'RBG' directors tweet support for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after cancer surgery12/22/2018
"Be well, tough lady," writes filmmaker Julie Cohen
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is getting support from RBG filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen, after the 85-year-old jurist underwent surgery to remove malignant nodules from her lung.
"Be well, tough lady. We. Need. You.," Cohen tweeted hours after the Supreme Court's Office of Public Information shared news of the operation, which was performed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
According to the court's public information officer, "Two nodules in the lower lobe of her left lung were discovered incidentally during tests performed...to diagnose and treat rib fractures sustained in a fall on Nov. 7." Picking up on the serendipity of uncovering the cancer after Ginsburg's injury, West tweeted, "I'm no doctor, but maybe #RBG breaking ribs is a good thing."
In an op-ed piece published on CNN.com on Saturday, the directors noted the cancer surgery news triggered alarm among progressives, who fear any deterioration in Justice Ginsburg's health could put President Trump in a position to name her replacement. But Cohen and West pointed out RBG has survived cancer twice before, and has weathered many other challenges that might have overwhelmed a lesser person. "Seemingly superhuman determination and toughness have been hallmarks of Ginsburg's entire life," they wrote. "This is a woman who had no trouble staying at the top of her Harvard Law School class -- a class in which she was one of nine women among 500 students -- at the same time she was taking care of a toddler and nursing a husband stricken with a potentially fatal cancer." RBG, produced by CNN Films, made the Oscar shortlist announced earlier this week. It earned $14 million dollars at the box office, a phenomenal showing that speaks to Ginsburg's popularity and her crucial role as a bulwark against Trump. While recuperating from her cancer surgery, Ginsburg voted with the majority in the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision that rejected the Trump administration's latest immigration policy initiative, that would have banned immigrants who cross illegally into the United States from seeking asylum. Reports say Ginsburg cast her vote from her hospital bed. In the meantime, her recovery continues. According to the Supreme Court's statement, “Ginsburg is resting comfortably and is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days."
Marshall Curry's A Night at the Garden, and films from The Guardian Docs and New York Times Op-Docs make shortlist
In February 1939, 20,000 Americans gathered in Madison Square Garden--not for a hockey game or concert, but to join in a Nazi rally. That shocking event, long since forgotten, is the subject of Marshall Curry's short documentary A Night at the Garden.
The film, constructed entirely of archival footage from the rally, made the Oscar shortlist of 10 documentary shorts revealed on Monday. Curry, a two-time Academy Award nominee, clearly sees the relevance of that distant event to the America of today. "We’d like to believe that there are sharp lines between good people and bad people," the director said in an interview with Field of Vision, the site that posted the short. "But I think most humans have dark passions inside us, waiting to be stirred up by a demagogue who is funny and mean, who can convince us that decency is for the weak, that democracy is naïve, and that kindness and respect for others are just ridiculous political correctness." Joining Curry's film on the shortlist is another documentary with historical dimensions. Women of the Gulag, directed by Marianna Yarovskaya. It centers on the memories of several women in their 80s and 90s who were dispatched to Soviet forced labor camps decades earlier, during the Stalin era. Millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, were confined in the camps and countless numbers perished under brutal conditions. "Our 'last witness’s' stories range from the horrific to the uplifting," the director writes. "Conservatory student, Vera, [was] arrested for playing 'German hymns'...Ksenia live[d] in a pit covered by branches...For most, the telling of their stories was cathartic. Adile, in her 90s, put it this way: 'I lived so long to be able to finally tell the truth.'"
Also making the shortlist is the innovative and cinematic documentary short Black Sheep, which recounts the experience of Cornelius Walker, a young British man of Nigerian descent. When Cornelius was 11 his mother took him away from London to live in another town after a boy of Walker's age and ethnicity was killed near their neighborhood. But seeking a safer place to live brought unintended consequences.
"Cornelius suddenly found himself living on a white estate run by racists," the Guardian writes on its website, where the film is posted. "But rather than fight them, Cornelius decided to become more like the people who hated him. They became his family and kept him safe. And in return, Cornelius became submerged in a culture of violence and hatred." The film features Walker speaking directly into camera as he reflects on what he went through 15 years earlier. Non-professional actors were hired to recreate key scenes from his life.
Lifeboat, from RYOT Films, puts a human face on the extraordinary refugee crisis that has seen tens of thousands of people flee North Africa and the Middle East.
"Lifeboat bears witness to refugees desperate enough to risk their lives in rubber boats leaving Libya in the middle of the night, despite a high probability of drowning," RYOT says of the film directed by Skye Fitzgerald. "With few resources but certain that civil society must intervene, volunteers from a German non-profit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts."
Joshua Bennett and Julia Schatz-Preston directed Los Comandos, a shortlisted doc that focuses on a group of emergency responders in El Salvador, who bear some similarity to the famed White Helmets in Syria.
"Violence has overrun El Salvador. The emergency medical unit Los Comandos de Salvamento is standing up to the gangs’ reign of terror," states the film's website. "Sixteen-year-old Mimi is a dedicated Comando caught in the cross hairs. When her fellow Comando, 14-year-old Erick, is gunned down while serving, she faces pressure to flee El Salvador and head north."
Period. End of Sentence, from director Rayka Zehtabchi, reveals how women in a village in Delhi, India are combatting a taboo about menstruation that has negatively impacted an untold number of people.
"Without sanitary products or proper education about their bodies, millions of girls end up missing school or dropping out entirely once they begin their periods," notes a press release about the film. "But in a modest room in a rural Indian village, local women unpack wooden crates filled with the donated supplies they need to produce and sell thousands of pads to local women in an effort to improve feminine hygiene, thus launching The Pad Project. This micro-business in a box stimulates the economy of individuals in the village and empowers women and girls to feel comfortable with their bodies and to stay in school past puberty."
A couple of Netflix shorts made the Oscar shortlist, among them End Game, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
"A moving film about the passage from life to death," writes DOC NYC, which showcased the film, "End Game is a portrait of the last days of those in palliative care in two San Francisco Bay Area medical facilities pioneering new paradigms for end-of-life decisions." Netflix also scored with Zion, the story of Zion Clark, a young man born without legs. He was subjected to abuse in a series of foster homes, but found fulfillment and camaraderie when he joined his middle school's wrestling team. The film won Best Documentary Short at the IDA Awards earlier this month. "We like to say it's a sports doc that's really about growing up," director Floyd Russ tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "Zion didn't have confidence, no belief in himself. And that's what wrestling gave him."
63 Boycott looks back more than 50 years to a massive protest in Chicago, where more than 250,000 students demonstrated against racial segregation.
"Many marched through the city calling for the resignation of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed trailers, dubbed ‘Willis Wagons,’ on playgrounds and parking lots of overcrowded black schools rather than let them enroll in nearby white schools," according to the film's website. Gordon Quinn, founder of Kartemquin Films, directed the short. "’63 Boycott connects the forgotten story of one of the largest northern civil rights demonstrations to contemporary issues around race, education, school closings, and youth activism."
Easily the most provocatively-titled short to make the Oscar doc shortlist is My Dead Dad's Porno Tapes, directed by Charlie Tyrell, part of the New York Times Op-Docs series. Along with Black Sheep, it's also one of the most innovative documentaries of the year, making novel use of stop-motion animation in a nonfiction context.
In the touching film, Tyrell tries to come to terms with who his late father was and why their relationship had been less than satisfactory. You can watch the short here:
The 10 shortlisted documentary shorts will be trimmed to a final five contenders when the Oscar nominations are revealed on January 22.
Won't You Be My Neighbor? and RBG are in, but Michael Moore, Aretha Franklin left out
Shortlists are generally as notable for what they leave out as what they include. That's arguably the case with the Oscar documentary shortlist released on Monday, which was absent Michael Moore's latest film and a much-talked about documentary on Aretha Franklin.
Fahrenheit 11/9 didn't make it, despite Moore's Oscar-winning pedigree and a successful box office run. Amazing Grace, meanwhile, was a last-minute qualifier in the Oscar documentary race, debuting only last month after a 46-year delay. The film, centered on Aretha Franklin's recording of her acclaimed live gospel album, had been held up by technical problems and then legal challenges from the singer. But her death in August paved the way for the film's release, perhaps too late for full consideration by Oscar Documentary Branch voters. In lieu of Fahrenheit and Amazing Grace, the doc shortlist was dominated by the biggest box office hits of the year. Morgan Neville's Won't You Be My Neighbor? -- which earned an astounding $22.6 million -- made the list as did RBG, the documentary about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that has earned $14 million in theaters. Betsy West, co-director of RBG with Julie Cohen, alluded to the shortlist news via Twitter.
Also making the list is Three Identical Strangers, Tim Wardle's hit documentary that tells the strange story of triplets who were separated at birth and later discovered each other as adults. That has made $12.3 million at the box office. Free Solo, which has collected almost $11 million so far, also joined the party. E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's doc follows climber Alex Honnold on his attempt to scale Yosemite's El Capitan without benefit of ropes. "The fact that people are responding to the film is very, very meaningful to us," Vasarhelyi tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "It's wonderful. It's amazing. We're shocked because it wasn't something that we ever thought about." A slew of international-focused films earned spots on the shortlist--some seemingly coming out of nowhere. The Distant Barking of Dogs, directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont, focuses on a Ukrainian boy living in a village depopulated in the midst of war with Russia.
Joining that film is Communion, a documentary from Poland directed by Anna Zamecka that revolves around a teenager girl who cares for her autistic brother and "dysfunctional father," with no mother to aid her.
Among better known international films to make the shortlist, The Silence of Others explores the legacy of torture and assassination that scarred Spain during the rule of dictator General Francisco Franco. Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar directed that film, with Pedro Almodóvar executive producing. Of Fathers and Sons, directed by Talal Derki, centers on the filmmaker's infiltration of a radical Islamist family in Northern Syria. At enormous personal risk, Derki examined a patriarchal ideology that puts adhering to a strict definition of Islam above every other consideration. "The way you speak, they way you eat, the way women should act, their life, the way you dress, the way you leave your beard, politically, everything [is controlled]," Derki explains. "You can defeat a dictatorship, but how do you defeat a guy who speaks in the name of Allah, of God?"
On Her Shoulders, Alexandria Bombach's film about Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, made the shortlist. But another film about a Nobel Peace Prize winner did not. That was Derek Doneen's The Price of Everything, an acclaimed documentary on Kailash Satyarthi and his efforts to end child slavery.
The Netflix documentary Shirkers, directed by Sandi Tan, appears on the shortlist, but some other Netflix contenders like Quincy and Reversing Roe failed to make the cut. Shirkers explores Tan's experience making a horror film as a teenager in her native Singapore. Her remarkable achievement was ruined when her adult mentor on the project, a mysterious man named Georges Cardona, ran off with the completed footage. "This film is the story of me recounting all of that in my dealing with this loss," Tan explains, "pulling my friends along this journey, and a new set of friends--other people I discovered along the way whose lives had been affected by the actions of this Georges Cardona." Stories with a domestic focus earned the majority of recognition from the Documentary Branch. Minding the Gap, one of the most honored films of the year, earned a spot. Bing Liu directed the film that reveals the emotional damage sustained by Liu and two friends as they grew up in Rockford, Illinois. To escape their abusive home lives, they gravitated toward skateboarding.
Other remaining Oscar contenders touch on aspects of race in American culture.
In Hale County This Morning, This Evening director RaMell Ross creates a portrait of African-American experience in a rural Alabama community, defying the stereotypes often attached to depictions of Black America. "It was incredibly difficult" to describe the film to potential backers, Ross told us, "which is evidenced by every 'pitch' [being] completely different. I would talk about the film differently every time. I think that helped to not reduce it in my own head and to allow my relationship to the film to be as spontaneous as each day would come." Charm City from Marilyn Ness offers a ground-level view of some of Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods, where residents have been systematically denied opportunity--in part through redlining that kept quality health care, education and transportation out of reach. But as Ness reveals, some remarkable individuals, including neighborhood peacekeepers, are helping to build a better future for Baltimore's youth. Among them is Alex Long, "a product of Baltimore's streets," who guides kids toward a path of positivity. "I truly love my city," Long affirms in an interview with Nonfictionfilm.com. "It taught me and my family a whole lot as far as just who we are, how tough we are individually, and it showed us that it's a lot of, lot of great people out there."
Questions of race underpin Crime + Punishment, Stephen Maing's acclaimed documentary about policing in New York City. The director follows a group of officers who challenged the NYPD's policy of pressuring cops to keep up arrest totals (department brass deny such a policy exists). The alleged quota system has made youth of color the disproportionate target of police trying to maintain an acceptable level of "collars."
“From the beginning I saw how this job was,” one officer declares in the film. “It’s not about helping people. It’s about numbers.” Rounding out the 15 shortlisted docs is Kimberly Reed's Dark Money, which investigates the pernicious influence of untraceable cash on American elections, and the shadowy groups responsible for it. "If we had different regulations that were in place that discouraged these groups from spending money anonymously, that's the ultimate goal of this [film]," Reed tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "We should know, as voters, who's spending money to support or oppose candidates, and what they're in it for, what their motivations are, what their profit motive is. Because armed with that, that's when voters can determine whether or not there's corruption involved." Voters--the kind who make up the Academy's doc branch--will narrow the list of 15 remaining Oscar contenders down to a final five nominees. That announcement will come January 22. Swedish-born music producer became huge concert draw, but struggled with pressures of fame The music video for Avicii's breakthrough song "Levels" has racked up more than 380 million views on YouTube. His video for the song "Wake Me Up" -- that's been viewed 1.7 billion times. Those numbers give a sense of the worldwide popularity of the late artist, born Tim Bergling, who has variously been described as a remixer, DJ and music producer. In his relatively brief life -- he died by suicide in April of this year at the age of 28 -- he became a top arena draw on an international scale, performing his brand of electronic dance music (EDM) for crowds that reached 70,000 per concert. But as the new documentary Avicii: True Stories reveals, he never became comfortable with fame and he struggled with intense anxiety. It feels good for me to be able to help to carry on his legacy, whether it's on the music side or his personal side. Director Levan Tsikurishvili got to know his subject over a lengthy period in which he documented Avicii in his native Sweden to points around the globe. "We spent many years together, shared the same house and daily life [over] two, three, four years," Tsikurishvili tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "I would say we got very close to each other." The film opened Friday at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills; it opens next Friday (December 21) at Cinema Village in New York, after an international release that has seen the documentary play in Sweden and other European countries and as far away as Uruguay. It was completed well before Avicii's untimely death in Muscat, Oman. As a teenager Bergling demonstrated an uncanny ear for rhythm and beats, posting his early remixes to music forums. In 2011 his song "Levels," which sampled Etta James' recording of "Something's Gotta Hold of Me," became a mega-hit. It also helped push EDM into the mainstream, putting DJ/remixers like Avicii on a par with more traditional recording stars in terms of audience appeal. "DJs nowadays are the musicians that people were used to 20 years back," Tsikurishvili observes. "It's modernization of the entire music creation." With laptop and recording studio, Avicii could make dazzling, danceable hits, collaborating with Madonna, Coldplay's Chris Martin, Wyclef Jean, Rita Ora and other talents. In the film, Wyclef compares him to Bach. "The usual preconceptions about DJs used to be like, 'Oh, they only come and press play and that's it,'" the director comments. "Most of the people don't know that those people [mega-DJs] are musicians and they're producers, exactly in the same way as The Rolling Stones or Queen or Led Zeppelin or whoever you want to compare them to." Images from Avicii's Instagram feed Bergling/Avicii described himself as shy and ill at ease being the center of attention. It was perhaps not the ideal disposition for someone who, almost accidentally, became an arena act performing for massive crowds of adoring fans. Tsikurishvili got a unique angle filming the phenomenon of Avicii in concert. "I used to hide right behind Tim so the crowd didn't see me," he reveals. "But you are staying in exactly the same position as he does and I really wanted to give the perspective to the viewers of what he saw when he was up in the DJ booth... It is unreal, definitely, to see 50,000 people scream or cheer." The stereotypical image of Swedes is of an emotionally contrained people. But Bergling was exceptionally open about his struggles to cope with the pressures that came with growing renown. He sought comfort in alcohol to manage his anxiety. "He was super open as a person about himself," Tsikurishvili recalls. "He had this honesty and openness that I almost haven't seen in any other person, so that was something that I learned a lot about and kind of took inspiration for myself." The film suggests Avicii's management pushed him too hard to keep performing despite the DJ's mounting physical and mental health issues. But Tsikurishvili himself is reluctant to pass judgment. "I would like to be neutral when it comes to that as the director," he tells Nonfictionfilm.com. "I would not make any comments on that, to be honest with you." What he will comment on is Avicii's capacity both for introspection and understanding of others. "That was something that captured my attention from the very beginning," he notes. "His emotional intelligence was very high." Avicii's EQ was even demonstrated during a visit he made with Tsikurishvili to the jungle of Madagascar, the director recalls. "We get there and we were having a super simple lunch like bananas and fruit. These lemurs showed up and they started to steal our food and it was super cute. Those lemurs were just so lovely, but one of them wanted to take Tim's banana and bit him on the finger really heavily." Tsikurishvili says he was struck by their different reactions to the incident. "I was so upset the lemur bit him, kind of like angry. Tim started to defend the lemur. He was like, 'No, he didn't mean anything wrong. He just thought my finger was a banana as well, like food. It was just a huge mistake."' Tsikurishvili remembers. "I went in with the thought that the lemur was the bad guy because he hurt my friend. But he had this different point of view on that, different angle. And that really taught me the size of the emotional intelligence [he possessed]. I've never seen that in any other human being." The director prefers not to speak about his friend's death. But he would like his film to serve as a tribute to him.
"I really hope people see how he was. I think the film honors him in a great way," he says. "It feels good for me to be able to help to carry on his legacy, whether it's on the music or his personal side." The director thinks there are lessons to be learned from Avicii's experience, especially for young people who harbor illusions about fame. "You're not learning in school that stardom is not good. You're only learning the good side of it. And honestly, what's stardom? I don't believe in that and Tim didn't believe in that either," Tsikurishvili insists. "I think that's something that human beings have made up and people are running into it... I don't say people who like stardom are not good. What I mean is that it's good to kind of study that. What is stardom and what does it mean to be a star?"
Pope Francis: A Man of His Word is now streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu
German director Wim Wenders has earned three Oscar nominations for his documentaries, most recently in 2015 for The Salt of the Earth. He's in contention again this year for his latest film, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word, a project that stemmed from a Vatican offer of unusual access to the spiritual leader.
Wenders, who was born Catholic but later converted to Protestantism, makes no secret of his respect for the Pope and the significance of his decision to take the name of Francis when he was elected pontiff by the College of Cardinals, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. By choosing the humble St. Francis as his model, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio sent a strong message to the church hierarchy--rejecting the luxurious majesty of the Holy See in favor of a more simple lifestyle and message of solidarity with the poor. Pope Francis is now available on streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime, iTunes and Vudu. Nonfictionfilm.com interviewed the filmmaker via email, an exchange that ranged from the film to critics of the Pope, including one Vatican official who has demanded Francis resign. What impressed you most about Pope Francis in the time you spent with him? Wim Wenders: I was very impressed by the sheer power of Pope Francis' presence, by his genuine kindness and tenderness, the emotional impact of his simple, yet deep language, by his humility and his love for people, but maybe most of all by his courage, or better: his fearlessness. I spent three years watching and listening to the man, not necessarily in person, but on a daily basis in the editing room, and that did have a great impact on me. It does rub off. Actually think I am a more courageous person now, I am trying my best to get by with less, and I try my best to treat everybody else as equals. Why do you think the Vatican made Pope Francis available for the purposes of a documentary? What was their objective in supporting a documentary project? It wasn’t really “The Vatican”, the institution as such, that initiated this documentary, but rather the Secretariat of Communication. Monsignore Dario Viganò, at the time prefect of this Secretariat and a close collaborator of Pope Francis. He wrote that initial letter to me, asking me if I could imagine making a film about Pope Francis, and if I could possibly come by and talk about it. It turned out that Dario Viganò, was a real cinephile—he had been teaching cinema, had even written books about it. He knew what he was doing, and he knew that cinema was a means of communication that no Pope had ever ventured into. He figured that a documentary film could do justice to the radical approach of Pope Francis' papacy, at least that’s how I understood it. He left me with nothing less, or more, than, “If you want to do this, we will enable you to do this, but you're going to have to write and conceive it yourself, and it’s going to have to be financed and produced independently. We're going to keep out of it. I just want to plant a seed, and if you like the idea, we'll help you. You will have a privileged access to the Pope, you will have access to the archives, but other than that, it's your movie." That seemed a good approach. I certainly would not have been available for a commissioned film. I remember, I also asked him, why he had picked me, and not somebody else. He just smiled and said, rather cryptically, that this had to do with Wings of Desire. I left it at that and didn’t inquire more. |
AuthorMatthew Carey is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. His work has appeared on Deadline.com, CNN, CNN.com, TheWrap.com, NBCNews.com and in Documentary magazine. |