Category: Documentary

Though I was not in a position to at the time, I had really wanted to see The Gates when it was exhibited. Watching this is the closest I can come to that. Unlike The Floating Piers, the work was constructed while Jeanne-Claude was still alive and she seems to be somewhat of a calming influence on him. Like that other work, this required the couple to work through many decades of government bureaucracy before finally having the chance to pull it off. The interviewers somehow found the grumpiest New Yorkers to express all forms of disgust at the two week, in the middle of winter installation. It makes for a great contrast to the delight the artists themselves show at seeing their work finally realized.

Before this film, I only knew of Dick Gregory by name. This documentary offers a fairly comprehensive view of his life from his early days as a comedian to his activism to his later promotion of health and weight loss products and then returning to being a speaker and comedian. While fairly standard as a biopic, the subject is definitely intriguing and there is plenty of footage of Dick himself along with interviews from family members and those he influenced.

Many people know the story of Jesse Owens, but don’t know that in 1936 seventeen other Black American athletes also travelled to Nazi Germany to compete in the Olympics. The group consisted of track and fielders, weightlifters, and boxers because many of the other Olympic sports were still segregated in the United States. Starting from the point where there was debate on whether or not the United States should even field a team, this film does a great job covering the experiences of these participants, contrasting to great effect the experiences under Nazi policies to the United States’ own issues on race, which continued even after the athletes arrived in Germany despite quite a bit of success at the Games.  

For the most part, this is a fairly standard documentary about the life and career of Rick James told through archival footage and contemporary interviews with various talking heads. What sets it apart is its comprehensiveness and the sheer amount of information that I had no idea about (from his draft dodging to Canada to performing with Neil Young and so on), told in ways much more interesting than just reading his wikipedia page. The interviews include his daughter, his long-time bandmates, and older ones from James himself. It doesn’t shy away from the low points of his life, but also chronicles the highs beyond Super Freak. It’s beyond a doubt that he was an incredible artist who put a lot of thought into his art. Unfortunately not as much thought put into his drug use or relationships with women. 

When the Allies liberated the Nazi concentration camps, cameramen were there to document the atrocities. Some of that footage was compiled into the British documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey which was inexplicably shelved for 70 years. This film documents the making of that one, including footage from it as well as interviews with more recent interviews with survivors and other people who were there at the time. The footage is very similar to that shown in Night and Fog. Though just as horrifying, my recent viewing of that film may have diminished some of the impact here. The rest of the film is an interesting, albeit rather standard format, documentary chronicle.