“DOC NYC started in 2010 and is now, at 250 movies and dozens of filmmaker workshops (best in class: ‘Show Me the Money Day’) spread over eight days [November 9 through 16], the biggest and probably best one-stop venue for nonfiction cinema in the United States,” proposes Chris Barsanti, writing for Film Journal International. “Plus, there’s always the chance that you could run into the likes of this year’s Lifetime Achievement honorees: HBO nonfiction maven Sheila Nevins and director Errol Morris, who between them probably shepherded or inspired more documentaries and documentary filmmakers than any other two individuals in the business.”
At amNewYork, Robert Levin notes that this festival is no “take-all-comers omnibus; it’s been programmed thoughtfully, and it is the place to be for anyone who cares about the indispensable art form and the work of its foremost practitioners.” Levin naturally focuses on “movies with strong connections to New York City, chronicling a wide range of stories and experiences.”
This year’s edition opens with Greg Barker’s The Final Year, “a truly up-close-and-personal, behind-the-scenes look at the Obama administration and its foreign policy team during its last twelve months,” as Lauren Wissot notes, introducing her interview with Barker for Filmmaker. “To say that Barker gained unprecedented access to the president’s men (and one woman) during that period is an understatement. The veteran documentarian (Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma, Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden, etc.) managed to shadow three heavyweight insiders—Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, and ‘Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting’ Ben Rhodes. . . . And all before the trio had any inkling of the biggest unconventional threat to come.”
Steven Zeitchik spoke with Barker for the Los Angeles Times when The Final Year premiered in Toronto, noting that the “Trumpian curveball changed the last few months of filming, which continued until the inauguration. And it makes the final product a fundamentally different beast. What had been a straightforward D.C. document, color-drenched but benign, becomes an urgent ideological rebuttal when viewed through the lens of 2017.” Reviews: Will Ashton (Playlist, B-), Frank Scheck (Hollywood Reporter), Scott Tobias (Variety), and Elizabeth Weitzman (TheWrap).
“When David Bowie died in January 2016, the news sent shock waves around the globe, triggering the kind of mass mourning usually reserved for royalty in bygone ages,” writes Stephen Dalton in the Hollywood Reporter. “A longtime friend and fan of Bowie, British director Francis Whately’s documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years diligently chronicles the late rock icon’s autumnal career resurgence using rare archive footage, recycled quotes, music videos and performance clips. But it is mostly woven from first-hand interviews with a wide range of friends and collaborators who worked on Bowie’s final projects. With a tone more celebratory than elegiac, this is a worthy screen memorial.” Variety’s Owen Gleiberman notes that this “singular and haunting pop documentary” is “a companion piece to David Bowie: Five Years, the 2013 documentary in which director Francis Whately meditated on the pivotal period of Bowie’s fame, from 1970 to 1975.”
“Jessica Lange remembers the time when she worked as a model for the fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez during the 1970s,” writes Muri Assunção for Hyperallergic. “She can’t hide her smile: ‘Everybody at that time got swept into Antonio’s world. There was something magical about it. He had this way of bringing joy into people’s lives.’ Lange is just one in a long list of Lopez’s collaborators who appear in James Crump’s seductive new documentary, Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco . . . And their admiration and devotion toward the artist are key in understanding the magnitude of his work.”
In IndieWire’s preview of highlights in the DOC NYC lineup, we find:
One of the films Manuel Betancourt previews at Remezcla is Peter Gordon’s Still Waters. “Chronicling the day-to-day in a unique after-school program in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, Gordon’s documentary about ‘Still Waters in a Storm’ gives hope to those eager to see people aiming to be better and to better those around them.”
For the Villager, Scott Stiffler writes about Alice Elliott’s Miracle on 42nd Street: “It’s got jazzy transition music and charismatic star power, plus its archival footage of seedy ’70s Midtown puts HBO’s The Deuce to shame—but this documentary on NYC’s iconic housing complex for ‘qualified singers, actors, dancers, and behind-the-scenes members of the entertainment community’ comes up just short by adhering to that old showbiz adage about leaving the audience wanting more.”
Women and Hollywood gets a few words with Elliott and has also been interviewing other female directors with work in the lineup:
The Detroit Free Press notes that a film it’s produced, 12th and Clairmount, is in the lineup: “Using Detroiters’ home movies and other archival video and photos, the Brian Kaufman-directed film aims for an immersive look at Detroit’s tumultuous summer of 1967.” It’s one of the films Glenn Dunks writes about at the Film Experience, along with Chard Freidrichs’s The Experimental City and Prudence Katze and William Lehman's The Iron Triangle.
A few more titles to mention; clicking on them will take you to collections of reviews either here or at Critics Round Up:
As more reviews, interviews, and so on appear throughout the festival, we’ll be making note of them here.
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