Shola Lynch discusses the eight-year journey of producing FREE ANGELA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. Photo by Simon Luethi.
Filmmaker Shola Lynch describes the story of Angela Davis’ arrest and trial in the early 1970s as “a political crime drama with a love story in the middle of it.” That inherent intrigue and drama is what led her to make Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, a documentary that she has been working on for the past eight years. Through a mix of present-day interviews and archival film and audio recordings, Lynch tells the story of Davis’ early days as a professor and activist and highlights the series of events that led to Davis becoming an internationally-recognized symbol of social justice. Regardless of one’s existing familiarity with Davis’ history, the film presents a fascinating and complex look at the culture of radical organizing that has cultivated advances in racial justice, feminism, economic issues, and prison reform over the past 50 years. Additionally, all aspects of Free Angela and All Political Prisoners — from the on-screen events depicted to the off-screen collaborative process of Lynch and Executive Producer Jada Pinkett Smith — demonstrate the power of women working together to create and support social change. If you missed Tuesday’s screening, you can see the film at AMC Theatres in New York, LA, Atlanta, Boston, DC, Detroit, Oakland, and Philadelphia starting this weekend.
After the screening, Lynch joined filmmaker and friend of STF, Hugo Perez, for a discussion.
Continue reading…
Janet Tobias shares an incredible story of adventure and survival in NO PLACE ON EARTH. Photo by Simon Luethi.
Stranger Than Fiction’s Spring 2013 season opened on the second night of Passover, an appropriate night to share a story of Jewish survival and liberation. No Place on Earth, directed by Janet Tobias, is the story of the Stermers, a Ukranian Jewish family who survived the Holocaust by hiding in underground caves for a year and a half. Their amazing story may have been forgotten forever were it not for the work of Chris Nicola, a cave explorer who discovered remnants of the Stermers’ lives in the 1990s. Today, brothers Saul and Sam Stermer and their nieces, Sonia and Sima Dodyk, are alive to recount their stories on-camera, while the memories of the late matriarch Esther Stermer survive through her writings. No Place on Earth combines these interviews and writings, as well as dramatic recreations and a climactic reunion in Ukraine, in order to tell a moving story of perseverance and survival.
After the screening, Tobias spoke with STF’s Thom Powers about the filmmaking process and how the film has affected the lives of the Stermers.
Continue reading…
On the eve of the Broadway premiere of Hands on a Hardbody: The Musical, director S.R. Bindler stopped by Stranger Than Fiction to present a New York premiere screening of his newly remastered classic Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary to a theater full of diehard Hardbody fans. Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary was not only a high water mark for DIY, bootstrap filmmaking in the late1990s but was and continues to be one of the most entertaining and engaging documentaries of all time. The fans of this documentary are legion, and for many years DVDs and prints of this out of print classic fetched hundreds of dollars on eBay – a situation that will no doubt be alleviated by the re-release of the newly mastered version of the film.
Continue reading…
Terence Nance discusses the complex origins of AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY. Photo by Simon Luethi.
In 2006, filmmaker Terence Nance made a short film called How Would You Feel? Though it was billed as a fictional narrative, How Would You Feel? stars Nance and his close friend, Namik Minter, as versions of themselves. The film also dramatizes actual events and emotions experienced by Nance and Minter, as told through Nance’s perspective. Years later, Nance decided to put How Would You Feel? in context, using interviews, animations, letters, and home movies to tell a more complete, if still personal and subjective, story. The resulting film is his feature documentary, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Oversimplification demonstrates the ways in which fiction can be used as a tool to convey truth and explores the challenges that arise when such truth is one-sided.
Oversimplification was the final film screened as part of STF’s Winter 2013 season. After the screening, Nance spoke with STF’s Thom Powers about the origins of his film and the success it has had over the past year.
Continue reading…
Filmmaker John Walter shares his admiration for Shohei Imamura and A MAN VANISHES
It is appropriate that Shohei Imamura’s A Man Vanishes, a documentary about a missing person and the often blurry distinctions between fiction and truth, was nearly impossible for U.S. audiences to see for nearly 40 years. In late 2012, the film’s belated U.S. release was met with praise from critics; Manohla Dargis wrote that, had A Man Vanishes premiered at Cannes that year, “it would have been hailed as a thrilling discovery.” In the film, the man who has disappeared is Tadashi Oshima, an unassuming middle-aged businessman, and Imamura attempts to aid in the search for him by interviewing those closest to him. The deeper the search goes, however, the more complicated it becomes, and more questions are raised about the true motives of those involved. A Man Vanishes is a fascinating exploration of the boundaries of reality, and its reflexivity makes it a film as much about the documentary medium as it is about the search for Oshima.
After the screening, STF’s Thom Powers invited filmmaker John Walter (How to Draw a Bunny, Theater of War), a longtime Imamura enthusiast, to join him in discussing the film and Imamura’s work as a whole.
Continue reading…
