Charles Chaplin was born in a tough area of London and came to America not only to reinvent himself but partially to invent the language of the then-new art of cinema itself. Through pluck, luck and sheer determination, Chaplin became a leading man and director—often playing the familiar “Little Tramp” character for decades, first in silent films and then, most famously, with a rousing closing speech in “The Great Dictator.”

“tick tick… BOOM!” is the name of the musical Jonathan Larson wrote and performed about the failure of “Superbia,” his rock-opera adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 that was to be his ticket to Broadway. Sadly, this didn’t happen. If something good came out of that piece’s failure, it would be the powerfully personal follow up that would lead to the legendary Broadway groundbreaker “Rent.”

PARIS - On Thursday it was announced that Canal Plus, a France-based media conglomerate that began in 1984 as this country’s first privately-owned television, would be definitively pulling out of the Cannes Festival as its main sponsors. Cannes, and Canal as it’s known more simply, have been in a collab for the last 28 years, the latter beaming the opening and closing ceremonies into hundreds of thousands of homes, its familiar logo omnipresent

When “Saturday Night Fever” came out in 1977, the small film about an Italian kid from Brooklyn who moonlighted as a disco dancer became a force of nature. It rocketed star John Travolta into the stratosphere, and the soundtrack album, heavy on the Bee Gees, sold 25 million copies—many before the film was even out in theaters.

Director John Maggio’s new documentary

This past week marked eighty years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, which lured the United States into WWII. Sixteen million Americans answered the call to join the armed forces against the Axis of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and fascist Italy. Over 400,000 servicemen lost their lives in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, with approximately 80,000 more still classified as missing in action, their final resting places unknown.

Throughout the centuries philosophers have responded to the idea of death in many ways. Kierkegaard saw grief as a door to faith while Heidegger found it a way to give deeper meaning to one’s life. It was Camus who found the absurdity in it all.

As adults, grief exists as an emotional conglomerate and people from all walks of life deal with it in different manners.

When Bill Simmons put out the call for documentaries for his “Music Box” series on HBO he made sure to get in touch with Penny Lane. He had seen Lane’s previous documentary, “Hail, Satan?” and asked if she had any ideas on artists to profile for “Music Box.”

Lane did have an idea: Why not ask Kenny G, whom she had first seen at the Blue Note

“Satanic Panic” is a very real fear that gripped the United States in the eighties and nineties.

Over those decades, there existed over 10,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse and death. By the late nineties the panic began to spread to other countries. The media and the church unleashed a terror campaign. Though not as large an issue as it once was, the fear persists to this day.

Filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West make documentaries about extraordinary women. Their Oscar-nominated 2018 “RBG” followed around the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Cohen and West have returned with “Julia,” which traces the rise of Julia Child from her Southern California beginnings to becoming the world’s first celebrity chef. “Like a lot of people in my generation, I

Dozens of amazing films once again show us the value of hewing to truth when so many seek to create their own alternative reality. This year’s DOC NYC demonstrated how truly talented are documentary filmmakers the world over, many of whom aren’t household names but nonetheless continue the search for truth in a world less and less interested in it. 

Here are some of the major offerings