Documentaries

The most optimistic hope attached to social media and, before its existence, the antecedent of pervasive cable news coverage, was that a smaller world might breed more empathetic connections. Seeing and communicating more directly with other people all across the globe could create peace.

  As we continue exploring Black History Month, HFPA member Kimberly Reyes recently sat down on zoom with two influential filmmakers who have unique credentials to address both where we stand and where we should be headed in entertaining and educating audiences to better understand history. Also in perfect timing for the milestone month, producer Chris L Jenkins and director Brandon Kramer are promoting their own documentary film, The First Step, which followed media personality and civil rights activist Van Jones as he attempted to build bridges during the Trump era and bring people together from both political parties to pass a landmark criminal justice bill on prison reform, The First Step bill.

It was 1945 and as the war in Europe wound down, Stuart and Budd Schulberg, two young US officers, rushed around Germany in a race against time. The two brothers – Budd, 31, a navy lieutenant and Stuart, a 23-year-old marine corps officer – had been dispatched by the OSS on a special film-finding mission.

Sports have long been talked about as being a great social unifier, especially in the United States of America. Of course, this is only partially true.

Commitment to Life is a documentary about unwavering bravery in the face of death, as we meet and hear about so many of the extraordinary and courageous people in Los Angeles who stepped forward during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Premiering at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on February 11, Commitment to Life is directed by Jeffrey Schwarz (Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine), and documents the true story of how an intrepid group of LA people living with HIV/AIDS – doctors, movie stars, studio moguls and activists – changed the course of the pandemic.

Childhood innocence is a beautiful thing that should be sought to be reasonably protected. But too often, both within families and on a macro level, a mistake is made in thinking that the best way to achieve this is through sheer avoidance rather than engagement.

How does a yoga school morph into a political movement, and eventually a doomsday cult responsible for a terrorist nerve gas attack? That’s the darkly fascinating transformation put under the microscope by AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, a world premiere and U. S.

More than “Tutti Frutti. ” More than flamboyance.

The rise of social media has created the opportunity for people to connect with those who might have suffered trauma similar to their own.   In parallel, it has also helped provide a vocally receptive audience to a trend in the nonfiction film space — a broader reexamination of the past treatment, both by the media and society at large, of female public figures, especially actresses, singers, and other celebrities.

Everything about Bethann Hardison is distinctly unique: her upbringing, her look, her wide-ranging career from model to agent to activist, and even how she brought Invisible Beauty, the film about herself, to fruition. It is not that common that the subject of a documentary also serves as its co-director (along with Frédéric Tcheng who previously made Halston and Dior and I).