A Legend Lives Again in Lisa Cortés’s Sparkling New Documentary “Little Richard: I Am Everything”
Little Richard liked to call himself the King of Rock and Roll, and it’s hard to argue with that claim after seeing the new documentary about the incendiary singer’s wild music and even wilder life. Little Richard, born Richard Penniman, not only pioneered rock attitude with piano-pounding hits like “Lucille” and “Long Tall Sally, but” he also flaunted a gender-bending persona that continues to resonate in the culture three years after his death in 2020 at age 87.
Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ferguson Documentaries Will be Made Available for Free
If ever there was a time for American citizens—specifically white Americans—to learn about the history of racial segregation, oppression, and the reasons and uses for protest, that time is now. Actually, that time was decades ago, but for the purposes of this post, let’s focus on today. Tens of thousands of people all across the country have been in the streets protesting police brutality and systemic racism after the murder of George Floyd,
RBG‘s Cinematographer on Revealing an American Icon
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has sparked a cultural fandom that is usually reserved for musicians, actors and athletes. The Supreme Court Justice’s face adorns stickers and pins at every bookstore and she has adopted the moniker ‘Notorious RBG.’ At 85 years old, Ginsburg is engaging the next generation of activists, but her personal history is just as inspiring. RBG Cinematographer Claudia Raschke worked with directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen to peel back the layers of Ginsburg’s career and grant us insight into her life as a wife,
RBG Co-Directors/Producers on Their Groundbreaking Subject – Part 2
In Part 2 of our two-part interview with Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the filmmaking team behind the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary RBG that opens May 4, the pair discusses what they learned while doing their research (the justice is a huge opera fan), her nearly 56-year fairy-tale marriage to her incredibly supportive college sweetheart Martin Ginsburg and how they got around not being able to film the Supreme Court in session.
Screenwriter Michael Golamco on Please Stand By’s Heroine on the Spectrum
Wendy, the blonde heroine of Please Stand By, lives in northern California and writes Star Trek fan fiction. Played by Dakota Fanning, she’s hardly the only pretty, Trekkie protagonist in film history, but she is likely the first one dealing with autism and living in a group therapy home. Ben Lewin directs this Magnolia Pictures film, out tomorrow, which co-stars Toni Colette as Scottie, Wendy’s no-nonsense therapist, and Alice Eve as Audrey,
Director Greg Barker & Obama Advisor Ben Rhodes on the President Obama Documentary The Final Year
Well into Barack Obama’s second term, filmmaker Greg Barker began chronicling the actions of the president’s foreign policy team. The result is The Final Year, which spotlights Secretary of State John Kerry, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and speechwriter and adviser Ben Rhodes, along with a few powerhouse cameos by Obama himself. The documentary observes policy discussions, but turns more on poignant moments. These include an election night in which the Obama camp’s hopes for its legacy are dashed.
Talking to Writer-Director Tobias Lindholm About his Oscar-Nominated A War
The third big-screen collaboration between Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm and actor Pilou Asbaek, A War follows a company commander through the horrors of Afghanistan and back to Denmark, where he's put on trial for alleged war crimes. The movie, an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, has a semi-improvisational style and features mostly nonprofessional performers. Lindholm's two previous movies, R and A Hijacking,
Battle of the Titans: Robert Gordon on William Buckley vs. Gore Vidal in Best of Enemies
Playing at the BAMcineamaFest in Brooklyn and AFI Docs in Los Angeles tonight, Magnolia Pictures' Best of Enemies is a riveting behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr., where these two intellectual heavyweights clobbered each other over their views about God, sex, and politics.
We spoke with co-director and producer Robert Gordon about how this film came to be,
511 Days of Total Darkness: The Incredible True Story Behind the Documentary No Place on Earth
In 1993, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, NYPD officer and caving enthusiast Chris Nicola set out to Western Ukraine to explore Verteba and the Priest’s Grotto Cave, one of the longest cave systems in the world. Inside the caves—dark, damp, and stifling, wholly inhospitable to human life—he found the unthinkable: buttons, shoes, a house key, artifacts of human habitation decidedly recent. Upon returning from the caves, his attempts at discovering the origins of these items led him to only the offhand comment from a local villager that,
