By Risa Nye
A fine layer of ash drifted through an open window on a recent windy night, covering my desk and keyboard with a reminder, as if I needed one, of the fires that still burn in the Bay Area and beyond. How timely, then, to view Wilder than Wild, a documentary by producer/director Kevin White and writer/producer Stephen Most, which explains and demystifies “megafires” so large they can be seen from space.
By Andrea Chase
There is a quiet desperation running through Tom Dolby’s The Artist’s Wife. It creates the sort of cinematic tension that Mr. Dolby and his muse, Lena Olin in the title role, used like a fine chiaroscuro throughout the drama of a genius slowly losing his mind, and the devoted wife who has subsumed her life to his genius for 25 years. With that chapter of her life ending, choices she made in the past are thrown into sharp relief as the prospect of a life lived solely for herself proves a daunting leap into the unknown.
By Cari Borja
“tell me and i forget, teach me and i may remember,
involve me and i learn.
from salon #58 in Berkeley, CA studio, from SF Chronicle article
Ahh, the idea of being in a kitchen again ~ not mine, but someone else’s with others, (or even the kitchen I once had in my design studio in Berkeley, above) ~ apprenticing, learning, collaborating in the same tactile real space as other human beings (that I’m not related to)… making things and tasting things and giving others something they never knew they even wanted? I didn’t think I would actually have to imagine this, crave this even, as much as I do right now.
By C.J. Hirschfield
What if health providers and practitioners prescribed ceremonies, rituals, festivals and other community activities as medicine to treat trauma? The excellent new documentary A Place To Breathe would argue that distressed refugees, in particular, would benefit greatly, and the film effectively argues this route as a way to foster resilience.
By Frako Loden
The tagline for DocFest, the 19th San Francisco Documentary Festival, is “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction”—a saying we all appreciate more than we’d like during these days of COVID-19, wildfires, racist domestic terrorism and unhinged presidential campaigns. But however much we might want to hide from some of these truths, we still relish a good documentary that tells it like it is—or at least when we’re feeling more fragile, brings back fond memories or confirms our biases. SF DocFest gives you a chance to do all that with 49 new documentaries, easy to watch from home with the website’s clearly worded instructions. Here are ten that you might choose from.
By C.J. Hirschfield
The huge success of the Tiger King documentary series showed that we love watching a story about a park that is badly run by an eccentric/unsavory person, is dangerous, and ends up being an unqualified train wreck. The new HBO Max documentary Class Action Park may be about a waterpark and not an exotic zoo, the basic elements are the same, but its death count is much higher. It is a story of greed, corruption, coverups, bankruptcy, the 1980s, and ironically, some really good times as well.
By C.J. Hirschfield
Throughout the world, the phrase “Oakland football” conjures up images of Raider Nation, fans who glory in looking as terrifying and tough as they can. But while the Raiders are gone, the Laney College Eagles are still flying high. And thanks to the latest season of a popular Netflix series, a new image of the city’s football can emerge: A kinder, gentler one, that better reflects what we locals call Town Love. And the coach is Hella Oakland, focusing on community and guiding his scrappy (read that working-class) team members to be successful—in sports, and in life.
By Mandy Feder-Sawyer
A once remote, rural, largely unknown California mountain town now lives in infamy worldwide.
In Ron Howard’s documentary, Rebuilding Paradise, the audience is along for the entire ride – the harrowing and horrific drive through the flames to a community grappling to find its place in the aftermath of the deadliest fire in California history.
By C.J. Hirschfield
They ride all forms of public transit, lug around pounds of paper, eat on the run, stay in modest hotels where they practice alone in front of the mirror, and lament all of the time they have to spend away from their families. They are the unsung human rights superheroes, and the new documentary The Fight powerfully– and engagingly–tells not only their stories, but of four major court cases that have the potential to upend our most cherished and hard-fought rights.
by C. J. Hirschfield
The 2014-15 @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz exhibit, held at the now decommissioned and notorious prison, drew nearly 900,000 visitors, generated over 90,000 postcards to political prisoners all over the world, and illustrated the power of art when presented outside of a traditional museum or gallery setting.
by C.J. Hirschfield
At age 79, and after 60 years of activism, John Lewis is still organizing; still mobilizing; still legislating. Oh yes, and he’s definitely still dancing.
In the illuminating and luminous new documentary, John Lewis: Good Trouble, acclaimed Bay Area director Dawn Porter (Trapped, Gideon’s Army) creatively and conscientiously chronicles the life and career of the legendary civil rights activist and Democratic Congressman from Georgia.
eatdrinkfilms.com 