Category Archives: Documentary

Everybody to Kenmure Street

Everybody To Kenmure Street         5 suns

In the category of World Cinema Documentary comes the story of a community coming together to save undocumented immigrants from deportation.  In 2021 the UK police executed a dawn raid in a neighborhood in Glasgow, Scotland, picking up two men from their home and loading them in a police van for deportation to their home countries.  Before they could leave though, a spontaneous crowd of neighbors appeared in the streets and in an act of civil disobedience they formed obstacles and demanded that the men be freed.  Since this happened in the age of social media there was plenty of video recording being taken and word spread through the surrounding area.  The movie combines the video footage with narration from witnesses and some reenactment of events.  The film could not be more relevant to what is happening in the US today with the current administration.  It shows what can be accomplished with peaceful resistance to a tyrannical government. The movie is inspiring and moving.

The Lake

The Lake.      4 suns

The Lake concerns an environmental time bomb that is affecting the Great Salt Lake in Utah.  For years the water level in the lake has been dropping as the surrounding area has been using more water for the residents and for agriculture.  The land near the lake is becoming contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals and the wildlife is dying.  When the wind comes huge dust storms threaten the wellbeing of the human population.  Three government researchers are featured in the film who present their findings and talk of the need for more study and for more government funding to reverse the trend.  They express their frustration of getting the attention of elected officials and the people. They emphasize that of all the cases of lakes in decline around the world, never has a lake been saved from disaster. The film ends on a very hopeful note.  The researchers were present and expressed optimism at getting funding to fix the monumental problem.  Only time will tell if the Great Salt Lake and the surrounding environment can be saved.

Feels Good Man

Feels Good Man.   5 suns

For anyone interested in politics or the dark side of the internet,  Feels Good Man is a documentary you must see.  It covers a cartoonist who created a comic character called Pepe the Frog some 20 years ago that was part of a mildly amusing comic strip about a group of friends living together.  We then learn of various underground groups on the internet who used the character in memes to promote whatever bad message they wish to share.  The means of distribution is called 4chan, sort of an underground version of Instagram.  All of this was completely foreign to me, but perhaps some of you have heard about this.  The type of individuals doing this are characterized as young men living in their parent’s basements with no job who spend all their time on the internet denigrating people they disapprove of.  They even have a name.  They are called NEET or Not in Education,  Employment or Training.  They are the type that live on the fringes of society and are very angry over their situation.  Around the time of the 2016 presidential election,  Pepe found his way to white nationalist groups and became a hate symbol that even got the attention of the ADL.  This was all terrible news for the creator of Pepe who just saw Pepe as a symbol of friendship.  Finally,  this all blew up on the internet with the frog actually helping Trump to get more votes among the white racists and young NEETs.  It all seems like too much to believe but there are national news organizations that covered the story as real.  The film was in the works for at least for years and was just seen here at Sundance for the first time.  It was a fascinating story and was done very well with many interviews and news footage to back it up.  I would be interested to learn from any readers who were aware of this while it was happening.

Coded Bias

Coded Bias    4 1/2 Suns

The documentary Coded Bias concerns the biases that have been found present in the algorithms used mainly in facial recognition software and the effect this has on people’s lives.  It follows the efforts of some very smart computer researchers including Joy Buolamwini, an MIT Media Lab researcher.  She discovered that this software when tested on women and non- white people has a markedly lower accuracy rate than on male and white people.  This inherent bias comes from how the software learns what faces look like based on the thousands of images in the database which in turn was provided by the designers.  Other issues raised were how the same technology is being used in China to deny rights and privileges to dissidents by the government as well as the individual’s rights to their own personal data.  The film also speaks of how these algorithms are used to profile people looking for loans and employment.  Some of those concerned about these matters have established the Algorithm Justice League to raise awareness of these issues and find ways of combating the biases of such software.  The issues here are far more complex than I can relate here,  and I hope the film receives wider distribution after the festival. I found it the most interesting documentary I’ve seen so far. 

Saudi Runaway

Saudi Runaway.   4 Suns

Saudi Runaway is an amazing documentary about a young 26 year old Saudi woman who decides to flee her country and her domineering father because of the oppressive laws against women in Saudi Arabia.  Muna connected with the director through social media and secretly filmed her story on her iPhones for a period of two months before making her escape while on her honeymoon which means she also fled from her new husband.  She had to secretly send the phone footage to the director just to have space on the phones for more of the story.  The film is full of Muna’s emotional dilemma and family scenes. In order to live out her dream she must hurt the people she loves including her mother.  I didn’t know what to expect from this film but was very pleased.  It is an important story to tell as Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive regimes toward women in the world.  A postscript noted that women are fleeing the country at a rate of 1,000 per year.  I hope this film gets distributed soon. 

One Child Nation

One Child Nation                              4 ½ stars

One Child Nation is a documentary about a subject we have all heard something about but that very few of us know the whole story.  The filmmaker, Nanfu Wang tells us in very personal terms about China’s policy of allowing families to have only a single child in the name of improving the productivity of the country.  This policy, that lasted from 1979 until 2015 was responsible for many thousands of forced abortions, sterilizations, infanticide and government abductions of children from their parents.  The film was thoroughly researched and tells the story through many personal interviews with those who were forced to carry out the government policy and with those directly affected by it.  Wang was personally affected by it as she was born in China during the policy and had a younger brother who might have been lost if he had turned out to be a girl.  Wang herself has a boy’s name because her family was hoping for a boy, which is the much preferred gender to have as children.  In the nineties when international adoptions opened up in China, the government started the practice of forcing children to be separated from their parents and placed in orphanages where they could then be allowed to be adopted by western parents.  The film is an important one to see as it shows what an authoritarian government can be capable of.  This is the second documentary from Wang who was only in her early thirties when it was made.  Her films which were filmed in China has brought her unwelcome attention from the Chinese government.  The interviews are done in Chinese, but her narration is all done in English.  Let’s hope that she continues her good work in the future.

Where’s My Roy Cohn?

Where’s My Roy Cohn?                                 4 stars

The documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? was on my list to see at Sundance, but I didn’t get the chance to see it then.  Thankfully I found it on cable so just saw it during this time of quarantine.  This film by Matt Tyrnauer tells us about one of the most notorious (and ugliest) figures in the latter twentieth century of American politics.  It covers his career starting with his participating as a prosecutor in the trial of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg resulting in their execution, extending to the Communist hearings with Joseph McCarthy and his connections with New York mobsters as a defense attorney often getting light sentences for them.  The film features many interviews with his various associates and relatives (including Roger Stone), none of whom have a kind thing to say about his character.  However, the point is made that he was a sharp lawyer who was always ready for a fight and would stop at nothing to destroy his enemies.  Through the seventies and eighties Cohn had close contacts with the administrations of Nixon and Reagan playing a role in some of the harshest right wing policies that continue to this day.  The film also goes into Cohn’s gay lifestyle, how it was no real secret that he associated with gay men and frequented gay night clubs.  Yet he always maintained that he was not gay up to his death from AIDs in 1986.  Included is Cohn’s role as mentor to a young New York real estate tycoon named Donald J. Trump.  According to the film Trump learned to never admit being wrong and to never make apologies.  Cohn successfully defended the Trumps in an anti-discrimination lawsuit involving denying housing to African Americans.  Trump even used Cohn’s mob ties to get his Trump Tower built in New York City in the early eighties.  Given how this man is portrayed, one would probably not describe the film as impartial.  It shows how he made a career of using lies and deceit to destroy lives for sake of personal gain throughout his career and how he had no empathy toward fellow humans.  Whether or not you are familiar with Roy Cohn’s career, I recommend you see this movie.

American Symphony

American Symphony                      4 ½ stars

The 2023 film American Symphony by filmmaker Matthew Heineman started as a project to follow musician Jon Batiste as he worked on his classical composition “American Symphony” but turned into a much bigger story about life. In 2021 The band leader of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show had just been nominated for 11 Grammys and granted Heineman access to his life as he worked on this piece. Batiste was writing a classical piece but making it more modern using new styles and musicians from a variety of backgrounds to make it avant-garde compared to traditional classical music. It was quite unusual for a pop musician to enter this genre let alone a black musician, but Batiste gives it all the attention and effort he can. But while this is transpiring on screen, it is discovered that Batiste’s girlfriend/wife Suleika Jaouad has had a recurrence of bone cancer and must undergo lengthy chemotherapy treatments. So, on top of writing the new piece and preparing for the Grammys, Batiste was dealing with the crisis of supporting Suleika through this new crisis. Jaouad is herself a writer and painter producing her own works of art, continuing her efforts through the treatment. The two of them go through tough challenges, encouraging each other, while surprisingly still granting the filmmaker access to their lives. One type of film I especially enjoy is those that show the unfolding creative process of writing music. In American Symphony we see not only Batiste’s struggles with creating his masterpiece, but also the intimate look at a couple going through a difficult time in their lives. The film ends with the finished product being performed for one time only in front of a packed crowd in Carnegie Hall. It is a triumphant finish to a very emotional story. The movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song It Never Went Away which is played at the end of the movie.

Free Solo

Free Solo                                                             4 ½ stars

It has been called awe inspiring and a celebration of one of the greatest athletic achievements ever.  Free Solo is a documentary from National Geographic  that covers rock climber, Alex Honnold’s quest to be the first person ever to climb the 3,000 foot face of El Capitan without a rope.  The film was three years in the making and includes interviews with Alex, his rock climbing friends, his girlfriend and his mother.  The film crew play a part in the film as well as they go into it not knowing how it will turn out.  One climber describes the event as a gold medal Olympic event, but if you don’t win the gold, you die.  We see how Alex studies the climb and memorizes every move he has to make on the rock’s most dangerous parts.  The film never shies away from the danger as it reminds us of many other free solo climbers who have died in pursuit of their dreams.  Certainly not for the squeamish, the final climb is a thrill to watch, even if you know the outcome ahead of time.  And it’s a good way to visit the national parks in a time when no one can.

The Great Hack

The Great Hack                 4 ½ stars

This week I return once again to the Sundance releases to find a compelling documentary in The Great Hack.  The film goes into the details of the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2017 and 2018.  It uses the personal stories of two individuals who got caught up in the scandal involving the Trump campaign, Brexit and many elections around the world.  The British company (named by Steve Bannon of Breitbart) teamed up with Facebook and used the personal data of millions of people to find ways of changing their behavior through the spreading of millions of social network postings to swing elections in favor of their clients.  Their most famous client was of course the Trump Campaign in the election of 2016.  One of their tactics was to get individuals to sign up for an app that provided not only their personal information, but that of their Facebook friends as well.  The film introduces us to David Carroll, a professor who sued Cambridge Analytica to recover his personal data in a case that was heard in the British courts.  The ruling forced the company to comply with Carroll’s wishes which they failed to do, making Cambridge Analylica in effect a criminal enterprise.  The other story told is that of Brittany Kaiser, a one-time director who worked for the company for 3 ½ years in a role that made her very familiar with the practice of data harvesting and using it for the benefit of their clients.  Kaiser became a whistleblower who revealed what she knew in testimonies in Britain and the US.  Cambridge Analytica is now defunct, but the film gives us a stark warning that this practice of gathering our personal data and using it to change our behavior is only going to continue.  The Great Hack makes it clear that it may be a long time before we can have a true free and fair election again.