Documentary | Cagey Films

D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on August 18, 2021January 24, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Stephen Sondheim coaches a singer on pronouncing a single syllable in D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970)

Criterion’s new Blu-ray of D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970) is a fascinating glimpse of the intense physical and mental labour which goes into the process of artistic creation, closely observing the recording of the original cast performing the songs from Stephen Sondheim’s breakthough Broadway show Company in one long fourteen-hour session. Tense, exhausting and exhilarating, it depicts dedicated professionals doing their jobs under intense pressure to deliver under a near-impossible deadline.

Being human: two new Criterion releases

Posted on June 23, 2021March 3, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Erin "Tiny" Blackwell engages impishly with the camera in Martin Bell's documentary Streetwise (1984)

Two very different new releases from Criterion explore what it means to to maintain one’s humanity in the face of inhuman systems. Masaki Kobayashi’s overwhelming 9 1/2-hour epic The Human Condition (1959-61) follows a conscientious socialist into the brutal horrors of Japan’s occupation of Manchuria during the Second World War, while Martin Bell’s Streetwise (1984) and it’s sequel Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell (2016) document the lives of homeless kids on the streets of Seattle during the Reagan era and the aftereffects of that experience in later life.

Recent Arrow viewing, Part Two

Posted on May 5, 2021November 11, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Captain Seafield (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) and sonar expert Nedge Pepsi (Beulah Peters) are shocked by the Lake Michigan Monster (2018)

Yet another wide range of titles from Arrow Video from a restored silent classic to aliens over Tokyo, woods infested with zombies, food which consumes those who eat it, apocalypse in an alternate future Los Angeles, friendship destroyed by political conflicts, rich people facing the loss of their wealth and a naively admiring time capsule of the U.S. on the brink of the ’60s.

Michael Apted’s documentary legacy

Posted on February 3, 2021March 14, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Director Michael Apted with Jackie, Lynn and Sue during production of 28 Up (1984)

A look back over the 7 Up series (1963-2019), filmmaker Michael Apted’s remarkable longitudinal documentary series following a diverse group of Britons from the age of seven to sixty-three. Following Apted’s death on January 7, it’s unclear whether the series will continue, but the most recent episode offers a deeply moving summation of the project’s meaning in its subjects’ lives.

2020: Year-End Thoughts

Posted on December 30, 2020December 29, 2020 by Kenneth George Godwin

The cost of security and comfort is high in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)

It’s that time of year again. How to decide what’s “best” out of the six-hundred-plus movies I watched in 2020? It’s an impossible task, so here’s a fairly random selection of things which may not be best, but certainly appealed to me and stuck in my memory.

Seeking cinematic truth: two new Criterion Blu-rays

Posted on December 23, 2020December 22, 2020 by Kenneth George Godwin

Mouchette (Nadine Nortier) has a rare moment of uncomplicated pleasure in Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1967)

Two new releases from the Criterion Collection showcase very different approaches to filmmaking. Robert Bresson’s Mouchette (1967) and William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes (1968/2005), although both made during the turbulent late ’60s, display radically different styles and attitudes towards exploring authenticity in the cinematic representation of reality.

Euro Horror

Posted on October 28, 2020March 3, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Lucio Fulci as director "Lucio Fulci" going mad in Lucio Fulci's Cat in the Brain (1990)

Minor Euro-horror gets the deluxe treatment in several releases from Blue Underground, Grindhouse Films and Severin; three features by Dutch director Dick Maas – De Lift (1983), Amsterdamned (1988) and Down (2001) – and three from Lucio Fulci – Cat in the Brain (1990), Aenigma (1987) and Demonia (1990) – along with Simone Scafidi’s Fulci for Fake (2019), an illuminating documentary about Fulci.

Creeps be creeping

Posted on September 30, 2020November 21, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

The showdown with the monster re-enacted in Pete Schuermann's The Creep Behind the Camera (2014)

Pete Schuermann’s The Creep Behind the Camera (2014) is an odd hybrid, begun as a documentary and incorporating interview clips, but mostly a dramatization of the story of Art Nelson aka Vic Savage, a talentless sociopath who dreamed of being a movie director but was sunk by a lack of talent and his own increasingly violent sociopathy. Synapse’s Blu-ray includes along with the feature, a wealth of extras including a 2K scan of Nelson’s no-budget monster movie The Creeping Terror (1964).

D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus’ Town Bloody Hall (1979):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on August 19, 2020March 24, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Feminism and masculinity go toe-toe-toe in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's Town Bloody Hall (1979)

In D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ Town Bloody Hall (1979), the raggedness of the film – shot on the fly in 16mm – perfectly captures the chaos of the event it documents, a fractious panel held in New York on April 30, 1971, in which four feminists were pitted against Normal Mailer, who had just published The Prisoner of Sex, his problematic response to the feminist movement. Criterion gives the scrappy film a 4K restoration and loads the disk with fascinating contextual supplements.

Can it really be that long ago?

Posted on May 17, 2020December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cheryl Stunick as the plucky space heroine in Kenneth George Godwin's The Adventures of Stella Starr of the Space Rangers in the 23rd Century, Chapter 7: Falling Starr! (1994)

Twenty-seven years ago this week, I shot my short film The Adventures of Stella Starr of the Galaxy Rangers in the 23rd Century, Chapter 7: Falling Starr! at the Winnipeg Film Group with a bunch of dedicated friends and co-workers. What was I thinking!

Tag: Documentary