Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers
200 episodes - English - Latest episode: 19 days ago -Mike and Ken talk to award-winning documentary filmmakers about their art, their subjects, and their process.
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Episodes
”In Her Hands” with Tamana Ayazi & Marcel Mettelsiefen
November 15, 2022 11:55 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBWhen filmmakers Tamana Ayazi (making her feature doc debut) and Marcel Mettelsiefen (“Watani: My Homeland”) set out in early 2020 to shoot a film about the new generation of young, well-educated Afghans, they knew they wanted to find a strong woman to tell this story. Instead, they encountered a force of nature: Zarifa Ghafari, the 26-year-old mayor of Maidan Shahr, who was not only one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors, but also its youngest. Tamana and Marcel’s thought-provoking, insigh...
”Is that Black Enough for You?” with Elvis Mitchell
November 10, 2022 11:21 - 47 minutes - 43.4 MBElvis Mitchell, longtime host of KCRW’s “The Treatment”, and producer of “The Black List”, joins Mike to discuss his new documentary “Is that Black Enough for You?” The film recounts an explosion of Black Film which occurred mainly in the period of 1968-1978, placing it within the context of both the prior failure of Hollywood to provide real representation of Black characters, as well as a strand of chiefly independent African American-produced film that Elvis traces back to as early as th...
”All that Breathes” with Shaunak Sen
November 08, 2022 12:48 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBFrom its lyrical opening shot of rats scurrying across an empty, moonlit lot somewhere in New Delhi, Shaunak Sen’s (“Cities of Sleep”) thoroughly original new documentary “All that Breathes” makes it clear that generous helpings of the cinematically sublime will be served up along with gritty doses of reality. The film follows Nadeem and Saud, two brothers who run a makeshift bird clinic and tend to the ubiquitous black kites of Delhi, which are falling out of the sky at alarming rates. Equa...
”Last Flight Home” with Ondi Timoner
November 03, 2022 10:14 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBWhen your dad — who is also your best friend and your family’s source of inspiration — announces that he has made the decision to die, the immediate reaction is shock and revulsion. But, after careful consideration and discussion, it became clear to the Timoner family that paterfamilias Eli, who had been battling very severe illness and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life, was ready to take this final step in his life’s journey. In “Last Flight Home”, her shattering, deeply moving and, u...
”Documentary Now!” with Alex Buono, Rhys Thomas & Seth Meyers
October 28, 2022 10:58 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBCan we all agree that the date of August 20, 2015 should be enshrined as one of the most important in the history of documentary? In case you’ve forgotten, that’s the date that “Documentary Now!” burst on the scene with the airing of its first episode: “Sandy Passage”, an unforgettable debut starring Fred Armisen and Bill Hader parodying the Maysles’ classic documentary “Grey Gardens”. Somehow, this crew of on and off-camera SNL talent (the show’s co-creators are Armisen, Hader, Seth Meyers,...
”Descendant” with Margaret Brown
October 25, 2022 15:48 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBIt’s not really about the ship. The first thing you have to understand about Margaret Brown’s (“The Great Invisible”, “The Order of Myths”) brilliant new Netflix documentary “Descendant” about the Clotilda, the last known ship to arrive with enslaved Africans in the U.S., is that it’s not primarily about the search for and discovery of this historic vessel. What carries her complex and lyrical film along in its looping journey across time and place are the stories of the descendants themselv...
”The Janes” with Tia Lessin & Emma Pildes
October 17, 2022 10:46 - 48 minutes - 44.2 MB“It’s a caper story, a heist movie, with women at the center. They were outlaws.” So says Tia Lessin (“Trouble the Water”), one of the directors of “The Janes”, the thoroughly engrossing new HBO documentary about… abortion. Set in Chicago, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, “The Janes”, also directed by Emma Pildes (“Jane Fonda in Five Acts”), tracks the mostly forgotten story of a courageous band of women, who, fed up with the lengths to which women had to go to seek abortions, took matters i...
”Blind Ambition” with Rob Coe & Warwick Ross
October 14, 2022 10:07 - 42 minutes - 39 MBFour young men arrive in South Africa from their native Zimbabwe and find each other through their love of–and professional dedication to–wine. Tinashe the big picture philosopher; Pardon the competitive jokester; Marlvin, pious and warm; and Joseph, the stalwart leader of Team Zimbabwe--all will overcome the obstacles facing them as refugees to arrive at the World Championship of Wine Tasting in France. Directors Rob Coe and Warwick Ross join Mike to discuss their film “Blind Ambition”. ...
”Civil” with Nadia Hallgren
October 03, 2022 10:09 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBBen Crump knows what it’s like to be in the eye of the storm. As a civil rights attorney representing families in some of the most high-profile cases involving police killings in recent years (including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor), Ben is constantly in the spotlight. But as Nadia Hallgren’s (“Becoming”) powerful and incisive documentary portrait “Civil” reveals, it is in the more private moments that Ben really shines, offering the kind of support and genuine concern, in addition to exp...
”Nothing Compares” with Kathryn Ferguson
September 30, 2022 16:28 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBWhat happened to Sinead O’Connor? It can be too easy to misremember the “after” story, of how quickly in the wake of her appearance on Saturday Night Live in October of 1992, this once megastar largely disappeared from the brightest lights of the world stage . But it also is too easy to ignore the “before” story of what brought her to fame early in life. In “Nothing Compares”, Kathryn Ferguson traces Sinead’s story from her childhood years with an abusive mother and time in a reformatory...
”Navalny” with Daniel Roher
September 28, 2022 10:25 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBHe survived a government-orchestrated poison attack. He pranked the Russian security agency. He endured (and continues to endure) solitary confinement in a remote gulag. Oh, and he also made some pretty cool TikTok videos. His name is Alexei Navalny, and, as Russia’s leading opposition figure, he will use whatever means possible to try to end the authoritarian regime of President Vladimir Putin. He’s also the subject of Daniel Roher’s (“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band”) tim...
”Moonage Daydream” with Brett Morgen
September 27, 2022 16:14 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MB“I was drowning”. Acclaimed filmmaker Brett Morgen (“Kurt Cobain Montage of Heck”, “The Kid Stays in the Picture”) knew he was in deep trouble creatively when he sat down to write the script for his latest documentary and days stretched to weeks and then months. When your film subject’s own creative output is as varied, unpredictable, and brilliant as rock star David Bowie’s was throughout his legendary career, the pressure to measure up can be paralyzing. But, eventually, Brett cracked the ...
”Gaslit” -- Fact or Fiction with Jim Robenalt
September 08, 2022 11:02 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBA mustard-colored Porsche races through the streets of Washington, DC. A crazed political operative holds a pencil to the throat of a former presidential advisor. An orgy hosted by a prominent businessman rages through the night. Does this sound like a documentary about Watergate? Well, it’s not actually. These entertaining, adrenaline-fueled moments are brought to you by the 8-part Starz limited series “Gaslit” starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn about Martha Mitchell, John Dean and the ev...
Emmy Roundup with Scott Feinberg
August 31, 2022 10:04 - 39 minutes - 36 MBThe Hollywood Reporter’s Executive Editor of Awards Scott Feinberg joins Mike and Ken to break down this year’s Emmy nominees in all the major documentary categories, including Outstanding Documentary Program; Outstanding Series; Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking; and Outstanding Directing. After considering all the angles, Scott pulls no punches in giving his take on who he thinks will take home top honors. Scott also sheds light on this year’s Emmy rule changes, how the voting pr...
”Three Minutes: A Lengthening” with Bianca Stigter
August 26, 2022 10:02 - 37 minutes - 34.8 MBWhen the writer Glenn Kurtz stumbled upon an old home movie buried in his parents’ closet in Florida, he inadvertently discovered a whole world that, tragically, had been nearly erased from history. Returning as a tourist in 1938 to the small village of Nasielsk outside Warsaw where he grew up, his grandfather David Kurtz brought with him a brand new 16mm Kodak movie camera. The three minutes of footage he shot there, which later turned up in the closet, are now among the only surviving movi...
”The Territory” with Alex Pritz
August 24, 2022 10:53 - 38 minutes - 35.1 MBNot yet 19 years old, a young man named Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau is approached by an elder, who tells him, ready or not, it is time for Bitaté to become his community’s new leader. With Brazil’s election of a right-wing president on the horizon, bands of illegal settlers clearing forests, and the impending disaster of climate change, how in the world can Bitaté take on such a staggering responsibility? But he knows he must: the fate of not only his own small Indigenous community but of the enti...
”Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” with Ian Denyer
August 21, 2022 10:23 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBIn the delightful and, yes, delicious CNN Original Series “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” the beloved actor/writer/director is constantly on the move, setting out to discover what makes each of Italy’s 20 regions unique. By the end of season two, Stanley had tramped across nine of them, and along the way, sampled enough pasta and salumi to feed a small army of production assistants. London-based Ian Denyer, who came on board to direct “Venice” (for which he is Emmy®-nominated), “Umbria...
”When Claude Got Shot” with Brad Lichtenstein
August 20, 2022 17:43 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBWhen Claude Motley got shot… everything changed. Not just for Claude, whose jaw was shattered by a bullet fired through his car window, but for Nathan, the 15-year-old youth who pulled the trigger and for Victoria, the woman who shot Nathan when he tried to rob her, too. These tragic events in Milwaukee in 2014 unleashed a chain reaction of trauma and devastation that continues to wreak havoc on the lives of everyone involved. Brad Lichtenstein’s masterfully crafted, emotionally powerful and...
”Controlling Britney Spears” with Samantha Stark & Liz Day
August 18, 2022 17:26 - 51 minutes - 47.5 MBAfter pop star Britney Spears’ controversial 13-year conservatorship finally came to an end in November 2021, Spears credited the #FreeBritney movement: “I honestly think you guys saved my life.” Filmmakers Samantha Stark and Liz Day also played no small role. When their documentary “Framing Britney Spears” premiered in February of that year, it sparked a flurry of international news coverage and put the spotlight on a conservatorship that seemed less about protecting Spears than it was abou...
”We Feed People” with Sara Bernstein
August 16, 2022 13:18 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBHe pops up often in your social media livestream, appearing from just about every corner of the globe. His head bobbing up-and-down in the frame, his voice slightly frantic, he reports in real-time from the frontlines of whatever new catastrophe has left thousands – or even millions — of people in desperate need of food and to describe what’s being done about it. He’s world-renowned Chef José Andrés and his organization, World Central Kitchen (WCK), has become legendary for its quick respons...
”The Beatles: Get Back” with Peter Jackson
August 15, 2022 04:25 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBLegendary Director Peter Jackson joins Mike to discuss the Emmy-nominated “The Beatles: Get Back”. Peter discusses why after a career that has spanned “Heavenly Creatures,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Hobbit,” and “King Kong,” he turned to documentary filmmaking with "They Shall Not Grow Old." And how the techniques that he employed in turning the trenches of the First World War to life came to be useful when faced with the 60 hours of 16mm film shot by Michael Lindsay Hogg in 1969 durin...
”Lucy And Desi” with Robert A. Martinez
August 14, 2022 10:52 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBLucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. They were America’s most beloved couple and Hollywood’s ultimate power couple. But when the studio lights were turned off, what was it like being the “real” Lucy and Desi? How did their relationship inform everything they did — from creating the groundbreaking sitcom “I Love Lucy” to running one of Hollywood’s most successful television studios? With “Lucy and Desi”, multi-hyphenate comedian-actor-producer — and now documentary director — Amy Poehler aims her pro...
”Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches” with Julie Marchesi and Seun Babalola
August 12, 2022 10:47 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBFrederick Douglass was not only one of our greatest activists, he was a great writer, an artist who worked in words. Director Julie Marchesi (P.O.V., American Masters, African-American Lives) and producer Seun Babalola (NOVA, The United Shades of America, Africa Everywhere) explore the growth of his mind and the power of his words in their Emmy-nominated “Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches.” Each speech is performed by one of the film’s all-star cast (Nicole Beharie, Colman Domingo, Jona...
”100 Foot Wave” with Joe Lewis
August 11, 2022 10:41 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MB“Nazaré”. To those who follow the world of big wave surfing, the word speaks for itself. A once sleepy fishing village on the coast of Portugal, Nazaré has now become one of the world’s preeminent big wave surfing spots. It’s also the most likely future location for that most elusive of all surfing dreams: the 100-foot wave. As the hunting ground of legendary surfer Garrett McNamara, Nazaré plays a starring role in the thrilling six-part, Emmy®-nominated HBO series “100 Foot Wave” directed b...
”George Carlin’s American Dream” with Michael Bonfiglio
August 10, 2022 10:31 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBGeorge Carlin wasn’t just a comedian, he was one of the great American artists of the later half of the 20th-Century, and he was shaped by and interacted with the great events of his day with intelligence, wit, and an ever-adapting nature. That’s what co-director Michael Bonfiglio (with Judd Apatow) of “George Carlin’s American Dream” explains when he sat down with Mike. Bonfiglio’s (producer of “Paradise Lost 2 & 3”, “Some Kind of Monster” & “The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling”) film trac...
”Changing the Game” with Michael Barnett, Clare Tucker, Alex Schmider
August 09, 2022 10:23 - 56 minutes - 51.4 MBRacking up win after win, Mack Beggs is well on his way to an undefeated season and a second consecutive Texas state high school wrestling crown. But, far from being recognized as the top athlete that he is, Mack finds himself the target of criticism from parents, social media trolls and national commentators. As a young trans man, Mack wants nothing more than the opportunity to compete against other young men. But Texas law prevents this, and so Mack has no choice but to take on not only hi...
”The Tinder Swindler” with Felicity Morris
August 01, 2022 10:22 - 45 minutes - 42 MBWith 55 million matches to date, Tinder advertises itself as the world’s most popular dating app. But, back in 2019, it was one match in particular — between a Norwegian woman living in London and a charming, self-described “Prince of Diamonds” — that became a viral sensation. It turned out that “Simon Leviev” was no prince, but a convicted con artist who used Tinder to woo a series of women in an elaborate Ponzi scheme that left them emotionally devastated and thousands of dollars in debt. ...
”Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” with Dayna Finegold & Dan Geller
July 26, 2022 16:49 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBIt’s more than a song. As Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (“Ballet Russes”, “The Galapagos Affair”) point out in their new documentary, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is a journey. A journey of artistic and spiritual discovery, a 7-year Odyssey of composition, and, once all but lost, an even longer journey to find its place as one of our most admired songs, admiration which take the form of critical praise and popular renditions that can be found in Dreamworks movies and primetime talent shows...
”Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” with Dayna Goldfine & Dan Geller
July 26, 2022 16:49 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBIt’s more than a song. As Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (“Ballet Russes”, “The Galapagos Affair”) point out in their new documentary, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is a journey. A journey of artistic and spiritual discovery, a 7-year Odyssey of composition, and, once all but lost, an even longer journey to find its place as one of our most admired songs, admiration which take the form of critical praise and popular renditions that can be found in Dreamworks movies and primetime talent shows...
”The Martha Mitchell Effect” with Anne Alvergue & Debra McClutchy
July 18, 2022 10:34 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBCoined by a Harvard psychologist in the 1980s, the “Martha Mitchell Effect” describes a process in which a person’s beliefs are initially labeled as delusional but later turn out to be true. But who was the real Martha Mitchell? What were her claims about Watergate? And why, until now, has she been largely erased from our collective memory? Opening up to Ken about their riveting all-archival documentary short “The Martha Mitchell Effect”, filmmakers Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy describ...
”Fire of Love” with Sara Dosa
July 11, 2022 10:04 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBLove and Lava, Magma and Matrimony. Sara Dosa’s (“The Last Season”, “The Seer and the Unseen”) “Fire of Love” encourages such puns, and that’s no accident: The film explores the relationship of Katia and Maurice Krafft, married volcanologists as they chart the world's volcanoes from the late 1960s until their untimely deaths in 1993. It’s a film that takes science seriously, but, like its subjects, isn’t afraid to have some fun. Join Mike as he speaks with Sara about how she’s reworking...
”Sub Eleven Seconds” with Bafic
June 27, 2022 10:18 - 22 minutes - 20.5 MBSha’Carri Richardson is fast. Really, really, really fast. At the 2021 U.S. Olympic trials, Sha’Carri, only 21 at the time, ran the 100-meter finals in 10.84 seconds, more than a tenth of a second faster than her closest competitor. In “Sub Eleven Seconds”, his artfully crafted documentary portrait of this superstar athlete at a moment of peak performance, the director Bafic captures Sha’Carri’s split-second athletic brilliance, refreshing honesty and totally original style. As part of our ...
”Holy Cowboys” with Varun Chopra
June 25, 2022 16:37 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBIn a small town in India, a cow vigilante group seeks to recruit teenage boys to join its ranks. Who are these so-called cow vigilantes and how are they using the welfare of the cow, which is sacred to India’s majority Hindu population, to fan the flames of nationalist extremism? In Varun Chopra’s fascinating, multifaceted and provocative new short documentary “Holy Cowboys”, the filmmaker follows Gopal and his friends as they come under the powerful influence of one such group that, in the ...
”Beba” with Rebeca Huntt
June 24, 2022 10:02 - 40 minutes - 36.8 MBLike a freshly sculpted work of clay, director Rebeca Huntt’s stunning documentary debut BEBA captures in real-time her family’s fluid interpersonal dynamics; the complicated legacies of inherited national, ethnic and racial identity; and her own brewing caldron of coming-of-age dramatics. To call it a “personal film” is both a wild understatement and a reductive miscalculation: “BEBA”, for all its personal complexities, is a profound spiritual quest intended to stir existential questions in...
”Beba” with Rebecca Huntt
June 24, 2022 10:02 - 40 minutes - 36.8 MBLike a freshly sculpted work of clay, director Rebeca Huntt’s stunning documentary debut BEBA captures in real-time her family’s fluid interpersonal dynamics; the complicated legacies of inherited national, ethnic and racial identity; and her own brewing caldron of coming-of-age dramatics. To call it a “personal film” is both a wild understatement and a reductive miscalculation: “BEBA”, for all its personal complexities, is a profound spiritual quest intended to stir existential questions in...
”The Feeling of Being Close to You” with Ash Goh Hua
June 23, 2022 14:24 - 21 minutes - 19.8 MBA phone call between mother and daughter. A bad dream. Home movies. Seems simple, yet Ash Goh Hua’s short documentary “The Feeling of Being Close to You” expertly navigates physical and emotional space to provide a compelling, affecting story of attempted reconciliation. “The Feeling of Being Close to You” will play at the The Palm Springs International ShortFest as part of the “In Search of Lost Time” series on Thursday, June 23rd 2PM, at the Camelot Theatres (Palm Springs Cultural Center)...
”Bitterbrush” with Emelie Mahdavian
June 14, 2022 19:21 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBHollyn and Colie are range riders. Every day during the summer, these highly skilled hired hands ride their horses across the remote, rugged Idaho mountains, pushing cows across sky-high ridges to their final destination. It’s hard work for low pay, but the rewards are plentiful: the thrill of the open range, the symbiotic relationship with their animals, and, not least of all, the close bond of friendship with each other. In her magical new documentary “Bitterbrush”, Emmy®, Peabody and Sund...
”Handbook” with Pavel Mozhar
June 13, 2022 10:01 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MBAs part of our focus on NextGen filmmakers — up-and-coming talents in the documentary world — “Top Docs” is pleased to be partnering with the 28th Palm Springs International ShortFest (June 21 – 27) to feature several filmmakers with outstanding documentary shorts in this year’s festival. In this episode, Ken talks to Pavel Mozhar, director of the IDFA-award-winning short documentary “Handbook”, a chilling exposé of the mass arrest and torture of protestors in the filmmaker’s native country...
”The Andy Warhol Diaries” with Andrew Rossi
June 09, 2022 10:46 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MBWhat more can be said about Andy Warhol? Campbell’s Soup. Marilyn Monroe. Pop Art. The Factory. Fright wig. 15 minutes. Connect the dots and you feel pretty confident in your short-hand knowledge of who Warhol was and his place in modern art and contemporary culture. But, as much as Andy Warhol is a household name when it comes to 1960’s celebrity icons, not a lot is known about Warhol’s interior life or his intimate relationships. Using Warhol’s diaries (published just two years after his d...
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival Live Panel
June 06, 2022 17:29 - 52 minutes - 47.8 MBAn expat journalist reflects on the recent revolutions that have transformed her native Ukraine. A filmmaker, looking for spiritual advice, goes to a secretive Buddhist monastery in Kyoto. A mother grieves for her young son and seeks answers about why childhood drownings are shockingly common. A young dancer finds her way back to performing after experiencing a life-changing swimming accident. What do these four compelling films have in common? The answer: in each case, a first-time feature ...
”Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” with Rory Kennedy
June 01, 2022 10:37 - 48 minutes - 44.7 MB“If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going” was a phrase uttered by generations of pilots in reference to the storied Seattle-based company that was virtually synonymous with American engineering know-how. But, in 2018, a practically brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft crashed soon after takeoff in Indonesia, followed five months later by a second 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia. All told, between the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights, 346 people were killed. And Boeing’s reputation lay in tatters. ...
”jeen-yuhs” with Coodie Simmons & Chike Ozah
May 27, 2022 10:14 - 45 minutes - 42 MBLong before Kanye West became one of the most famous people on the planet, he was a 19-year-old up-and-coming producer of beats trying to make a name for himself in the local Chicago rap scene. Enter comedian Coodie Simmons, host of a local cable access show, who — taking inspiration from the landmark documentary “Hoop Dreams” — decided to turn his camera full-time on Kanye, sensing the young rapper had what it took to make it big. Now, 24 years and over 300 hours of footage later, Kanye is ...
”Sirens” with Rita Baghdadi
May 13, 2022 23:47 - 38 minutes - 35.3 MBIn “Sirens”, Rita Baghdadi (“My Country No More”, “City Rising”) joins to Mike to discuss her portrayal of the all-women Lebanese heavy metal band Slave to Sirens, with a focus on Sherry, the virtuosic lead guitarist, and Lilas, the rhythm guitarist who is the charismatic center of the band. As much a coming of age story as a rock doc, “Sirens” explores not only their music, but the lives, relationships, and loves of their young lives. In this highly layered film, the backdrop is the revol...
”Exposing Muybridge” with Marc Shaffer
May 09, 2022 19:56 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MB“He's not a dusty antique from the past; he's the beginning of now” That’s how Marc Shaffer describes the subject of his film, Exposing Muybridge. Mike and Marc explore the strange and varied career of Eadweard Muybridge (just one of the many versions of the name he gave himself over the years). Born in Britain, he moved to New York to sell books, and then to San Francisco to become an early photographer of the American West as well as its native inhabitants. He then had the fortune (bot...
”Free Renty” with David Grubin
May 09, 2022 10:27 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBIn 1976, a curator at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnography discovered a long-forgotten item stored away in the museum’s collection: a series of stark but stirring daguerreotypes taken in 1850 that are believed to be the oldest photographs of enslaved Africans in the U.S. While the discovery made headlines across the country, they did not prompt a serious inquiry by Harvard to find out more about the photographic subjects, who included a man called Renty and his daughter Deli...
”Boycott” with Julia Bacha
May 02, 2022 09:34 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBWhile over the decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has periodically been front page news in America, for the most part, the issue has not taken center stage in U.S. politics. But what if it turned out that, unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, state legislatures throughout the country have been approving bills that not only took a stand on the conflict, but actually penalized some Americans for expressing an opinion on the issue? In her revelatory and thoroughly gripping docu...
Anatomy of a Scene from ”Ailey”
March 23, 2022 10:28 - 15 minutes - 14.6 MBIn this installment of Anatomy of a Scene, “Ailey” director Jamila Wignot describes the creative process behind a key sequence in her remarkable portrait of American dance legend Alvin Ailey. After building his hugely successful dance company from scratch, Ailey felt an ever-increasing amount of pressure and eventually broke down. Jamila and her team, guided by Ailey’s point of view, figured out how to “mirror and imagine” Ailey’s overwhelming sense of disorientation during this crisis. Crea...
Anatomy of a Scene from ”Attica”
March 16, 2022 09:05 - 18 minutes - 16.8 MBIn this powerful Anatomy of a Scene featurette, “Attica” director Stanley Nelson, recently awarded the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary, focuses on a climactic sequence near the end of the Oscar-nominated film. Stanley takes us inside the prison yard at Attica after authorities have re-taken control of the yard and proceed to systematically humiliate, torture, and exact revenge against the prisoners and their leaders. He discusses the thinking behind individua...
”The Queen of Basketball” with Ben Proudfoot
March 10, 2022 11:05 - 31 minutes - 28.4 MBIt starts like a modern day fairy tale: from the cotton fields of Mississippi, to three national collegiate championships, to scoring the first basket in Olympic history. But despite all her plaudits, when all that had passed, Lusia Mae (Lucy) Harrison felt she could pursue the game no further. In his Oscar-nominated short, “The Queen of Basketball,” director Ben Proudfoot (nominated just last year for “A Concerto is a Conversation”) puts Lucy front and center to tell her own story, while...
”When We Were Bullies” with Jay Rosenblatt
March 02, 2022 11:29 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBAfter a series of highly improbable coincidences, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt (“The Smell of Burning Ants”) finds himself back in his old elementary schoolyard making a film about a bullying incident from 50 years ago. Building on Jay’s own hazy recollections and those of his former 5th grade classmates, “When We Were Bullies” brilliantly pieces together a highly personal story that masterfully evokes universal themes and excavates a shared emotional terrain. Ken recently spoke with Jay on ...