Born into Brothels is about children growing up in a red light district in Calcutta (now Kolkatta), India. What I wasn’t expecting is the extensive amount of outside intervention that is really the story of the film. Some would see this as an intolerable rebuke of the documentarian’s principal directive: to document. This is to […]

Lake of Fire is filmed in black of white. It’s worth noting that like all films we term “black and white,” its actually rendered in various shades of grey. And Tony Kaye’s documentary about abortion in America is careful to show that the issue’s history and moral questions are not black and white. Lake of […]

For the Bible Tells Me So, a recent documentary by Daniel Karslake is an interesting beast. Through at least the last twenty minutes, my eyes were wet and my nose was running. And though that’s surely a sign of something that’s emotionally resonant, I’m not without reservation in recommending it. After the obligatory footage of […]

protagonistthemovie.com Having been rather satisfied with “Be Your Own Protagonist,” the movie Protagonist—which seems to be available from Netflix (whose Red Envelope Entertainment holds the rights) and nowhere else—almost necessarily piqued my interest. And though the summary sounded luke-warm, I decided that on the title alone I had to give it a shot. I’m glad […]

The Agronomist is a 2004 film about the life of an agronomist. As you may infer from that sentence, it didn’t win large audiences. But to say it’s about an agronomist is to minimize the truth. Jean Dominique called himself an agronomist, as was his training, but this underestimates his work, his charisma, and his […]