Films

Compelling Documentary WHAT HAUNTS US by Paige Goldberg Tolmach to Premiere at 2017 DOC NYC

The documentary What Haunts Us by Paige Goldberg Tolmach, tells the story about the 1979 class of Porter Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina that graduated 49 boys. Within the last 35 years, six of these boys committed suicide. Filmmaker Tolmach graduated from this school and now digs deep with the film in discovering the dark secrets that have lingered and haunted this community that she so loves. What Haunts Us will premiere at the 2017 DOC NYC Film Festival on Monday Nov 13th. The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ William Faulkner This is the central idea in What Haunts Us, Paige Goldberg Tolmach documentary about the horrific nightmare that happened at her seemingly perfect high school…that NO ONE wants to talk about to this day. When Paige hears about the suicide of yet another former schoolmate, she begins to take a deeper look at the past and starts to ask questions that almost no one in Charleston wants to answer. As she digs deeper, she begins to hear the awful truth about a beloved teacher who methodically manipulated and molested many of his students for years. It becomes her obsession to understand how it could have happened in plain view and, as it turns out, with the knowledge of the school. Her obsession becomes a story about our obligation to speak up and protect those who can’t protect themselves. It’s a story about how silence is complicity and about finding the courage to unearth what lies below the surface in order to shine a light on the truth of our own past.
Read more
VIDEO: Watch Trailer for Joyce Wong’s Indie Dark Comedy WEXFORD PLAZA, Opens in Theaters on October 27

Joyce Wong’s directorial debut Wexford Plaza, that premiered at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival, will open in theaters on October 27. The subtle, yet powerful and modern coming of age story featuring breakout performances by newcomers Reid Asselstine and Darrel Gamotin, went on to win the award for Best Narrative at CAAMFest. Wexford Plaza is a slice-of-life dark comedy about a lonely female security guard (Betty) who works at a dilapidated strip mall. Isolated and friendless, a glimmer of hope appears when a charming bartender shows Betty kindness, leading to an unexpected sexual encounter. Although Betty and her deadbeat paramour are well meaning in their intentions, their behavior ends up causing both of their lives to unravel. Wexford Plaza is about two losers who are earnestly trying to improve their condition, but ultimately become deluded by their dreams
Read more
VIDEO: Watch Trailer for Indie Thriller SWEET VIRGINIA, Opens in Theaters on November 7

IFC Films has released the trailer for the indie thriller Sweet Virginia, directed by Jamie M. Dagg and starring Jon Bernthal, Christopher Abbott, Imogen Poots, Rosemarie DeWitt and Odessa Young. The film which World Premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, will open theatrically in select cities on November 17th. A burglary-homicide rattles the residents of a small Alaska town, in particular two women made widows by the crime and their mutual friend, Sam, the proprietor of the local motor lodge. Sam is an outsider himself, a former rodeo champ all too happy to leave the jolt and violence of the ring behind. So when his guests prove unruly or a stranger reaches out to him, reluctance is his natural response. Secrets are revealed, violence increases, and the people in town act more unhinged. His hesitancy — and his willingness to move past it — becomes the lynchpin for his survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqZu5uxqLUE
Read more
Grateful Dead Documentary LONG STRANGE TRIP is Back in Theaters

Amazon Studios is rereleasing Long Strange Trip, Amir Bar-Lev’s critically acclaimed documentary about the Grateful Dead, in theaters on October 13th in Los Angeles and November 3rd in New York. The film has been nominated for two Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Best Director and Best Music Documentary. The film has been screened at over 20 film festivals around the globe beginning with its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and continues to be seen by fans worldwide through Amazon Prime. Directed by Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story) and executive produced by Martin Scorsese (No Direction Home: Bob Dylan), Long Strange Trip is the first full-length documentary to explore the fiercely independent vision, perpetual innovation, and uncompromising commitment to their audience that made the Bay Area band one of the most influential musical groups of their generation. Artfully assembling candid interviews with the band, road crew, family members and notable Deadheads, Bar-Lev reveals the untold history of The Dead and the freewheeling psychedelic subculture that sprouted up around it. The film also provides poignant insight into the psyche of late lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, whose disdain for authority clashed with his de facto leadership of the sprawling collective that kept the show on the road. With a soundtrack that captures some of the band’s most dynamic live performances, as well as unguarded offstage moments and never-before-seen interviews, footage and photos, Long Strange Trip explores The Dead’s singular experiment in radically eclectic music making. Much more than the “behind the music” backstory of an exceptionally talented and beloved group of musicians, the film is at once an inspiring tale of unfettered artistic expression, a heartfelt American tragedy and an incisive history of the rise and fall of 20th-century counterculture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzJFPlLdISo
Read more
BIG TIME, Portrait of Bjarke Ingels, Architect of 2 World Trade Center, to Premiere at DOC NYC | Trailer

Big Time is an intimate portrait of the Danish starchitect – Bjarke Ingels – the architect of the 2 World Trade Center, as he tries to balance his professional ambition and personal life. The film will have its NYC Premiere at the 2017 DOC NYC in Art + Design section on Wednesday, November 15, 2017. Big Time is spread over a period of six years while his architecture firm BIG works to complete their largest projects yet, the 2 World Trade Center and the New York skyscraper VIA 57W, which houses the newly opened multiplex Landmark at 57 West, where the film opens later this year for a week-long theatrical run. Director Kaspar Astrup Schröder is a self-taught visual artist and designer. Though based in Copenhagen, he often works in Asia. Has exhibited visual work and released music in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, New York, Shenzhen and Tokyo. His previous films THE INVENTION OF DR. NAKAMATS (2009) and MY PLAYGROUND (2010) were selected for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). RENT A FAMILY INC. (2012) was honored with a Golden Eye Award in the category Best International Documentary at Zürich International Film Festival. Astrup Schröder: “I wanted to convey architecture in a different, cinematic way. Bjarke’s business in New York evolved so quickly, it was as if he had put himself in the driver ’s seat in a train, which could never stop, and now he had to lay the tracks while managing the steering wheel. He ran into some health-related issues, and the pressure became even bigger. That’s when I started to feel that the film could be more universal and that it could also paint the greater picture of of how the little things in life – close relations, love and health – might be more important than we presume.”
Read more
20 Pound Nutrias Invade Louisiana in Documentary RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE | Trailer

Rodents Of Unusual Size takes us up-close into a large region south of New Orleans that survived hurricane Katrina and is now facing its latest threat—hordes of monstrous 20 pound rodents known as the nutria. The documentary by award winning filmmaking team Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer (Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea and Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone) & co-director Quinn Costello. The film will screen as part of 2017 DOC NYC at the IFC Film Center on November 15th at 7:15pm. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are one of the largest disappearing landmasses in the world and the voracious appetite of this curious and unexpected invasive species from South America is greatly accelerating coastal erosion, which in turn makes the area even more vulnerable to hurricanes. As the coastline disappears, the hunters and trappers, fishermen and shrimpers, storytellers and musicians that makes Louisiana a country unto itself are leaving en masse. Nonetheless, a stalwart few remain and are fighting back. Rodents Of Unusual Size tells the story of one such diehard, Thomas Gonzales, and his community of Delacroix Island, as they resist the invasion of the rodents. The state of Louisiana has started a program that pays a $5 bounty for every nutria tail collected, which has helped the effort, by encouraging former trappers to hunt the nutrias for their tails instead of the fur. Others have tried business ventures to harvest the nutria for their fur and meat, in hopes that by creating a demand for this sustainable resource, they could help protect the wetlands and fight back the rodents. And yet despite the havoc this invasive species has wrought on Southern Louisiana, it has also been embraced by the culture. The Audubon Zoo in New Orleans has opened a nutria exhibit, the local Triple-A baseball team has a nutria as a mascot, a fashion collective designs clothing made out of nutria promoting it as “sustainable fur” and even some Cajuns have nutria as pets. Through the offbeat and unexpected stories of the people confronting the nutria problem, the film confronts issues surrounding coastal erosion, the devastation following hurricanes, loss of culture and homeland, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Read more
Comedian Hari Kondabolu Confronts Minority Media Representation in THE PROBLEM WITH APU | Trailer

Brooklyn-based comedian Hari Kondabolu is the host of the popular podcast “Politically Re-Active” alongside W. Kamau Bell. In the new documentary, The Problem With Apu he tackles minority media representation and specifically Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian immigrant proprietor of the Kwik-E-Mart, a convenience store in Springfield – in the animated television series The Simpsons. In this highly-personal, insightful and timely exploration of minority media representation, Kondabolu speaks with prominent South Asian actors about the damaging legacy of Apu – who is voiced by a white actor with a heavily exaggerated, stereotypical Indian accent. Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn, Aasif Mandvi, Hasan Minjaj, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aparna Nancherla, Russell Peters, Sakina Jaffrey and Maulik Pancholy share poignant stories about their own experiences with Apu and the broader questions about the comedy and representation he evokes. With additional interviews with EGOT-winner Whoopi Goldberg, W. Kamau Bell, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Mallika Rao, and many more, The Problem With Apu takes a humorous look at how even a beloved television series can have a blind spot. The Problem With Apu directed by Michael Melamedoff will World Premiere at DOC NYC 2017 on Tuesday, November 14, 2017; and will make its television premiere on truTV Sunday, November 19 at 10PM ET/PT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGzvEqBvkP8
Read more
SAVING BRINTON, Documentary on Discovery of Cinematic Treasures of Barnstorming Movie Man | Trailer

Saving Brinton follows eccentric collector Mike Zahs who discovers the showreels of the man who brought the moving picture to the Heartland. He begins a journey to restore the legacy of America’s greatest barnstorming movie man and save these irreplaceable cinematic treasures from turning to dust. The documentary film, directed by Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburn, will make its NYC premiere at 2017 DOC NYC on November 13 and 14, 2017. The screenings of Saving Brinton are presented at DOC NYC with an additional 10-minute package of silent films from the collection with live narration by film subject Michael Zahs. Included among the shorts are films by Edison and the Lumière brothers as well as a rediscovered “lost film” from 1904 by George Méliés that premiered in October 2017 at the prestigious Pordenone Silent Film Festival. In a farmhouse basement on the Iowa countryside, eccentric collector Mike Zahs makes a remarkable discovery: the showreels of the man who brought the moving picture to America’s Heartland. Among the treasures: rare footage of President Teddy Roosevelt, the first moving images from Burma, a lost relic from magical effects godfather Georges Méliés. These are the films that introduced movies to the world. And they didn’t end up in Iowa by accident. Amid the old nitrate reels are the artifacts of William Franklin Brinton. From thousands of trinkets, handwritten journals, receipts, posters and catalogs emerges the story of an inventive farmboy who became America’s greatest barnstorming movieman. As Mike uncovers this hidden legacy, he begins a journey restore the Brinton name and return the films to big screen glory in the same small-town movie theater where Frank first turned on a projector over a century ago. By uniting community through a pride in their living history Mike embodies a welcome antidote to the breakneck pace of our disposable society. “Saving Brinton” is a portrait of this unlikely Midwestern folk hero, at once a meditation on living simply and a celebration of dreaming big.
Read more
SOUFRA, Inspirational Story of Refugee Entrepreneur, Mariam Shaar, to Premiere at DOC NYC

[caption id="attachment_25077" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Mariam Shaar in Soufra[/caption] The award-winning documentary film Soufra follows the inspirational story of intrepid social entrepreneur, Mariam Shaar – a refugee who has spent her entire life in the 69-year-old Burl El Barajneh refugee camp south of Beirut, Lebanon. Soufra, directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Morgan (Storied Streets, Waiting for Mamu), will have its North American Premiere at the DOC NYC Film Festival in New York on November 12th. [caption id="attachment_25078" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Manal Hassan and Maha Hajjaj vegetable shopping in SOUFRA[/caption] The film chronicles Mariam and a diverse team of fellow refugee women, from throughout the Middle East who share the camp as their home as they set out to change their fate by launching a catering company, “Soufra,” and then expanding its reach (thanks to an astonishing Kickstarter campaign), outside the camp with a food truck business. Together, they heal the wounds of war through the unifying power of food while taking their future into their own hands. Soufra is produced by Primetime Emmy®-winning filmmaker Kathleen Glynn (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, TV Nation), Rebelhouse President, Trevor Hall, Pilgrim Media Group President & CEO Craig Piligian, and executive produced by Academy Award®-winning actress Susan Sarandon.
Read more
Watch Trailer for Netflix Documentary JOAN DIDION: THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD Premiering at NY Film Fest

Ahead of its world premiere tonight at this year’s New York Film Festival, Netflix has released the trailer for the documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. The documentary launches globally on Netflix on October 27. Across more than 50 years of essays, novels, screenplays, and criticism, Joan Didion has been our premier chronicler of the ebb and flow of America’s cultural and political tides with observations on her personal – and our own – upheavals, downturns, life changes, and states of mind. In the intimate, extraordinary documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, actor and director Griffin Dunne unearths a treasure trove of archival footage and talks at length to his “Aunt Joan” about the eras she covered and the eventful life she’s lived, including partying with Janis Joplin in a house full of L.A. rockers; hanging in a recording studio with Jim Morrison; and cooking dinner for one of Charles Manson’s women for a magazine story. Didion guides us through the sleek literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s, when she wrote for Vogue; her return to her home state of California for two turbulent decades; the writing of her seminal books, including Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It as It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, and The White Album; her film scripts, including The Panic in Needle Park; her view of 1980s and ’90s political personalities; and the meeting of minds that was her long marriage to writer John Gregory Dunne. She reflects on writing about her reckoning with grief after Dunne’s death, in The Year of Magical Thinking (winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction), and the death of their daughter Quintana Roo, in Blue Nights. With commentary from friends and collaborators including Vanessa Redgrave, Harrison Ford, Anna Wintour, David Hare, Calvin Trillin, Hilton Als, and Susanna Moore, the most crucial voice belongs to Didion, one of the most influential American writers alive today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99NaRJQzXiM

Read more
Sam Pollard’s Latest Film MAYNARD Profiles Maynard Holbrook Jackson, First Black Mayor of Atlanta | Trailer

The documentary Maynard, directed by the prolific filmmaker Sam Pollard, has wrapped as the film enters post production in Atlanta, Georgia. He was Obama before Obama, Maynard Holbrook Jackson became first black Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia in 1973 and this film is an exploration into a man who had dreams and ambitions to be a public servant for his people seeing that it was the next logical step in the journey that had been started by Dr. King, and so many others who had blazed the trail during the years of horrific segregation. Maynard interviews include President Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, Vernon Jordan, Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Jesse Jackson, former Atlanta Mayor’s Sam Massel and Shirley Franklin, and current Mayor Kasim Reed to name a few. Directed by Academy Award nominee, Emmy winner and 4 time Peabody Award winner Sam Pollard (“Slavery by Another Name”, “Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me”, “Two Trains Runnin’”), Maynard is produced by Wendy Eley Jackson, Dolly Turner, and Winsome Sinclair with cinematography by Henry Adebonojo who worked on the Academy Award nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro”. Update: MAYNARD will World Premiere at 2017 DOC NYC on Thursday, November 16th, 2017.
Read more
HAITI MY LOVE is Haiti’s First Entry for Oscar Race for Best Foreign Film | Trailer

For it’s first submission ever, Haiti has selected Haiti, My Love (Ayiti Mon Amour) by Guetty Feli Cohen as its candidate for nomination in the foreign-language category of the 2018 Oscars. Haiti, My Love, an official selection of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, is set in post-earthquake Haiti, and invokes the country’s past and present with stories that intertwine and collide. A grieving young boy discovers he has a superpower. An old fisherman realizes the cure for his ailing wife can be found in the sea. A muse struggles to exit the story her author is penning. In Guetty Felin’s magical neorealist tale, these three stories combine to create a poetic portrait of the island nation Haiti. Set five years after the devastating 2010 earthquake, Felin’s film eschews the images that saturated screens after the disaster. While the pain of the destruction remains evident — in young Orphée’s grief over the loss of his father, in the rubble of decimated buildings, in ghostly images that float beneath the ocean’s surface — Felin refuses to tell a tale of victimhood. Instead, she places the island’s narrative back in the hands of Haitians whose lives aren’t reducible to headlines. And as her characters begin to heal, Felin suggests that the island will too. Felin taps into her past work in the documentary field, infusing the realities of modern-day Haiti with a lyrical touch. From its verité-style moments of Jaures the fisherman labouring by the beach to the theatrical scenes between muse Ama and her author, the film makes its fluid tonal shifts at a lulling, rhythmic pace. Shot on location with local actors and crew, Felin’s film is an important addition to the body of work coming out of Haiti’s burgeoning film scene. Ayiti Mon Amour doesn’t just mark the emergence of a distinct new directorial voice; it’s a key development in the evolution of a national cinema. TIFF
Read more