What happens when justice fails to protect the very people it is meant to serve?
It’s no surprise that now more than ever, rape and sexual assault victims are speaking out and bringing their cases to college officials. And it’s also no surprise that colleges are pulling out their entire arsenal in order to hide these rape allegations. Any accusation of that nature would make the college look bad, and it’s even worse for the college when the culprit is a star athlete who brings them millions of dollars.
That sentence was just appalling to write, so I can imagine how it was to read. That’s exactly what the film The Hunting Ground explores. It is a documentary written and directed by Kirby Dick that focuses on several rape victims from colleges all over the United States. Produced by Amy Ziering, it first premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on February 27, 2015. The documentary mostly followed Andrea Pino and Annie E. Clark who were both raped while enrolled at the University of North Carolina. They teamed up to lead a Title IX campaign against the school, which was then taken up by other rape victims at other colleges.
The film was moving. Pino and Clark shared their heart wrenching stories. Despite speaking out, their college did not act. There were numerous cases where victims spoke out about their situations and their cases were handled in a grossly inappropriate manner. In one case at Harvard Law School, a woman was raped, brought her accuser to the administration, knew her rights and had the rapist removed through expulsion. However, the following semester, the dean emailed her saying that the man had appealed and would be attending the school once again. Another case involved Jameis Winston, a quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who raped a girl and got away with it since he was the star football player for Florida State University at the time. He ended up leading the team to victory and earning the Heisman Trophy as a freshman (making him the youngest college player to do so).
The film really shines a light on all of the wrongs with the college system and how rape is handled on campuses. There are so many wrongs happening, that it begs the question: when will attitudes and perceptions about rape change? After seeing this documentary, you will start asking tough questions about rape and rape culture in America.
Watch the trailer here:
On Tuesday, November 10th, guests gathered for a private screening and world premier of HBO’s new documentary The Latin Explosion: A New America.
Jon Stewart fans, remain calm. Alas it was a terrible summer. First, Stephen Colbert announced that he would be ending his stint on The Colbert Report. But fans weren’t too worried, since we all knew he would return in the fall to take over for David Letterman. And then the news really hit hard, when Jon Stewart said he was done with The Daily Show. That’s when we freaked out. There was nothing left to turn to. There wasn’t a host opening. There wasn’t a segment in which he could become a recurring correspondent. We were losing someone.
Or so we thought. Stewart has just signed a four year contract with HBO to make all digital content, meaning that it would be streamed online and on HBO GO or HBO NOW and other digital platforms. Stewart is working with OTOY, a graphics company that will produce the videos with him, and although there is a chance he won’t be on camera, he still will narrate them.
As part of the deal, HBO gets “first-look options” for anything that Stewart will do, meaning that if he wants to develop a show or film, HBO gets first dibs. But nonetheless, this will prove helpful to Stewart, HBO, and fans everywhere. Whereas Stewart has stated that the show was an energy drain despite loving it, he can now make short videos that will be all the more accessible to his fans, which tend to lean toward a younger demographic.
With mariquitas, little cubans sliders, and gorgeous posters of Havana, we were welcomed to “The Poet of Havana Screening.” The room was covered in posters and screens showing the touching image of Carlos Varela with his hand on his heart and Cuba as a backdrop.
Before the screening started, three Latin American poets performed their pieces in homage to the great cuban artist. The three of them spoke from the heart and the audience noticed. Everyone clapped and got prepared for what was coming.
Once the screen turned black, our perception of Cuba would never be the same. Here is a man who has been singing poems of protest and discontent towards oppression and governmental hierarchies for decades and has been a massive success in his motherland. This is in contrast to what we thought of Cuba as a communist and dictatorship nation.
The documentary touches on the politics of the embargo, the relationship between the United States and Cuba, and the reality of both cubans and Americans missing out on each others’ culture for a decision that they were not involved in.
Nevertheless, this man broke the international barriers and let his words of freedom reach far beyond his island. With friends Jackson Browne and Benicio del Toro as his supporters, he has managed to share his people’s story of an intense desire for freedom.
As we completely understood his social metaphors, the preview of the documentary ended. It is an understatement to say that we are hungry for more. We want to learn more about how one man and his voice helped change stereotypes, and how a intellectual revolution changed the people of Cuba, and how a people’s yearning for freedom took place just 330 miles away from the land of the free.
Watch the full documentary on HBO October 23rd, 2015.
On Wednesday, October 14th “The Diplomat,” a documentary about the life of the legacy American diplomat Richard Holbrooke premiered at One Time Warner Center.
The film is directed by David Holbrooke, Richard’s eldest son, who also directed Hard as Nails, which aired on HBO in December 2007. His other works include Freaks Like Me, Time for a New God and A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn. He also produced long-form pieces for The Today Show, CBS News and CNN, has been a contributing editor at GQ and written for the Huffington Post.
In the Diplomat, David Holbrooke “get[s] to know [his father] better in death,” David says, “than I ever did in life.” The senior Holbrooke’s singular career spanned fifty years of American foreign policy- from his early years as a foreign service officer in Vietnam through his success in securing a peace between Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia, and finally, to his work as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In the film, David interviews the many people who had personal relationships with Richard Holbrooke including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, David Petraeus, Kofi Annan, Diane Sawyer, Bob Woodward, and foreign presidents past and current. The film is a frank portrait of Richard Holbrooke’s relationships with his sons. It gives insight into Holbrooke’s public persona: a single-named celebrity in certain circles, the “diplomatic hope of a generation,” contrasted against a man his sons struggled to know better. The film shows that Richard’s fatherhood weighed against ambition, drive and the force required to affect change throughout the world. The documentary takes you behind the scenes of high stakes diplomacy where peace is waged and wars are ended.
The film premieres on HBO Monday, November 2 – the 20th anniversary of Holbrooke’s crowning achievement: the Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia. Check out our red carpet interviews with David Holbrooke and the producer of the film, Stacey Reiss:
Q: When did you know you wanted to make a documentary film about your father?
David Holbrooke: It was about month after his death when I stood on a stage with President Obama, Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton – with all these luminaries and realized he was a historical figure and felt that story really needed to be told. At first I thought someone else should do it but then I realized that I really needed to understand him better and so I set out. It was a crazy odyssey but here we are, the film is coming out on HBO.
Q: Did you know how you wanted to structure the film?
David Holbrooke: I knew that I wanted to have a voice in it so what I set out to do my story of his life. I knew there were two things that were important- 1 there was a linear structure: so we started during his first job at Vietnam, then into Bosnia and finally Afghanistan. I followed his life but I also knew sadly it was going to end with his death so that was really important. The other thing is I wanted to go to the places he had worked in. I wanted to go with the people who had been there with him and so that was the key to the film. To be in Afghanistan was one thing but to be there with Dexter Filkins who covered him for The New Yorker and The New York Times was another thing. This gave me an insight both in the person and in the place.
Q: Do you feel like there were parts of your father that you did not know about but uncovered throughout the making of the film?
David Holbrooke: Sure, there was lots that I learned about him now that I spent 4 years making it. I hope that it’s something everybody does- speak to their parents and interview them and just sit down with them because I never had the chance to actually interview him while he was alive.
Q: How did you get involved in this project?
Stacey Reiss: After David’s father died, he called me up and asked if I was interested in working with him on a film about his father and I knew Richard as David’s dad because David and I are friends but I didn’t know all of his work so I lept at the opportunity and got the opportunity to see all the work that he did as we traveled around the world.
Q: Have you produced other films?
Stacey Reiss: This is my 3rd HBO documentary and interestly each of the films I’ve done for HBO are about people and it’s often about a person not necessarily known by name but once you know their work it sheds light on who they are. This is another example, not everybody knows Richard Holbrooke by name but they certainly know about the Dayton Peace Accords, the work that he accomplished.
Appropriately hosted at the Supreme Court of New York, the premiere of Vice and HBO’s collaborative effort was a hopeful event.
On May 28, HBO hosted a special screening at ArtBeam of the riveting movie “Nightingale.”
The West Coast portion of Bessie’s 81 Theatre Tour kicked off today, with an invite-only brunch held at Millwick in downtown Los Angeles.
Yesterday on May 28, 2014, TheKnockturnal.com was on the scene at the New York premiere of HBO’s latest documentary “The Case Against 8” at the Time Warner Center Screening Room. Five years in the making, the film takes a riveting inside look at the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that overturned Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.
With exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of both the powerhouse legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson and the four plaintiffs in the suit, the documentary is a powerful emotional account of the journey that took the fight for marriage equality all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read our exclusive red carpet interviews below:
Director Ryan White
Q: What was the intension going in to keep this story interesting on camera?
A: We filmed 600 hours of footage over the course of five years, as legal nerds and people who became really entrenched in the lives of the plaintiffs, Kris and Sandy and Paul and Jeff, we thought most of those minutes were really interesting in the end. It was a really big challenge in the editing room to distill a massive five year legal drama into an hour and fifty minutes that makes sense to a non-legal audience at the same time keeping the legal audience happy as well. Going in and out of the personal lives of the plaintiffs while keeping the legal story compelling was the goal.
Q: Now that Prop 8 is out, what are your hopes for the film?
A: The end of the film is very bitter-sweet, we followed Kris and Sandy, Jeff and Paul for five years, and their families as well. So it’s incredibly celebratory to see them reach their fairytale ending after 5 years of trials and tribulations. But the film ends bittersweet with gay marriage still being illegal in 33 states. We hope the film can be an inspiration to the people in those states to start a conversation. We want people to get to know the Plaintiffs in our film and maybe rethink their stance on the issue.
Plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Krier
Q: Can you explain the feeling of being a part of this gripping time of modern history.
A: It feels really important to be a part of group of people that could accomplish something like what we did. The lawyers and the team behind them were all extraordinary and trusting. We weren’t just talking to a judge, we were talking to all of America about why marriage equality matters so that if we did lose, we could maybe open the eyes of other people in America.
Q: After five years, besides your personal gain of being able to marry the one you love, what was your bigger picture of it all?
A: We learned to be disciplined and clear about what we were really in it for which was to repeal Proposition 8. We’ve been able to bring our personal story into the bigger story about how harmful a law is to exclude a group of people based on a characteristic that cannot be changed. We wanted to be a part of that history where things would be corrected.
The film will be in select theaters Friday, June 6 and premieres Monday, June 23 on HBO.
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