What Documentaries did you see in June 2019?

Got one part left to go on O.J. Simpsons: Made In America and I am really enjoying it so far.

I watched the 1954 documentary The Queen in Australia, which documents Elizabeth II's visit to Australia in 1954. It is also notable as the first Australian feature film to be filmed in colour. Come to think about it, it is also notable for being one of the very few feature length films of any description to originate from the country during the 1950s.


I enjoyed watching it.

Awakening In Taos / Mark Gordon (2015) “Awakening” has been making the festival circuit for a year or so and has a PBS showing scheduled for later in 2017. It got a theater presentation at George R.R. Martin's independent theater in Santa Fe because of the film's regional interest. Mabel Dodge Lujan (1879-1962) was a fairly well known person in the early 20th century. She was a kind of artsy/independent female/intellectual/sexually free/hippie of her time. As a world-traveler and patron of the arts, she was instrumental in introducing modernist art to the U.S. being a major organizer of the Armory Show of 1913 in NYC. She held "salons" in her New York home where you could run into the likes of Emma Goldman and John Reed. She came to New Mexico in the late 19-teens, setting up housekeeping in the then remote small town of Taos because of the nearby Taos Pueblo (today a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and its supposed connection to the spirit world. She married Tony Lujan, a Native American (never mind that he already had a wife) and began an artists’ colony. She hosted many famous artistic people in Taos, including D.H. Lawrence (who bought a large farm there and whose ashes repose there) and Georgia O'Keeffe who also ended up moving permanently to New Mexico. Taos is today still the artist's destination that Lujan created. This brief feature (63 minutes) has only a couple of talking heads but is filled with archival photos and paintings of the Taos landscape by the artists who visited her. Interesting and informative. Try to catch it on the TV.


The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2016: Documentary  (2016)

The Trump Resistance in Hollywood has begun. Four of the fine nominees are about immigrants, refugees, and/or the Syrian conflict.

Joe’s Violin / Kahane Cooperman. At the end of WWII, a Holocaust survivor in a Displaced Persons camp traded a carton of cigarettes for a violin so he could play again. In modern day NYC, now a very elderly man, he donates the violin in a drive for musical instruments for disadvantaged children.

Extremis / Dan Krauss. This is not really – to me – a documentary. It is more of what used to be called (and maybe still is) cinéma vérité. That is, the camera follows people around with no commentary. In this film, we are in a ICU where two families have to decide whether to unplug their loved ones and let them die in comfort or have them surgically connected to an oxygen/feeding tube until nature takes it course.

4.1 Miles / Daphne Matziaraki. True events shot mainly with handheld cameras. Off the Greek island of Lesbos the Coast Guard is tasked with rescuing refugees fleeing war from a base Turkey. During one long day, a single crew goes on three rescue missions, pulling people off sinking boats and out of the water. Sometimes that can’t save everybody. Powerful

Watani: My Homeland / Marcel Mettelsiefen. A mother and her three children living in Aleppo make the decision to leave their home country. The father is missing – taken by ISIS – and probably dead but they can’t be sure. We follow them as they go first to Turkey and then to Germany where they are received with a warm welcome and a nice, safe place to live.

The White Helmets / Orlando von Einsiedel. The White Helmets are teams of Syrian volunteers who vow to go unarmed to areas that have been attacked and rescue anyone regardless of which side of the conflict (or on no side) they are on. One of the two teams we see in operation is in Aleppo. They are the ones who rescued the famous “Miracle Baby,” an infant about a week old trapped in the rubble of a demolished building for 16 hours. The Miracle Baby makes an appearance one year later. Here is a news story that ran at the time. You can see tears on the eyes of the rescuer who first holds the baby.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h0VDhENotI

In case you missed it, the Oscar went to "The White Helmets."

Just finished this one www.imdb.com/title/tt8488126/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Crazy bitch!

Depressing as hell. www.imdb.com/title/tt1300563/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

Not new but a re-watch, BBC History: Cold Case. Very interesting as some of the bodies they examine are hundreds, and one i think is a thousand years old. 



Can someone help me with adding a link? I've been trying to add am IMDb link but it won't work for some reason.

Wu Tang of mics and men, Ice and Fire, and watching the Manning one soon on her(him).