ENTERTAINMENT
April 5, 2013 | By Susan King, Los Angeles Times
Documentarian Shola Lynch first encountered controversial political activist and professor Angela Davis over 20 years ago while still a student at the University of Texas in Austin. Davis delivered a speech that "was all about justice and race, fighting the good fight," recalled Lynch, now 44, on the phone from her home in New York. "In college, that is what we were all about. That was the time we were trying to figure it out. What did equality mean? What does it mean to be black?
ENTERTAINMENT
August 30, 2012 | By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
"The Ambassador" will make your head spin. Part muckraking nonfiction film, part performance piece, it is a nervy documentary guaranteed, depending on who you are, to enlighten, disturb or offend. Which is what you might expect from a man who describes his work as "a strange mix of Borat and the Economist. " That would be Danish documentary filmmaker Mads Brügger, whose previous film, "The Red Chapel," took his particular brand of political theater of the absurd to North Korea. Now Brügger is headed off to the Central African Republic, a just-about-failed state he describes, in a typical bit of scathing voice-over, as "'Jurassic Park' for those who long for Africa of the 1970s.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 11, 2012 | By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
There are only two things even remotely amiss with "MLK: The Assassination Tapes," a highly unsettling trip back in time that premieres Sunday on the Smithsonian Channel, 43 years and a day after the beginning of the sanitation workers strike that brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, Tenn., and his death. And they are small things at that. First, there is the slightly misleading title, which seems to imply a single cache of hitherto unsuspected, clandestinely recorded or revealing documents.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 24, 2013 | By Mark Olsen
The musical mystery “Searching for Sugar Man” won the Oscar for documentary on Sunday night. Directed by Malik Bendjelloul, the film about an obscure Detroit singer made a remarkable near-sweep of eligible awards since its premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The film details how for years it was thought that the 1970s singer-songwriter known as Rodriguez had faded into obscurity or died. But through the passionate sleuthing of dedicated fans in South Africa, where he unexpectedly achieved a startling level of fame, he was discovered to be very much alive, living and working in Michigan.
ENTERTAINMENT
February 24, 2013 | By Mark Olsen
“Inocente,” directed by the team of Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, won the Oscar for documentary short on Sunday. The film follows a homeless, undocumented immigrant teenage girl in San Diego as she relentlessly pursues her dream of becoming an artist. With heart and wit, the film explores the issue of homelessness among youth while also capturing the power of art and ambition. The work aired first on EPIX and later MTV. The filmmakers were previously nominated for their documentary feature “War Dance” in 2007.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 3, 2012 | By Glenn Whipp
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Monday its shortlist of 15 documentary feature finalists and, as always, the roll was as notable for its omissions as for its actual titles. Notably absent were such critically and commercially acclaimed docs as the Peter Jackson-produced West Memphis Three investigation, "West of Memphis," Sundance favorite "Queen of Versailles" and Monday's New York Film Critics Circle winner "The Central Park Five. " Another overlooked popular title, "Paul Williams Still Alive," an in-depth look at the 1970s songwriter and the fickleness of fame, has also often been mentioned as a strong candidate in the original song category.