Whether you want to immerse yourself in the world of birds, bees, baseball or backup singers, Netflix has a documentary for you. Missed "Man on Wire"? It's on there.
Here are films that changed the world, righted wrongs, pinpointed a moment in history, or simply shone a light on a previously unknown subset of society. (Availability subject to change. Films are unrated, except as noted.)
1. "20 Feet from Stardom" (2013) PG-13
This Oscar-winning doc shines a spotlight on the relatively unknown backup singers behind such superstars as Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder.
2. "The Act of Killing" (2012)
The director invited killers -- men who took part in the horrific purge that left more than 500,000 dead in Indonesia in the 1960s -- to reenact their crimes on film, resulting in a bizarre look inside the mind of men capable of mass murder.
3. "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" (2014)
Two filmmakers pay homage to their grandfather,...
Here are films that changed the world, righted wrongs, pinpointed a moment in history, or simply shone a light on a previously unknown subset of society. (Availability subject to change. Films are unrated, except as noted.)
1. "20 Feet from Stardom" (2013) PG-13
This Oscar-winning doc shines a spotlight on the relatively unknown backup singers behind such superstars as Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder.
2. "The Act of Killing" (2012)
The director invited killers -- men who took part in the horrific purge that left more than 500,000 dead in Indonesia in the 1960s -- to reenact their crimes on film, resulting in a bizarre look inside the mind of men capable of mass murder.
3. "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" (2014)
Two filmmakers pay homage to their grandfather,...
- 12/12/2014
- by Sharon Knolle
- Moviefone
After years of "Real Housewives" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," Bravo seems to be making a few small steps back towards its roots as a network known for dramas and an indie sensibility. The network's been bulking up the scripted series it has in development -- there's a TV adaptation of "Heathers," the supernatural drama "Witch Hunt" from "Nobody Walks" director Ry Russo-Young and playwright Dorothy Fortenberry, and there's "Fortune," a modern day take on Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" from another playwright, Theresa Rebeck (the creator of "Smash"). And now, according to Deadline, the network has ordered an hourlong drama script from filmmaker Raymond De Felitta, who was nominated for a short film Oscar in 1991 and whose most recent features have been the 2012 doc "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story" and the family drama "City Island," which premiered at Tribeca in 2009. The potential series, which comes via Warner Horizon Television,...
- 7/16/2013
- by Alison Willmore
- Indiewire
Netflix Streaming Picks Review: 'Booker's Place' (Heartbreaking Tale Of American Racial Intolerance)
The feature documentary Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story is a penetrating, truly heartbreaking film about good old-fashion American racial intolerance, its consequences and legacy. The short story goes: In 1966, Frank De Felitta produced an NBC News documentary about race relations in Greenwood, Mississippi - a town famous for its lynchings of African Americans (plantations still existed, whippings were commonplace, as were church bombings), as tensions caused by the growing Civil Rights movement were at a near peak - focusing primarily on the people of Greenwood. 55 years later, Frank's son Raymond De Felitta follows in his father's footsteps with Booker's...
- 6/4/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
As far as I'm concerned, the two most memorable scores of the year belong to Cloud Atlas and Beasts of the Southern Wild. That said, I made an egregious and unforgivable mistake when filling out my Critics' Choice nominations and forgot to include not one of them, but Both of them! Shame. I feel it. Now I have to hope my fellow Bfca members came through where I failed. However, we will discuss Critics' Choice nominations more on the upcoming episodes of the RopeofSilicon podcast, for now we're talking Oscar as the Academy has released a complete list of all 104 original scores competing for Best Original Score at the 2013 Oscars. I have not yet posted my predictions for Best Original Score and while I am making a fuss above concerning Cloud Atlas and Beasts of the Southern Wild, I think both of those stand a very strong chance at a nomination this year.
- 12/10/2012
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
At 7:00 pm (check local listings) this Sunday, Dateline NBC will air a special report featuring the Tff 2012 documentary, Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story. Placing first in Criticwire's recent mid-year lists of Top Documentaries of 2012 and the Top Festival Premieres of 2012, this documentary by versatile filmmaker Raymond De Felitta (City Island, Two Family House) richly deserves the attention. It is also fitting that an NBC news show is featuring the film. In 1965, filmmaker Frank De Felitta produced a documentary for NBC News about racial tensions in Greenwood, a small town on the Mississippi Delta, during the height of the Civil Rights movement. While many African-Americans in the town were afraid to meet with the crew, one man threw aside caution and spoke to the camera. Booker Wright - owner of a restaurant called Booker's Place and a well-known waiter ...
- 7/13/2012
- TribecaFilm.com
Imagine if the ad men from the "Mad Men" era were to put down their drinks and make documentaries. That probably wouldn't have happened back in the day, but one longstanding ad giant is giving it a go.
Ogilvy & Mather's entertainment divisions are creating feature-length movies that don't advertise anything. At least not in the traditional Madison Avenue sense.
Their civil rights documentary, "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story," premiered earlier this year and continues to gain recognition. An "NBC Dateline" segment called "Finding Booker's Place" airing Sunday will revisit the project.
Ogilvy Entertainment's Aisle C Productions produced "Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will be released in October by Roadside Attractions.
The expanding definition of content has moved Ogilvy and other ad houses into longer-form works that don't push product, creatives say.
"I think that there's a lot of value...
Ogilvy & Mather's entertainment divisions are creating feature-length movies that don't advertise anything. At least not in the traditional Madison Avenue sense.
Their civil rights documentary, "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story," premiered earlier this year and continues to gain recognition. An "NBC Dateline" segment called "Finding Booker's Place" airing Sunday will revisit the project.
Ogilvy Entertainment's Aisle C Productions produced "Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will be released in October by Roadside Attractions.
The expanding definition of content has moved Ogilvy and other ad houses into longer-form works that don't push product, creatives say.
"I think that there's a lot of value...
- 7/11/2012
- by Ron Dicker
- Huffington Post
Three diverse films that Tribeca is bringing to audiences everywhere have been honored as critics' picks on Criticwire's mid-year report on the Best Indie Movies of 2012, published today on Indiewire. We think they are pretty great too! 'Like Die Hard meets 24 by way of Taken' (slashfilm), Sleepless Night is a frenetic French thriller that takes place over the course of one night in a labyrinthine nightclub. At its core is one father's desperate attempt to save his son from a mob of drug-dealing gangsters. It's as exciting as it sounds! In Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story, director Raymond De Felitta revisits a civil rights documentary made by his father Frank in the 1960s. Using two families as parallel storylines, the intimate portrait raises the question: Over the past fifty years, how much progress has the South really made? Side By Side takes a look at the current realities of digital filmmaking.
- 6/28/2012
- TribecaFilm.com
With the year in film halfway over, over 200 critics listed in Indiewire's Criticwire network have submitted thousands of grades for movies that have played at film festivals in addition to opening in theaters and VOD. Halfway through 2012, Criticwire’s lists of the top films of the year feature an interesting blend of films that have largely been discovered at festivals such as Sundance, Cannes, Toronto and Tribeca. Overall, documentaries performed especially strong, with a trio of Tribeca offerings topping the list. Of the films that qualified for these lists, three of the five films to average a 10.0 or higher on our Criticwire grading scale were documentaries. As June winds down, Raymond De Felitta's "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story" holds the mid-2012 mantle, occupying a spot that went last year to Steve James' "The Interrupters." Different festivals wound up providing fodder for each of the individual lists based on...
- 6/28/2012
- by Steve Greene and Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Following up on last week's preview of the Tribeca Film Festival (site), this'll be the entry that'll carry us through to Sunday. Introducing Slant's package of reviews, Ed Gonzalez argues that Tribeca "has blossomed from a celebration of the Big Apple as a filmmaking center into a great facilitator and promoter of international film and video culture." The Los Angeles Times' Steven Zeitchik agrees that it's "a prime venue to discover international films." More packages and lists: Smithsonian Magazine's Daniel Eagan ("What to See"), indieWIRE ("12 New Films We're Excited For"), Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay ("25 Films I'm Looking Forward To"), Movies.com ("20 Most Anticipated Movies"), Time's Lily Rothman ("Top 15 Chatter-Worthy Films"), Time Out New York and Twitch ("Top 15 Picks").
Having previewed "30-odd films" for the Voice, Eric Hynes recommends 14, and Take This Waltz is one of them: "Sarah Polley's follow-up to her moving directorial debut, Away From Her, is a modern...
Having previewed "30-odd films" for the Voice, Eric Hynes recommends 14, and Take This Waltz is one of them: "Sarah Polley's follow-up to her moving directorial debut, Away From Her, is a modern...
- 4/25/2012
- MUBI
During our trip to La this past March for our Tribeca 2012 launch event, we sat down with director Raymond De Felitta (City Island, Tff 2009) to talk about his new film Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story, which premieres today at the Festival. In this interview, the first in a series of dicussions with 2012 Festival filmmakers, De Felitta discusses the documentary process in general, and in particular how it relates to his new film. We'll be releasing more interviews throughout the week to come, so make sure to stay tuned. Tickets are still available to see Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story at screenings on Thursday (4/26) and Saturday (4/28), and you can also watch it in theaters and on VOD via Tribeca Film beginning April 26.
- 4/21/2012
- TribecaFilm.com
This year's Tribeca Film Festival (site) opens on Wednesday with the world premiere of The Five-Year Engagement, which, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is directed by Nicholas Stoller, produced by Judd Apatow and stars Jason Segel, and closes on April 28 with Joss Whedon's The Avengers. In the New York Times, Stephen Holden notes that the new programming team (Frédéric Boyer, former artistic director of the Directors' Fortnight, Sundance vet Geoffrey Gilmore and Genna Terranova) have slimmed the lineup down to 90 features from 150 just two years ago: "As a result Tribeca is no longer a catchall basin for middling stray films seeking a showcase." What's more, "for the first time [the] world narrative and world documentary competitions have official opening-night films":
The opening narrative feature, Eytan Fox's Yossi, is the sequel to his gay love story, Yossi and Jagger, for which the Israeli actor Ohad Knoller won a best actor...
The opening narrative feature, Eytan Fox's Yossi, is the sequel to his gay love story, Yossi and Jagger, for which the Israeli actor Ohad Knoller won a best actor...
- 4/16/2012
- MUBI
Tribeca: Tell us a little about Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story. How do you describe the film in your own words? Raymond De Felitta: I think of Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story as a dramatic, narrative documentary. It's factual, but we also try to find a way to build it like a drama so that the events unfold in front of you. Tribeca: So I know there's a great story behind how this movie came to be. Can you give us a little synopsis of that? Raymond De Felitta: My father, Frank De Felitta, made seven or eight documentaries for NBC in the 1960s. I think they're wonderful time capsules; almost all of them are about current events. One in particular, I thought, was still so powerful because it was about the South and the Civil Rights era. When I found out that my father had made this film with Booker Wright,...
- 4/9/2012
- TribecaFilm.com
Tribeca Film has acquired North American rights to "City Island" director Raymond de Felitta's "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story," which they will debut on video-on-demand alongside 3 other titles during the Tribeca Film Festival. From April 17 through June 19, "The Giant Mechanical Man," "Death of a Superhero" and "Sleepless Night" will all be available in more than 40 million homes via cable, telco and satellite systems. "Booker's Place" will begin its VOD run on April 26. Additionally, these films will be available online via digital VOD services such as iTunes, Amazon Watch Instantly, Vudu and Samsung Media Hub, a new distribution partner of Tribeca Film. Tribeca Film will also begin to roll out these films theatrically, starting with "Booker's Place" on April 25 and "The Giant Mechanical Man" on April 27. Full press release below. New York, NY (March 19,...
- 3/19/2012
- by Peter Knegt
- Indiewire
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