Film-Forward

Documentary

Our Last Tango

Director German Kral marvelously layers reenactments in his documentary of tango superstars María Nieves and Juan Carlos Copes, offering a a tribute to two worthy artists and a depiction of what happens when the music goes silent.

Here Come the Videofreex

In 1969, a group of hippies interested in new technology, but with no regular access to equipment, were given a budget and video cameras by the CBS network—see how the revolution was televised.

The Brainwashing of My Dad

This film examines the effects of Fox News through a highly personal lens, with filmmaker Jen Senko documenting how her father was transformed from a Kennedy Democrat to a certified Rush Limbaugh “ditto head.”

Thank You for Playing

Joel Green is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at the age of 12 months and given just three months to live. His father, Ryan, a professional programmer drawn to video game design, creates a project that serves as a coping mechanism for himself and a memorial to Joel’s life.

They Will Have to Kill Us First

They Will Have to Kill Us First tracks the various paths taken by musicians exiled from northern Mali after Islamist Jihadist have taken over.

Rolling Papers

On January 1, 2014, Colorado became the first state in the nation to make recreational marijuana sales the law of the land. No longer were people required to go through the motions of obtaining bogus prescriptions for medicinal marijuana. Now, healthy people can just walk into a store and buy pot simply because they want […]

Requiem for the American Dream

Filmed over four years, the new documentary Requiem for the American Dream is the final, definitive long-form presentation of Noam Chomsky’s ideas on the interplay of power, capitalism, and democracy. Chomsky, arguably the foremost public intellectual of modern times, has been critiquing power and promoting democracy and solidarity for more than five decades in countless […]

Troublemakers

In the late 1960s, a handful of artists garnered attention for using land as both subject and material. Installation pieces featuring rocks and dirt started cropping up in galleries, and much larger works were created in remote areas of the American Southwest. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art casts light on this moment in art […]

Sound of Redemption

Spoiler alert: Unlike several of this past year’s other touted musician bio-documentaries—Amy, Janis: Little Blue Girl, and Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck—saxophonist supreme Frank Morgan did not overdose on drugs. Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story has resonances with the usual Behind the Music tales of success, addiction, recovery, and comeback. However, the strong […]