Category
Short Documentaries
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08.25.10The Documentary Blog Recommends: Salim BabaI'm a little behind on this one (three years behind to be exact) but I just checked out director Tim Sternberg's beautiful short documentary Salim Baba and was pretty much blown away. The film looks at one man's love of cinema and his attempt to maintain a family tradition in the face of technological advancements. Salim Muhammad lives in Kolkata, India where he pushes a handmade portable cinema cart around town for the local kids to watch cut-up versions of Bollywood action scenes and dance sequences. It's a tradition that was passed down to him by his father and one ...
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08.12.10The Film That Almost Killed Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb: The BBC’s “The Confessions of Robert Crumb”With the recent Blu-ray release of Terry Zwigoff's Crumb last week (my review will be up soon), I thought it might be interesting to look at this 1987 BBC documentary (via The Uranium Cafe) that almost killed Zwigoff's documentary altogether. The Confessions of Robert Crumb was apparently commissioned as part of a series of films highlighting important contemporary artists, and the Crumbs (Robert and his wife Aileen) had no qualms about agreeing to the project even though their good friend Terry was in the middle of shooting his own film on their lives. Zwigoff actually talks about this on the ...
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06.28.10The DocBlog Recommends: The Human ProjectThere are four great things about Bert McKinley and Erin Sproule's web series 'The Human Project': the quality is high, the content is great, it's Canadian and it's free! Fans of Showtime's TV version of This American Life will definitely want to check out this collection of short stories that finds average folks talking about such topics as unconditional love, scars and the unexpected discovery of a dead body (let's face it, we've all been there). I've embedded one of the trailers for the series above and you can check out one of the episodes after the jump. If you ...
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06.19.10DocBlog Highlighted Short: High SteelHigh Steel Directed by Don Owen Canada 13 min 47 seconds So I was going through the NFB archives (what an AMAZING website) and came across this cool short film on Mohawk Indians who make their living as high rise steel workers in New York City. High Steel was directed by Don Owen (Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leondard Cohen) in 1965 and serves as a great look at the insanely dangerous process of erecting high rise buildings. I can't imagine it's done this way anymore. They're not even wearing safety harnesses! I've always said that one element I love about documentaries is the fact ...
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06.18.10Sean Dunne’s New Short The Bowler Now OnlineSome of you may remember Sean Dunne's previous short works 'The Archive' and 'Man in Van' when they made their rounds on the internet last year. He's got a great style and a good eye for interesting characters, and his latest short is no different. From his Vimeo video: "Meet Rocky Salemmo. He’s a ramblin’ gamblin’ man. For the majority of his adult life Rocky has hustled bowling for a living. Here is his story. A short documentary about booze, broads and bowling." Check out the film in full above and take some time to go through the rest of his ...
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03.11.10ITVS Launches Futurestates: Werner Herzog Voices a Plastic BagITVS, a major documentary funder, has launched a new website, Futurestates, featuring an 'online series of 11 unique short films exploring visions of what life might look like in an America of the future'. So...sort of like Demolition Man and Back to the Future 2, only shorter. The site gives a select roster of some top emerging filmmakers the opportunity to present their own unique sci-fi (a term used very loosely here) visions of a future America. So far the stand out film features a plastic bag with a conscious narrative voice as provided by Werner Herzog. It's like a ...