DOC NYC 2019 “Narrowsburg” (Seth Shire)

November 11, 2019.  French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard said “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” Thus begins the story of Narrowsburg, a small town in upstate New York, where, we are told, it is tough to make a living. “Narrowsburg,”which is also the title of the new documentary from director Martha Shane, had its New York premiere at DOC NYC on November 10. It is a story that is simultaneously bizarre, funny and tragic.

A tragedy is defined as a story in which the main character (or characters) have success, then failure and learn nothing. The characters in “Narrowsburg” have, at least the promise of success. Things, however, do gradually go awry. Since the townsfolk do actually learn something, it may not be a complete tragedy. Be that as it may, “Narrowsburg” is also about the nature of truth, and where it may, or may not, lie or is truth just a matter of perspective?

DOC NYC 2019 “Hurdle” (Wendy Moscow)

November 11, 2019.  There are many heartbreaking moments in the new documentary “Hurdle” that give the viewer a visceral sense of what it’s like to live under 50 years of military occupation, but the one that lingers indelibly in my mind’s eye is the moment when Israeli soldiers begin lobbing percussion grenades at little Palestinian boys and youth proudly displaying their home-made kites for the camera. Watching their joy turn to fear as they flee the smoke and deafening explosions gave me a visceral sense of how traumatic it must be for young children who must live daily with the seeming arbitrariness of state violence.

Director Michael Rowley has chosen to illuminate an aspect of the Isreali/Palestinian conflict that we rarely see – the everyday lives of young people behind the border wall. He profiles, in particular, two young men who, in very different ways, strive to impart hope and self-worth to other young people languishing under the rule of a government that demonizes them, limits their opportunities, and forces them to leave their ancestral homes as Palestinian land continues to be confiscated to build Israeli settlements.

DOC NYC 2019 “Letter to the Editor” (Seth Shire)

Alan Berliner buying one of his two daily copies of “The New York Times.”

November 10, 2019.  I once heard it said that when an artist is given an obstacle (or challenge) this can enable them to advance their creativity and originality. Documentary filmmaker Alan Berliner, whose films have made extensive use of stock and found footage, as well as found sound, uses newspaper stills, from “The New York Times,” to create his latest documentary “Letter to the Editor.”

“Letter to the Editor” is a fascinating, dazzling, kaleidoscopic, heartfelt, sumptuous mosaic of the times in which we live, and have lived, with speculation as to the future of our lives, specifically how we will perceive the world with the diminishment, and soon to be outright loss, of print media. All of this is conveyed through the photographs which Berliner has meticulously collected over the past 40 years.

DOC NYC 2019 “Personhood” (Wendy Moscow)

Tammy Loertscher and her baby.

A pregnant woman with drug use in her past jailed for refusing to go to rehab? A woman accused of murder for having had an accidental miscarriage? Coercive medical interventions, such as cesarean sections, being ordered by the courts? A fourteen-week-old fetus “lawyering up” while the “host,” as pregnant women are often referred to in the thirty-eight states that have fetal personhood laws, is left undefended? No, this is not some dystopian, “Handmaid’s Tale”-like future. This is what it’s increasing like for women in the United States today, as state after state passes legislation that gives rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the Constitution (which, when written, accrued at birth) to the unborn. If you haven’t perused your copy of the U.S. Constitution in a while, the 14th Amendment says that “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law” followed by the “equal protection” clause, famously used to support marriage equality in the groundbreaking 2015 Supreme Court decision. But in thirty-eight states, the 14th Amendment is being employed to prioritize fetal protection over the rights of the women who carry them.

The eye-opening new documentary “Personhood” explores, in shocking detail, the consequences of the Religious Right’s efforts to undermine women’s hard-won right to control their own bodies, interweaving talking-head interviews with the story of Tammy Loertscher, an engaging young woman and accidental crusader against Wisconsin’s 1997 “Unborn Child Protection Act.” Her story is as much an indictment of our health care system (or lack thereof) as it is about the act itself.

DOC NYC 2019, “Kosher Beach” Screening 11/13, IFC Center, 5:05pm (Seth Shire)

 

To quote pop star Cyndi Lauper, “Girls just want to have fun.”  This might be the best way to sum up director Karen Kainer’s engaging and observant documentary, “Kosher Beach.” “Kosher Beach” is filled with characters who down to earth, eccentric and, above all, very human.  Their main concerns revolve around enjoying themselves at a beach in Israel.  For them the beach is a haven and a respite.

The beach in question, Bnei Brak, runs along Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean coast line. Bnei Brak is fenced off from an adjacent gay beach and another beach at which dogs are welcome.  As a result of this segregation, Bnei Brak is considered to be a “kosher” beach, which, on designated days, is for use by women only, primarily orthodox women.

DOC NYC 2019, “The Grand Unified Theory of Howard Bloom” (Seth Shire)

October 25, 2019.  Protons, elements, Kiss, molecules, chronic fatigue syndrome, Joan Jett, paradigms, Queen, relationships, personal meaning and many other elements all come together in “The Grand Unified Theory of Howard Bloom.” The new documentary, by director Charlie Hoxie, will be playing at DOC NYC.

I always maintain that documentaries must have great characters. Hoxie has certainly picked a fascinating subject for his film in Howard Bloom.  Bloom, with his wavy hair, his love of every dog that he sees on the street personality, his back pack, gadget laden belt and wavy hair is an absent minded professor, right out of central casting.  However, this is more than just an affectation. Bloom seems to have been a part of, well, everything.