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
After making the documentary “Boys State,” about a Texas program wherein adolescent males practice what it might be like to experience a real electoral campaign, filmmaker Jesse Moss turned his attention to a man running for real. For several months he and his crew followed then-South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg on his ultimately unsuccessful bid to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
There’s what goes on in the film biz and then there’s what really goes on in Tinseltown. That’s what documentary filmmaker Marina Zenovich (director of last year’s “Lance,” about disgraced biker Lance Armstrong) was seeking to get at with her new film, “What Happens in Hollywood.”
The documentary, which is now available on Roku, shows women, and some men, speaking candidly about the sexism and misogyny that is absolutely baked into the film industry, and has been since its founding by a group of rich men a century ago.
Filmmaker Auden Lincoln-Vogel was in Cannes this year in support of “Bill and Joe go Duck Hunting,” which he's written and directed.
In “Bill and Joe Go Duck Hunting,” a slow and contemplative film that was a part of the Cinefondation program, two friends go on a duck hunting expedition and much vexation ensues, the great outdoors the setting for an oppressive “huit-clos” film that's punctuated by awkward silences and dark humor.
Director Matt Ogens grew up in Frederick, M.D., not far from the Maryland School for the Deaf. One of his best friends was hearing-impaired and Ogens became familiar with the deaf community thanks to him.
“It just so happened that years later, when I decided to become a filmmaker, I directed a commercial campaign about high-school football teams around the country, and one of
David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam, has been imprisoned for decades following a string of brutal shootings in New York in the late seventies. He initially claimed that a dog named Sam commanded him to murder, but years later walked that back, saying he had actually been part of a satanic organization known as “the Children” who conspired with him in the murders. If it sounded outlandish, it was no more
Ken Burns knows he only has so much time left to make a certain number of movies. It’s getting harder to pick and choose which of the many ideas for his trademark multipart documentaries will get his full attention—but choose he must.
“As I get older, I get greedier. Because you realize there are so many subjects that you want to touch, and there’s not gonna be enough time to do them all,” Burns, 67, said this week from his home and offices
Ed Helms and Patti Harrison have such singular chemistry in the new film “Together Together” that one might assume that they have known each other for years. Not so, they both said when speaking about the film.
“I knew of him,” said Harrison over video chat, eliciting perhaps the hint of a smile from her co-star, who is known for his time on “The Daily Show” as well as “The Hangover” films and “The Office.”
Growing up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., Matthew Jensen knew his destiny was to work in films. As a young man, he took the Metro into the heart of democracy to watch and study films at the Smithsonian. He also cruised the pages of the Washington Post, seeking out revivals at theaters in Georgetown and word of AFI screenings at the Kennedy Center.
Ella Blumenthal was a young woman when the Nazis invaded her native Poland. Over the next few years she was bounced around Europe by Hitler’s forces, experiencing firs-thand the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. She even participated in the failed Warsaw Uprising in 1943, to which the Nazis responded with a horrific crackdown that would all but level the ancient city. Blumenthal and her niece, Roma