The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
The response to the AIDS epidemic that ripped through the gay community starting in the early years of the Reagan administration can be best characterized by how most health and social issues are dealt with in contemporary politics today, with a marked lack of empathy.
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I’m going to go ahead and spoil the entire plot of Bart Layton’s documentary The Imposter, but only because the film does in its first opening minutes. Why? Because the plot, as balls-out-crazy as it is, is not even the most compelling aspect of this film.
...moreDoin’ It In the Park, a forthcoming documentary from Bobbito Garcia and Kevin Couliau, reveals the world of New York City pick-up basketball. In gathering footage for the film, the co-directors made visits to 180 courts throughout the five boroughs.
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In the fall of 2008, I wrote a screenplay I intended to film entirely in an Alzheimer’s Unit. After many weeks of rehearsals, I arrived at a troubling realization: I was not just making a challenging film—I was making the wrong film.
Documentary filmmaker Cassie Jaye landed the Best Documentary Award at Cannes Film Festival for her film, Daddy I Do in 2010 — about the controversial religious ceremony Purity Balls, where girls from six to sixteen pledge their virginity to their fathers until marriage.
This is so amazing. Sit down for a couple of hours, relax, get your Woody on.
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I. Non-fiction rules!
Starting as far back as 50 years ago, non-fiction set out to crush fiction in the book world.
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Sizing up history is a tricky business: You can generally recognize that something is significant long before you can really say why or how. So it is with the Internet and its many pioneers. So it is with Josh Harris.
Just in case you were looking for a compelling 5-part documentary series to watch for free over the weekend, consider The Machine that Changed the World, a history of computing jointly produced by WGBH Boston and the BBC in 1991.
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America has always had people dying for a taste of the limelight and others willing to delude them for a healthy profit. PBS takes a funny and moving look at one such scheme in Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story (viewable in full on Hulu).