Film

“What a shit year it was,” Dave Chappelle said by way of greeting the live audience. “I’m so sorry if you lost someone, or lost something, during this pandemic.

 If there's one team sport in the U. S.

There have been many documentaries and films about Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ creative force, widely recognized as genius due to his novel approaches, pop composition, exceptional aptitude and mastery of recording techniques. But most have focused on his 1960s heyday or the difficult times during struggles with mental illness and drug addiction.

Leonard Bernstein was one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history. A renowned conductor and composer, a music educator and author, a humanitarian activist.

Inspired by Matthew Van Meter’s “non-fiction novel” Deep Delta Justice, Nancy Buirski’s documentary, A Crime on the Bayou depicts a series of systemic and systematic wrongs committed against two vastly different men, the Black Gary Duncan and the Jewish Richard Sobol. The film’s release is timed to this year’s Juneteenth commemoration of the end of slavery announced in Texas in 1865, the last Confederate state to formally adopt President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation.

The dark shadow of the mystery behind a shocking suicide looms over Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, Morgan Neville's documentary about the world-renowned chef and TV celeb. On June 8, 2018, the body of the beloved author and host was found in his hotel – he had taken his own life during the shoot of a new episode of his TV show.

Queen of trash? Feminist writer? Powerful emissary of women’s secret sexual desires? Gay icon? Insightful, affectionate, none too critical, Laura Fairrie's new documentary about the life of novelist Jackie Collins, aptly titled Lady Boss, aims to reveal the “real” woman behind and beyond the exterior veneer. Over a period of four decades, Jackie Collins, who was born in London in 1937, produced 32 novels, all of which appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives debuted in 1977 as the first feature-length documentary about lesbian and gay identities and lifestyles, made by openly gay filmmakers. The Mariposa Film Group, comprising Peter Adair, Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein, Lucy Massie Phenix (Winter Soldier) and Veronica Selver, sought to create a film that would be free of political didactics, one that would simply tell the stories of what it means to grow up gay in America.

Though better known, Gus Van Sant's 2008 Golden Globe and Oscar winning biopic, Milk, starring Sean Penn, was not the first feature about the gay pioneering politician Harvey Milk, or about the socio-political era in which he rose to power as the first openly gay man elected to office. In 1984, Robert Epstein and Bob Friedman made the The Times of Harvey Milk, a feature, which, among other things, prepared the background for other features about AIDS, such as Parting Glances (1986) Longtime Companion (1990), and Poison (1991), to mention just a few titles.

The recent box office success Godzilla vs. Kong encapsulates the vibrancy and prosperity of Hong Kong, a city that has been featured in Hollywood blockbusters such as Ghost in the Shell, Tomb Raider, Pacific Rim and many more.