documentaries-recomendations/favs.?

[WorldForgot]

[Reelist]

There's a new doc on HBOMax "Adrienne" about Adrienne Shelly, the actress/filmmaker who wrote and directed "Waitress" (2007) but died mysteriously before it was even released. Highly Recommended to any and all film buffs! Tissues required

[Robyn]

Nice! Will watch that one

[wilberfan]

I had a good double-bill last night:

https://youtu.be/PbunvLdbWxA

Then

https://youtu.be/YWCXwNCzZgo

[wilder]

4K restoration of Juliet Bashore's Kamikaze Hearts (1986), in theaters May 13, 2022. Kino disc coming on August 9, 2022.



Tough and cynical veteran Mitch and her more naive, yet eager partner Tigr are a couple of porn actresses involved in an intense lesbian relationship. Their already strained relationship reaches the breaking point as substance abuse and the pressure of working in the sex industry begins to take a heavy toll on both women.

NSFW

Some quick research shows that this is almost entirely staged. Storyboarded but unscripted, shot improv/verite starring people playing themselves and edited by a guy who claims he didn't know the footage wasn't real. Totally fascinating in its presentation of a porn industry riddled with drug abuse, narcissism, and misogyny but also populated mostly by professionals interested in merging their craft with a sex-positive (by 1986 standards) environment. Things get even more uncomfortably engrossing as the IRL romantic relationship between the two leads (real life porn actresses Sharon Mitchell and Tigr Bennet, essentially playing themselves) totally implodes in reality just as their characters' does in the film. Fairly naive about its intrinsic exploitation of its subjects but also completely unvarnished...it may have been scripted that they shoot coke together on camera, but that's also really two junkie porn actresses interrupting their breakup fight for a blast. Frequently pretentious and still totally searing. Great shit.

this film rests on an uncanny tightrope where principles of fakeness and objectivity are disassembled, leading to staged interactions red-raw with veneers of abrading truths. everything is a performance, everything is on show, so why try to break apart these entanglements of fiction and nonfiction when the two alloyed provide the most potent takeaways?

I chased a bootleg of this for years as a teenager, then picked up the Facets DVD when it was finally put out officially. Now here we are in 2022, where a 4K restoration is just readily available. What a time.

[wilder]

Love & Saucers (2017) - watched on Tubi

The strange story of David Huggins, a 72 year-old Hoboken man who claims to have had a lifetime of encounters with otherworldly beings - including an interspecies romance with an extra-terrestrial woman (with whom he lost his virginity to), and chronicled it all in surreal impressionist paintings, few of which have ever been seen.

[wilder]

October 18, 2022

Chris Smith's American Movie (1999) is coming to blu-ray from Sony



A documentary about a Wisconsin man named Mark Borchardt and his attempts to direct a low-budget horror film called "Coven."

[wilder]

John Cork's Murnau, Borzage, & Fox (2008) is available to watch for free via the director's vimeo page. Originally released as part of the Murnau, Borzage, and Fox DVD box set.



A look through stills and interviews at how William Fox influenced American film at the transition between silent and sound by importing the German expressionist F.W. Murnau who in turn influenced the romantic American Frank Borzage.