documentary
Saskia Baron
What a television programme gets called is not always the choice of the people making it, but it certainly is the choice of its broadcaster. In the case of Silenced: The Hidden Story of Disabled Britain, the relevant people at the BBC may come to regret giving an otherwise decent documentary that title. Over an hour, Cerrie Burnell, an actor born with the lower part of her right arm missing, explored in detail the history and present day discriminations against people with physical disabilities in the UK. She interviewed disabled people and several wheelchair-using campaigners, who Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The motor racing passion of movie star Steve McQueen is well documented, from his motorcycling exploits in The Great Escape to the rubber-burning car chase around San Francisco in Bullitt to his weird but mesmeric sports car odyssey Le Mans. Less widely known, however, was his plan to shoot a movie about Formula One during the mid-Sixties.This would have been called Day of the Champion, was to be built around specially-shot footage from races in the European F1 season, and would be based on photojournalist Robert Daley’s book The Cruel Sport (1963), which probed the dark side of a glamorous Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
One of the world’s leading architectural photographers, Julius Shulman was the subject of a show at London’s Photographers’ Gallery this autumn, “Altered States of America”. That title surely alluded to the visual modernism that changed the face of that country over the course of the 20th century, which Shulman, working in close tandem with the architects concerned, captured over a career of almost eight decades, in California especially.Visual Acoustics, Eric Bricker’s documentary about that career, was originally released in 2008, the year before Shulman died, just a year or so short of his Read more ...
theartsdesk
It all started so promisingly. Parasite's triumph at the Oscars was a resounding response to 2019's saccharine and problematic Green Book. Art house was in and here to stay. And in some ways, this came to pass - with cinemas caught in a cycle of opening and closing, the blockbusters were nowhere to be seen. Instead, it's been the indies and the streamers keeping us entertained through these days of isolation.This year's Best Of selection reflects the strange and diverse release calendar of 2020. Film has proved to be resilient, and a sparser schedule allowed for some hidden gems to shine Read more ...
Owen Richards
Frank Marshall might not be the biggest household name, but his footprint on Hollywood is unrivalled. He has produced hits ranging from Indiana Jones and Back to the Future to Jason Bourne and Jurassic World. He also takes occasional forays into directing, such as the madcap Arachnophobia and cannibalistic rugby tale Alive. Who better then to chart the career of The Bee Gees, a band far more influential than ever given credit for?How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is a top-tier music documentary, filled with world tours, lost demos and family drama. Marshall expertly balances the band's history Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
“Films are about the mystery of fate or the mystery of faith,” proclaims director William Friedkin in Alexandre O. Philippe’s latest documentary, Leap of Faith. At 84 years old, Friedkin proves himself to be a master of storytelling, not only behind the camera but in front of it, spiritedly discussing the genesis of his horror masterpiece with Philippe.Unlike the Swiss filmmaker’s previous works 78/52, which tackled the shower scene in Pyscho, or Memory: The Origins of Alien, Leap of Faith consists mainly of a single talking-head interview with Friedkin. It could feel like a DVD extra, or a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Do we have a right not be offended? It's a question that’s growing bigger and uglier, thanks to the censorious “cancel culture” which has become such a disfiguring aspect of social media.Leith’s notoriously profane and scabrous novelist Irvine Trainspotting Welsh ought to have been the perfect investigator for this Sky Arts inquiry into the creeping threat of cultural policing, but he seemed slightly uncertain, treading tentatively across the new-media firing range as if nervous about stepping on a troll-mine. At 62, having grown up in an era when the unsayable was still sayable, maybe he was Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Rock documentaries are so often disappointing, the result less a portrait than a whitewash. A J Eaton’s 90-minute rock doc David Crosby: Remember My Name, which premiered on Sky Arts, was an unflinching close-up, utterly absorbing and all the more affecting for its searing honesty in showing a man who’s gone through the fire and is willing to show the burns. That he was the arsonist only adds to the power of the story and to the viewer’s sympathy for the man at its heart, though sympathy is probably not what he wants.Croz has been part of two of the 20th century’s most distinctive bands: The Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Listen to "The Blues are Brewin", "You Better Go Now", or even "I’ll be Seeing You", and you can hear the hurt reverberate in every note Billie Holiday sang. Her voice rang with the wisdom of experience – perhaps too much experience. She lived a wild, impulsive life, until it was cut short by cirrhosis of the liver when she was only 44, handcuffed to a hospital bed with only $700 to her name. Now, director James Erskine offers a fresh, albeit harrowing, insight into the singer’s life with his new documentary Billie. Erskine elegantly demonstrates that while the drink was a problem (as Read more ...
Owen Richards
After Bassam Tariq's feature debut These Birds Walk was released at SXSW 2013, things seemed to slow down. The documentary about a runaway boy in Pakistan garnered strong reviews, but soon Tariq was working in a New York butchers pondering his career. However, the film did catch the eye of someone: Hollywood star Riz Ahmed. The two began talking, and realised they shared the same interests in heritage and generational relationships. And thus, Mogul Mowgli was born.In the film, Ahmed plays Zed, a rapper on the brink of international success. During a flying visit to his family home in Read more ...
Sarah Kent
“Black people, since the beginning of time, have always made things cool. Jazz, rock ’n’ roll… pick anything from a cultural standpoint and we have always been the arbitrators of cool,” says sports journalist Jamele Hill. “And it was really no different with sneakers.”One Man and his Shoes is not about sneakers, though, so much as the clever marketing campaign that transformed a small American company specialising in running shoes into the global giant, Nike, and the dramatic impact this had on black youth in America.The star of the campaign was basketball super hero, Michael Jordan, except Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s a brave film distributor who releases a documentary about an American journalist in the UK at the best of times, let alone in the middle of a pandemic, so first salute goes to Eve Gabereau at Modern Films for giving Raise Hell a proper launch. The late Molly Ivins was a hugely popular figure in the US, her witty, acerbic political columns were syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, but she’s practically unknown in Britain. It’s impossible to think of an equivalent figure here, unless you imagine The Guardian’s Marina Hyde crossed with Jo Brand.Janice Engel’s highly enjoyable Read more ...