Review: GIFT
When I was in grad school, the first book we had to read was Lewis Hyde's "The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World." It's a beautiful meditation on…
Arty Chick’s Middleburg Film Festival Download 2019
Another super tiring weekend in the bucolic Virginia hamlet of Middleburg watching more films than I should! I predicted early on that this festival would outgrow itself and I think…
Review: Where’s My Roy Cohn?
There’s something inherently distressing and depressing – and more than a little scary - about the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? The title is taken from a 2018 quote attributed…
Review: Midnight Traveler
Stories of refugees and immigrants are all over the news these days. But mostly they're about numbers and policy while the people are faceless and nameless. What this gritty documentary…
Review: Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins
If you don't know who Molly Ivins was, you'll be a fan by the end of this doc. If you do remember her, you'll fall back in love. And after…
Review: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
She was there at the very beginning of the film industry. She directed hundreds of popular films and built her own studio that rivaled all the others of the day.…
Review: Cold Case Hammarskjold
In this thoroughly odd documentary, Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger heads to Zambia after hearing conspiracy theories and tall tales about how UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was murdered in 1961. In…
Review: For Sama
For Sama is a thoroughly engrossing and heart-wrenching documentary made by the mother of a baby born in Aleppo, Syria during the rebel uprising and daily bombings. Sama's mother Waad…
Review: One Child Nation
Nanfu Wang has made a couple of my favorite documentaries of the past few years. Hooligan Sparrow followed a Chinese women's rights activist's journey and put both the subject and…
Review: Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
Oh, to be a great man's muse! To have him write poetry and songs about you, to you, for you. And all you need do is sit at his feet…
Quickie Review: Maiden
With the US Women’s soccer team on a championship run, the timing couldn’t be better for seeking out a documentary like Maiden. It’s a prime example of #GirlPower – on…
AFIDOCS 2019: Arty Chick’s Wrap-up
Usually when I see the slate for AFIDOCS I get excited for a few of them and intrigued by many more. But this time around, I was not all that…
Review: Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation
Woodstock, New York will always be associated with the concert that took place 50 years ago 43 miles from there in Bethel. Half a million young people came together for…
Quickie Review: Pavarotti (documentary)
Don’t get me wrong. My appreciation for Pavarotti does not mean I appreciate having been subjected as a kid to live radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera every Saturday afternoon.…
Review: Echo in the Canyon
When I lived in Los Angeles, I frequently drove through Laurel Canyon on the way to and from work and I knew that over the years it had been famous…