April 13, 2016
Page 13
Slate of Documentaries
C ontinued froM p age 5
positive notice the film is winning
at film festivals will help it snag
a distributor; for now you can fol-
low it on its website (kikimovie.
com).
6. “Hooligan Sparrow” tells
a story of political awakening
with remarkable parallels to “Two
Trains Runnin’.” After coming to
NYU for school, filmmaker Nanfu
Wang returned to her native Chi-
na intent on making a film about
a maverick activist, Ye Haiyan
(known as Hooligan Sparrow),
who had made a name for herself
on the internet advocating for sex
workers’ rights. In the post-show
screening that I attended, Wang
explained how, like most Chi-
nese, she had not been particular-
ly awake to the oppressive tactics
employed by her own govern-
ment--but soon she found herself
a target of government surveil-
lance and intimidation along with
Sparrow and her band of activist
colleagues as they pleaded for
justice for six elementary school
girls who were sexually abused by
their school principal. All the ac-
tivists’ actions (including Wang’s
actions in filming) are technically
legal--but the response of police
and hired thugs who intimidate
them, assault them, arrest Spar-
row and others, and hold them for
days without due process reveals
a government absolutely intent on
preventing any real accountability
for official actions, even deplor-
able ones. The struggle of Wang
and her subjects to document
their experience--including using
secret recording devices and hid-
den-camera glasses--and even to
find places to shelter them in the
face of black-listing and relentless
surveillance is an important win-
dow into the stakes for the strug-
gle for human rights in China--
and, to my mind, a perhaps more
visible look at the tactics used by
the powerful everywhere to si-
lence dissent. You can follow the
film on its website (hooliganspar-
row.com) and on Facebook; it’s
currently making the festival cir-
cuit and hopefully will find a dis-
tributer.
7. “Life, Animated” won the
audience award at Full Frame and
its director, Roger Ross Williams
(who also directed the terrific
“God Loves Uganda”), won a doc-
umentary directing award for this
film at Sundance. It’s a beautiful
and moving depiction of a partic-
ular family’s journey with autism.
Owen Susskind was an apparently
happy and normal child until, at
age three, he stopped talking and
began regressing in other ways.
After years of unsuccessful at-
tempts to reach him, Owen’s par-
ents discovered that they could
converse with him through the
Disney characters that he loved
so well--and indeed, eventually
they discovered that Owen had the
entire Disney catalog memorized
and, to a large degree, experienced
life through the lessons he had
learned from his beloved Disney
films. Through a skillful blend of
interviews and beautifully animat-
ed sequences, this inspiring film
tells the Susskinds’ story and illus-
trates an important breakthrough
in recognizing that the passions
of kids with autism can provide
an important pathway to helping
them make connections and build
satisfying lives. The film will re-
ceive a theatrical release in July
and, until then, you can follow it
on its website (lifeanimateddoc.
com) or on Facebook.
8. “Kate Plays Christine” is
a particularly fascinating Rubik’s
Cube of a film that wrestles with
the complexity of finding a truth-
ful vantage point for story investi-
gation. Its writer-director, Robert
Greene, who won a screenwriting
award for the film at Sundance,
builds it around actress Kate Lyn
Sheil’s preparation to play Chris-
tine Chubbock, a young news an-
chor who notoriously shot herself
on the air in 1974, in a dramatic
film about her life. We follow
Sheil’s attempts to transform her
physical appearance and to learn
more about Chubbock’s life and
relationships in order to try to un-
derstand her dramatic and inscru-
table actions. As the film unfolds,
both Chubbock’s and Sheil’s moti-
vations remain elusive--even more
so when you realize that there is
no film actually being made ex-
cept the one you are watching; the
entire project is an inquiry into
story-telling itself. We are being
had--but, in a sense, we are always
being had when someone tells us
a story, including a true one. And
what is a true point of view for
telling a personal story, especial-
ly one like this one about a sen-
sational act by a depressed person
angry about, among other things,
the sensational vantage point that
makes television news inherently
false? And how real are Sheil’s
struggles with playing her? This
quirky film grapples productively
with the craft of acting, the quan-
dary of suicide, and the challenge
of understanding another person’s
story.
9. “The Bad Kids” is a mov-
ing cinema verite’ examination
of a Mojave Desert High School
that serves “at risk” kids. The film,
which won a special jury prize at
Sundance, invites you to sit with
the experience of these kids and
the adults who try to help them-
-and without directly giving you
much history, you get a sense of
the social, emotional, and eco-
nomic pressures that have pushed
these kids to the edge. Indeed,
their struggles often seem to be
the fall-out from the struggles of
their parents. The approach of
this school and its principal is a
moving example of love in action-
-of really dealing with these kids
where they are, making genuine
and concrete offers of help which
sometimes can be accepted and
sometimes, heartbreakingly, can’t
be. With these kids, a rigid ap-
proach just won’t work--but lov-
ing limits and real investment in
them as people offers hope that in-
spires. The film recently acquired
a distributer and can be followed
on its website (thebadkidsmovie.
com) and on Facebook.
10. “Trapped” explores the
alarming effects of “TRAP” laws
(targeted regulation of abortion
providers), which since 2010 have
achieved their aim of shutting
down the majority of abortion
clinics in southern states and have
taken hold in other states as well.
The regulations impose unwork-
able restrictions on abortion pro-
viders that have nothing to do with
safe performance of the procedure
and everything to do with forcing
the shutdown of clinics and mak-
ing abortions practically impossi-
ble for women by requiring them
to travel expensive and unwork-
able distances, often for statutorily
required extra visits. The film il-
lustrates how a constitutional right
has been essentially regulated out
of existence in large swathes of the
country, increasingly leading to an
alarming return of dangerous at-
tempts by women to end unwanted
pregnancies. The treatment here
is reasoned and comprehensive
and focuses needed attention on
a trend about which most people
are not well-informed. It won a
special jury prize at Sundance and
is currently in limited release. It
will also air on public broadcast-
ing in June. You can follow it on
its website (trappeddocumentary.
com).
11. “Starless Dreams” won
the Grand Jury Prize and an Inspi-
ration Award, and invites you to
sit with the experience of young
women living in an Iranian juve-
nile detention center. These teen-
agers have committed serious
crimes like theft, drug trafficking,
and even murder, but filmmaker
Mehrdad Oskouei (himself the
father of a teenage girl) builds the
space and trust necessary to gently
coax from his subjects the stories
of abuse and deprivation that ap-
propriately broaden the picture of
their actions. My own experience
leads me to expect that one might
hear similar stories from girls
in detention here in the U.S; the
filmmaker subtly raises questions
about the world these girls can ex-
pect and the societal failures that
have brought them to this place.
I’m not sure it will get a U.S.
theatrical release, but it is worth
keeping an eye out for an oppor-
tunity to give these girls your ear.
12. “Sonita” won a filmmaker
award at Full Frame and an audi-
ence award at the Portland Inter-
national Film Festival. It follows
C ontinued on p age 16
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