Film

Arriving less than 10 months after Donald Trump’s supporters ransacked the United States of America’s seat of government in an attempt to forestall the certification of the country’s presidential election results, the new documentary Four Hours at the Capitol lands somewhat understandably as more of a rough first draft of history than a wholly refined, polished overview of the events of January 6, 2021. And yet, within that framework and context, it’s still a gut-punch work — a movie which, by way of its telling, grapples with the question of whether the alternate political and social realities in which Americans are seemingly living can coexist with the foundational principles of democracy, and in the end, sadly, affords no easy answer.

New Zealand's early film industry was small and mostly focused on documentaries. The government made films featuring the country’s stunning landscapes to promote tourism.

Pete Buttigieg’s historical run for the White House, as an openly gay and serious contender for a major party nomination, is a recurring theme in Jesse Moss’ new documentary, Mayor Pete. World-premiering at the Chicago Film Festival, Mayor Pete streams on Amazon Prime November 12.

The new documentary The Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses opens with a quote from Luther Standing Bear, a Native American author, educator and actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Man’s heart away from nature, he opines, becomes hard, and a lack of respect for growing, living things soon leads to a lack of respect for humans too.

Many Americans, especially younger ones, may not know who Arthur Ashe was and how significant his achievements were in and out of the realm of sports. For starters, Ashe was the first Black tennis player selected to the US Davis Cup team and the only Black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open.

Once upon a time … Americans sipped coffee and ate pie around communal tables at the Horn & Hardart’s iconic Automat, where they could share their struggles and dreams with strangers they had never met before (and would never see again). Lifetimes ago, these largely working-class palaces nourished a sense of unity and community that bridged diverse social classes, languages, genders and races in the increasingly rising urban melting pots of the East Coast.

In 1956, when the French diving pioneer Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) made his documentary, The Silent World, in 1956, it was a novelty in many ways that he himself could not have anticipated. The feature was co-directed by Cousteau, who was then 46, and a young director, Louis Malle, 24, who would go on to become a major voice in French and world cinema (Lacombe Lucien, Atlantic City, Au Revoir les Enfants) in the next three decades.

The 1923 establishment of Turkey as a Republic delivered the coup de gråce to the Ottoman Empire, and the country’s president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, encouraged culture and art. The first free elections were held in 1950.

What a film is about is not the same thing as the story it tells. This is useful to remember when watching the new Netflix documentary Britney vs Spears, released in advance of an important legal hearing on her case in Los Angeles the following day.

Wars, upheavals, changing politics, all have shaped filmmaking in Iraq. In 1909 the country’s first film project took place, but it was not seemingly in the Iraqi’s DNA to indulge in cinema.