On Saturday, June 10th “The Fourth Wall” directed by Luke Meyer premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The ten-year in the making documentary is a character-driven piece following the story of the Sullivanians, who created a secret psychotherapy sex cult hidden in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the 1970s and 80s.
Pain, sadness, loss and regret all encompass this absorbing tale of life and death in acclaimed documentarian Ondi Timoner’s newest piece of work entitled “Last Flight Home”, where she explores the sad and tear-jerking death of her late father and venture capitalist Eli Timoner.
New York, NY – The highly anticipated Tribeca Film Festival showcased the music documentary “Uncharted,” on June 10th, 2023. Directed by Beth Aala, “Uncharted” provided an intimate glimpse behind the scenes of the music business. This remarkable film shed light on the lack of access and opportunity granted to young black and brown women, as they strive to break through in the industry.
“I like your combination—it’s down my alley,” quips Patricia Field to Nadia Tulin in one of the early moments of Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field, premiering at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.
Richland has all the trappings of a picturesque American small town.
It has diners, high school football, town parades and a smattering of hometown heroes and their kids and their kids’ kids. All this rests on contaminated land, from improper nuclear waste storage from the power plant that has driven the economy for the past half century. As it happens, the plant supplied plutonium for the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.
Director Irene Lusztig’s documentary “Richland” takes a look at the legacy of the nuclear history in the eponymous town.
Pierce under the facade of many towns in America and you’ll find a radioactive underbelly. There are unsavory and complex histories to contend with, dominating industries with questionable practices and deep ideological rifts between its denizens. So this isn’t a film just about a nuclear town. It captures a disturbance felt all over the country. Its subject town’s focal point, uranium enrichment, happens to be a great metaphor: it brings energy, death, destruction, longevity, decay, prosperity, blight, advancement, regress. You can use that array of terms for plenty of institutions that backbone the history of many towns in this country.
Richland carries baggage that sounds familiar to many places. Beyond the scope of nuclear debate, there are salient moments to today’s public conversation writ large. For example, high schoolers and their parents debate the appropriateness of having a mushroom cloud mascot for their school team “The Bombers.”
The film captures so well the universal essence of small industry town life. And it gives breath to all its nuances and perspectives by letting its inhabitants speak for themselves. We’re not subjected to lectures from proselytizing pro or anti nuclear talking heads. Instead, we sit down at a diner table or a high school quad or living room and hear what people have to say about Richland, until we get an illuminating mosaic of thoughtful positions and the people behind them.
“Richland” premiered at Tribeca Film Festival June 11.
Grammy-Award-winning singer Gloria Gaynor was celebrated at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival with the premiere of the documentary Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive. The documentary which follows Gaynor who achieved massive success in the 1970s with her disco hit I Will Survive on her journey to making a musical comeback in the gospel music genre. The documentary was produced and directed by Betsy Schechter.
On March 23, the nonprofit “Get Lit” screened thirty minutes of the documentary, “Our Words Collide.” The film showcased five poets from the Get Lit program. After, a mental health panel featured director Jordan Barrow, and two youth poets, Sam Luo, and Amari Turner. Author and mental health activist Héctor Tobar led the discussion. The event showed the organization’s positive impacts on literacy and young people.
“Wild Life” is a visually stunning film that showcases the beauty and diversity of Patagonia’s landscapes and wildlife. It also provides a compelling look at the complex issues surrounding conservation and the role that private individuals and organizations can play in protecting wild places.
Life is what we make of it. We’re all bound to experience the strange, the wonderful, the fear-inducing, and breathtaking moments of brevity that redefine our persona, characteristics, and outlook for the next few million breaths we take.
On Tuesday, “Wild Life” premiered in New York to a packed crowd at the Museum of Modern Art.