There is something of an innocent quality strewn through Tomer Heymann’s latest documentary venture, which ultimately contrasts the film’s stark subject matter. Jonathan Agassi is the wunderkind of gay porn, an incredibly desirable but ultimately provocative star of adult movies who, at his height, was considered one of the greatest actors in porn. However, with […]Read More
It saddens me a little at how late I joined the party when discovering Agnès Varda’s work. It was only in the last couple of years that the enigmatic director, with her signature half-dyed bob haircut, was dropped in my lap countless times with film magazine editorials and an entire issue of Sight and Sound […]Read More
New to Netflix, Girls Incarcerated takes viewers inside Indiana’s Madison Correctional Facility, e.g. a jail for girls under the age of 18. Throughout the 8 episodes, you see the inmates, or ‘students’ as the staff refer to them, work to get their lives back on track. An insightful and interesting look into the US Justice […]Read More
The last few years have begun to see the fiftieth anniversaries of the studio albums of The Beatles, the most successful group of all time. This May, it is the turn of their groundbreaking studio album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Kaleidoscope Entertainment will be honouring the occasion with the release of a […]Read More
BBC Three have recently released a two-part immersive documentary series titled Getting High For God? presented by actor Mawaan Rizwan. The consumption of hallucinogenic drugs in order to find God is not only explored in this documentary but is actually taken on by the presenter himself, making the programme insanely interesting for its viewership. Part 1 […]Read More
One More Time With Feeling is Andrew Dominik’s exquisite new documentary chronicling the writing and recording of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ sixteenth studio album, Skeleton Tree. It also takes a look beneath the surface of the richly-textured and mournful tapestry which makes up the private world of Nick Cave and his wife Susie, following the death of their […]Read More
#BlackLivesMatter, a movement that seems to mentioned far too frequently for the unlawful killings of unarmed black males and sometimes females in the USA to be merely a coincidence. In Freedom: Black Hands, White Flags, filmmakers Levi E. Aluede and Daniel Modeste bring to light in just 20 mins some of history’s most important race […]Read More
After gracing our screens for over 17 years with fantastical broadcasting magic, covering a wide range of topics from the world of porn, to investigating those facing impending death, it is fair to say we can now crown Louis Theroux as the king of documentaries (if such title were to exist, of course). With three […]Read More
George Galloway has apparently made a feature-length documentary about Tony Blair, centring around Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and his fall from grace into greed. The film is directed by Sanne van den Bergh and Greg Ward, two virtual unknowns, both with only one other credit to their names. Even […]Read More
In what’s supposed to be a communist country we see the widening gap between rich and poor, and what the economic boom means to the people of China, in the third and final episode of Secrets of China. It’s not surprising to see how many factories are in China, but what is surprising to see […]Read More
In a country where being single over the age of 25 makes you a ‘leftover’, we see the extent of China’s desperate quest for love in the second episode of Secrets of China. Starting in Hefei, Billie shows us a ‘government sponsored marriage market’ where people display handwritten cards describing themselves and what they’re looking for […]Read More
In the first of three installments of BBC’s Secrets of China series, we see indie sweetheart Billie JD Porter delve into the world of China’s teenage population. It’s a real eye-opener for anyone watching when we see the extent of the pressures of success for China’s students. Pushy parents aren’t just a stereotype in China; […]Read More
We all know what happened to Amy Winehouse. In the opening moments of director Asif Kapadia’s Amy we see her at fourteen, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a friend with that undeniable voice, and we’re effortlessly reminded of what made her famous in the first place. Winehouse was fiercely talented, refreshingly open, and in July of 2011, […]Read More
Being the only teenager in a village of 58 sounds mundane enough, but imagine being the only teenager in a village of 58 in one of the most remote places on earth. That’s exactly what life is like for Lars who lies in Niaqornat, north-west Greenland, a place where the dog population out numbers the […]Read More
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