Frame by Frame combines vérité, interviews and never-before-seen archival footage to showcase four Afghan photojournalists documenting their war-torn country. The documentary opens with photojournalist Massoud Hossaini rushing to cover another suicide bombing and segues into historical television and radio reports over a montage of compelling historical photographs. This sets the scene of the country’s complex […]
Like MetLife and its commercial use of Snoopy, Laurie Anderson deploys her cute canine as an entry point to mull a subject people usually avoid thinking about: death. The depiction of the life and 2011 death of her rat terrier, Lolabelle, at first seems like those endless photos of and commentary on beloved pets posted […]
Saeed Torres is no James Bond. A middle-aged man working as a school chef, he fits no stereotype of a spy. But in the fall of 2011, he revealed to David Sutcliffe and Lyric Cabral that he was a “civilian operative” working for the F.B.I. The filmmakers initially present him in a way that makes […]
Produced & Directed by Andew Napier Released by Oscillosope Laboratories USA. 82 min. Not rated Mad as Hell profiles liberal talk show host Cenk Uygur, whose online news show, The Young Turks, seeks to shake up news coverage and reveal the corrupt business of politics. No one is exempt from Uygur’s glaring gaze: not George […]
Directed by Laura Poitras Produced by Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky Released by Radius Germany/USA. 114 min. Rated R The central, absorbing act of Citizenfour is viewing Edward Snowden like never before. He’s a human being in cinema verité close-up during the days when the computer contractor hands over United States government documents on […]
This year, the Tribeca Film Festival gave awards to pointed portraits of political engagement. These documentaries raise thoughtful and tangled issues about how the very personal becomes political. Point and Shoot A shy OCD-beset young guy, Matt VanDyke, left his mother’s Baltimore basement and his girlfriend for a North African-to-Middle Eastern odyssey, and plunged into […]
Directed by Dan Krauss Produced by Krauss and Linda Davis Written by Kruass, Lawrence Lerew and Davis Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories USA. 79 min. Not rated As a result of the violence they witness, soldiers often walk a fine line between morality and sanity, a demarcation that’s been well fictionalized in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of […]
Directed by Samantha Grant Produced by Grant and Brittney Shepherd Released by Gush Productions/ITVS USA. 76 min. Not rated In the age of punditry dominating 24/7 cable TV news and Internet bloggers, tweeters, and infotainment gossip, it still matters that The New York Times, “The Great Gray Lady” founded as a counter to the 19th-century […]
Written & Directed by Cullen Hoback Produced by Hoback, John Ramos & Nitin Khanna Released by Variance Films USA. 79 min. Not rated You know those things you click on all the time when you download a new app, establish an online banking, open a new social media account—“I Agree,” “Create an Account,” “Submit Information”—the […]