documentary

Note: This is the first in a series of reviews of films that played at this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham. ... read more »

Just a few quick links while I procrastinate on grading some papers: ... read more »

You could say I “read” David Shield’s Reality Hunger over the weekend, but as my first nod to the worthy successes (and ballsy failures) of his argument-through-form, I actually skimmed it in less than an hour. As is true of any good manifesto, he clocks or locks a feeling in the air, something already everywhere, familiar but not fully formed (although, of course, snippets from centuries of completely finished arguments about the representation of reality are the over-rife reality condition he considers, and uses, proving the thing and its opposite as he is most wont to do). ... read more »

I’ve been spending the last few days recovering from and catching up after my trip out to California for SCMS, so I haven’t been able to follow some of the recent debates about new directions in film distribution as closely as I would have liked.  So consider this pot to be a quick recap and reflection on some of the conversations that are taking place.  These notes tend to ramble somewhat, and there isn’t really a thesis here, just an attempt to make sense of some of the ongoing discussions that have been taking place in recent weeks. ... read more »

After using Agnes Varda’s One Sings and One Doesn’t as a pun, or place-holder, in a recent post, how fun that Netflix delivered her recent autobiography, The Beaches of Agnes, to my house the very next day. ... read more »

I performed a few drive-bys at SCMS (parking $40!) as it was held in my own town, meaning I stayed home and was thus left to perform Mommy-duty while other conference-goers cocktailed into the night. No matter, I attended 4 panels, 1 workshop (Queer Mentoring, where I spoke) and 1 party, and here’s a fly-by of my idiosyncratic bests: ... read more »

My Netflix queue has recently deluged me with a slew of migratory films that track from fiction, to documentary, to stage, and back again: Grey Gardens, Trumbo, Every Little Step.

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Before the invention of photography and film, we got to know the world beyond our personal experience through the oral, drawn, painted and written descriptions of the explorers that went forth, and came back.  The communication between what was experienced via the explorer’s senses, and what was subsequently represented to the people, did not always match up. ... read more »

Now that Kathryn Bigelow’s verité-style war film, The Hurt Locker, has achieved front-runner status for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars, the publicity for the film has directed renewed attention to the politics of representing war. ... read more »

Just returned from 2010 Berlinale where The Owls premiered, rocked German lesbian’s L-Word soaked version of dyke-America, and sold a bunch of territories, too (thanks to The Collaborative! Note to indie- film-world: if you make a feature for $20K you can re-coup costs pretty darn easily). I thought Hammer to Nail did a super job trying to explain the delightful, confounding, amazing experience which is this HUGE, cosmopolitan, diverse, intellectual, and extremely well-programed amalgam of films from star-studded to avant-garde, so I’ll do something else. Thanks to her as well for a fine wrap-up of our film and others! ... read more »