Category: Documentary

Yet another effective food propaganda documentary, a couple decides to live solely on food waste for six months. It’s next to impossible to watch this film and not want to be more discernable toward throwing away household food. What’s really striking, and feels futile for the everyman to rectify, is the amount of food that is tossed before it is seen by the consumer. The couple soon learned that there was no way they were going to starve but they might get bored from the overabundance they found in one or two items at a time, such as entire dumpsters with hummus. Especially during these Covid-19 times, it’s hard to get passed how rigid our late capitalism systems are, where it’s difficult to fill shortages in one area with surplus from another and the excess becomes waste.

It would be easy to presume a documentary about Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas would center on his microtonal masterpieces, but that’s not the case here. Instead the focus is on his dominant-submissive marriage to American writer and kink educator Mollena Williams-Haas. On the surface their personalities and backgrounds seem like they couldn’t be more different, but their relationship comes across as a true meeting of equals who have found exactly what they want in a partner. It’s a fairly standard documentary made more interesting by the uncommon subject matter and subjects. As a matter of personal preference, I could do without the more sexually intimate scenes shown, but I’m also someone who feels weird seeing sex scenes in narrative films between real life couples.  

I find the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude to be fascinating and I am disappointed that I never had a chance to experience any of them in person. This film documents the production of The Floating Piers, Christo’s first work after Jeanne-Claude’s death but one they had conceived and attempted to produce for many years. It’s a bit repetitive in scope, but still offers an interesting behind the scenes look at what goes into a large scale art installation. Christo was definitely an intriguing character and his micro-management is understandable based on the incompetence that is often found when dealing with bureaucracies.

As a kid in a doctor’s office waiting room, often the only thing to do is look at old Highlights magazines and thus I have fond nostalgia for the title. This documentary offers a simplified behind the scenes view of the inner workings of the Highlights production team as they prepare to put out their 70th Anniversary issue. It’s a very wholesome look into how print magazines, particularly one dedicated to educating children, are laid out with an eye to the many challenges and competition for people’s attention in the modern age.

In 2015, photographer Jay Maisel sold the 30,000 square foot former bank that had been his home for the previous almost fifty years. This documentary attempts to cover the days leading up to the big move. Directed by Stephen Wilkes, a mentee of Maisel, it seems that the director may have been a little too close to the subject matter. It touches a bit on Maisel’s career, but is not very thorough especially for anyone unfamiliar with his work. It provides images and descriptions of some of the uses for the many, many rooms in the fantastic building, but only through fleeting glimpses. One of my many obsessions is to see the layouts of homes and I was left wanting. It details a bit of what goes into a move of that size, but one is left to just marvel as to how even a small team of people can manage so much stuff. At a relatively short runtime, it short changes all of its possibilities though I still enjoyed the small windows it provided.