod for Best New Documentary Director for filmmaker Sean Dunne. OXYANA will be released by the filmmakers for sale starting July 1, 2013.

Struggling with poverty and unemployment after the demise of its only industry—the mining trade that had historically nourished the local economy—Oceana, West Virginia, has become the epicenter of a drug scourge devastating towns across the country and leaving many good and honest communities forsaken. Known among its residents as “Oxyana” after the OxyContin epidemic quietly washing over this sleepy Appalachian town, Oceana is a tragically real example of the insidious spread of drug dependency in the United States today. 

[caption id="attachment_4117" align="alignnone" width="550"]OXYANA[/caption]

Set against the eerie backdrop of abandoned coal mines within the lush West Virginia landscape, to the melody of Deer Tick’s haunting score, Sean Dunne’s unflinchingly intimate documentary probes the lives of Oceana’s afflicted. He turns the camera on its many residents, allowing them to tell their stories in their own words and homes to illuminate how their unique stories have led them each to the same tragic inevitability of pill addiction. Dunne eschews the high-drama mode in which drug dependency stories are often framed in favor of a simple, sympathetic immersion in the day-to-day experience of a town living in the harsh grip of addiction.

“We recognized when we set out to make OXYANA just how sensitive the subject matter was, but once we started showing the film at festivals, we saw an urgent need to get this message out to a wider audience,” says Dunne. “By distributing the film ourselves through our website, we can quickly get the film to those who want and need to see it and hopefully spark a dialogue about prescription drug abuse in this country.”

Sean Dunne has directed five previous short documentaries, including The Archive (nominated for an Emmy in 2011), Man in Van, The Bowler, Stray Dawg and American Juggalo (named documentary of the year for 2011 by the website, Short of the Week). Hailed as the “master of fringe Americana” for his ability to realistically capture half-mythical corners of the country, Dunne’s approach to documentary is to give his subjects the ease and opportunity to find their own voices and his viewers the freedom to form their own conclusions.

http://youtu.be/DW90pk0_NVs

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[caption id="attachment_4112" align="alignnone" width="550"]ENZO AVITABILE MUSIC LIFE[/caption]

ENZO AVITABILE MUSIC LIFE, directed by Jonathan Demme will open theatrically at Lincoln Plaza and a downtown theater in New York on October 18, and at the Royal and other Los Angeles area Laemmle theaters on October 25.  A national release will follow.

Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme (Silence Of The Lambs, Philadelphia, Stop Making Sense), turns his camera on Enzo Avitabile, a renowned Neapolitan saxophonist and singer/songwriter. This project is the fruit of the two artists’ reciprocal esteem for one another. It is also the result of many years spent following the musical artistry of Enzo Avitabile, a well-known figure on the world music scene recognized for his passion for research and experimentation.  

With this documentary, one of the world’s great directors tells us not just about the music of a singular artist in its fusion of Neapolitan world music (and especially Arab music, with performances by Naseer Shamma and Palestinian singer Amal Murkus) and jazz, but also of a city, Naples, with all of its treasures and contradictions.  The film follows Enzo, as he creates amazing new music with collaborators from all over the world, including Eliades Ochoa of Buena Vista Social Club, Naseer Shamma, Daby Touré and Trilok Gurtu. 

Music has always played a decisive role in Demme’s films, which is evident in all his works for the big screen. Over the years, this passion has been expressed in various video clips, and above all, documentaries (The Pretenders, New Order, Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young), which received high critical acclaim by the public, and film and music critics alike.

http://youtu.be/bMY73xNXDJk

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[caption id="attachment_4105" align="alignnone" width="550"]TAPIA[/caption]

Rapper, actor, entertainment mogul Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and boxing promoter Lou DiBella have acquired the rights to TAPIA, the documentary based on the life of five-time world champion boxer, Johnny Tapia. TAPIA is set to world premiere as part of the Documentary Competition at the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival on June 15.

TAPIA chronicles the personal and professional life of the boxer, beginning with his poor childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The film explores the glory of his punishing ring prowess and five world titles in three weight classes, forever mired by personal demons: his mother’s brutal kidnapping and murder when he was 8 years old, and his drug addiction, mental illness and near death experiences. Using first person narration from Tapia himself, archival footage, and personal photos, director Eddie Alcazar paints an intimate picture of the fighter and the man.

TAPIA follows the champ’s winding road through victories, downfalls and redemption. Director Alcazar spent many hours with Tapia filming the biopic, just weeks before the fighter’s tragic death at age 45. Tapia’s last interviews now serve as the heartbeat of Alcazar’s revealing documentary. In it, the soft-spoken champ opens up about his ‘vida loca’ and the unending pain of his mother’s murder, which led to glory in the ring and struggle throughout his life.

http://youtu.be/yB3Oy3cEu_4

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Husband and wife filmmaking team Andy Heathcote and Heike Bachelier have started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to self-fund the UK cinema release this summer of their documentary THE MOO MAN, a surprise hit at film festivals including this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Utah and London. The Moo Man will also be playing at the Sheffield Doc/Fest on 12, 15 and 16 June.

Steve Hook is a maverick farmer with a small dairy herd of fifty-five cows who is determined to keep his family farm in East Sussex small, organic and sustainable.  To achieve this he sells raw milk directly to the consumer via door-to-door delivery and at farmer’s markets rather than selling to supermarkets at a loss.

The Moo Man follows Steve and his herd as they deal with the hardships and issues faced by many British farmers today at a time where one family farm in the UK is closing everyday.

Charismatic and caring, Steve has a rare relationship with his animals, a bond that most of us have forgotten still exists which makes The Moo Man an endearing, intimate movie that tackles some surprisingly big issues. 

Director Andy Heathcote commented: “As soon as we met Steve Hook we knew we had to share his story.  At a time when we have all learned not to take for granted what we eat every day and where it comes from, we have found a true advocate for organic, healthy and sustainable food production.  Anyone who cares about the quality of the food they eat and provide to their families should see The Moo Man and take comfort that there are farmers like Steve who are working tirelessly every day to make a difference.”

Co-Director Heike Bachlier commented; “Distributing a film into cinemas costs money, and it has to be done properly.  Through Kickstarter, we are hoping to raise £20,000 to make a release campaign possible but we have only until the 12 June to get this in place. Any extra money we raise will go into even more marketing for more screenings and events around the country.”

http://youtu.be/7G6qNG0ZRvA 

via press release

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The hip hop history documentary film “I WANT MY NAME BACK” starring Master Gee & Wonder Mike of The Sugarhill Gang, the rap group behind the mega-hit “Rapper’s Delight,” will be released on DVD and digital platforms on June 11, 2013.

” More than 30 years after the historic recording of the iconic mega-hit “Rapper’s Delight,” Master Gee & Wonder Mike come back to reclaim their identities and rightful place in hip hop history in the documentary film “I WANT MY NAME BACK.” One Village Entertainment, a division of Image Entertainment, and part of Robert Johnson’s RLJ Entertainment will be releasing the film on DVD and digital platforms on June 11, 2013.

“I WANT MY NAME BACK” highlights the rise, fall, and rise again of original members of The Sugarhill Gang, Michael Wright (aka Wonder Mike) and Guy O’Brien (aka Master Gee). One of the most influential songs in the history of the music industry and #2 in Rolling Stone’s Top Hip Hop Songs of all time, “Rapper’s Delight” was the first commercial hip hop release, forever changing the face of the music industry. “Rapper’s Delight” is still, to this day, the number one selling single in hip hop history. The group followed up their first hit with another song still played today called “Apache”.  Their first three albums went platinum.  While this success should have cemented the legacy and careers of the original members, reality tells a much different story–one that most people, including those in the hip hop world, are not even aware of.  A story of unprecedented identity theft, copyright and trademark violations, Master Gee and Wonder Mike fight a more than 30 year battle against their label to get their names and legacy back.  The film also features Grandmaster Caz (The Cold Crush Brothers), Melle Mel (Grandmaster Flash), and Vinnie and Treach (Naughty by Nature).  “I Want My Name Back” is the journey of two men who want what was taken from them: their names, their legacy and their music! “

via press release

http://youtu.be/L-W1muPO8rg

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MUSICWOOD, a feature documentary including special performances and interviews with Yo La Tengo, Steve Earle, The Antlers, Kaki King and Lambchop, will screen at music festivals across the US in advance of the film’s theatrical release.  The tour kicks off at Bonnaroo on June 15 before travelling to Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival and Newport Folk Festival, with additional dates to be added.   MUSICWOOD opens in Portland, Oregon on August 9 and Juneau, Alaska on August 23.  

MUSICWOOD, directed and produced by Maxine Trump, is described as an adventure-filled journey and political thriller with music at its heart.  The film follows a group of the most famous guitar-makers in the world – Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars, Chris Martin of Martin Guitars and Dave Berryman of Gibson Guitars – as they venture into the remote Alaskan rainforest on a mission to protect the Sitka Spruce tree.  Essential for the creation of high-quality acoustic guitars, old-growth Sitka Spruce are disappearing at an alarming rate as Native American loggers are clear-cutting enormous strips of the Tongass National Forest. 

Set against the breathtaking beauty of Southeast Alaska and with a soundtrack featuring acoustic virtuosos including Yo La Tengo, Kaki King, Steve Earle and more, MUSICWOOD reveals a culture clash of staggering proportions.  The film captures Native American loggers, corporate CEOs and the radical environmental group Greenpeace, as they battle over one the world’s last pristine rainforests.  The result is a complex, heartbreaking and sometimes humorous battle over natural resources in which the future of the acoustic guitar hangs in the balance. 

http://youtu.be/RzgN7M6m5Yc

via: MUSICWOOD

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