WORLD PREMIERE Chelly Wilson was a Christmas-celebrating Jewish grandma, a lesbian who married men, and a proud owner of porn theaters in 1970s NYC. Through audio recordings, Chelly recounts her pre-war escape from Greece up through her unlikely motherhood and rise to wealth as a shrewd businesswoman on “The Deuce,” aka New York’s infamous 42nd […]
A glimpse into the artistic process behind brilliant creators across the disciplines. (Total Running Time: 88 MIN) Are You Down? | Director: Juan Matos, Dennis SchollFriends and colleagues comment on the work of New York artist Michael Richards, who lost his life working in his World Trade Center studio. (USA, 12 MIN) Made of Light […]
Joan Churchill, the recipient of DOC NYC’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award, has a prodigious career. She started as a cameraperson on films such as Gimme Shelter and Jimi Plays Berkeley; and co-directed several films with Nick Broomfield including Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer and Soldier Girls. In this live conversation moderated by […]
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus, known for her complex portraits of Bobby Fischer, Nina Simone and Marilyn Monroe, takes a fresh look at the life of undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau. Her profile is neither hagiography nor exposé, but rather a nuanced look at his passions, achievements, blind spots, and tragedies. We gain insights into key figures […]
This short plays as part of In Conversation with Joan Churchill. Filmmaker Joan Churchill, who is being honored this year with DOC NYC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, collaborates with Alan Barker on this personal portrait of legendary filmmakers Haskell Wexler, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. Over a rollicking evening, they discuss filmmaking and what it means to […]
US PREMIERE Materna, Italy, where Pasolini filmed the recreation of the life of Jesus, is the location for an updated reenactment entitled The New Gospel, a film gracefully blending art and activism. “Jesus was a social revolutionary,” says award-winning documentarian Milo Rau. With Cameroonian political activist Yvan Sagnet cast as Jesus, the film takes us […]
NYC PREMIERE The three minutes of footage explored in this extraordinary film are the only moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust. Director Bianca Stigter inhabits and examines every frame of the home movie Glenn Kurtz found in his parents’ home in Florida, transforming the rare color footage shot in […]
NYC PREMIERE From the award-winning creative team behind Notes on Blindness and Listen to Me, Marlon comes a contemporary take on cinema’s most iconic figure. Combining previously unheard audio recordings, dramatic reconstructions, and photos and films from personal archives, the film traces Charlie Chaplin’s meteoric rise from the slums of Victorian London to the heights […]
US PREMIERE Two men from opposite sides of the world come together over a shared love of action cinema. Isaac Nabwana, a director hailed as “Africa’s Tarantino,” and Alan Hofmanis, a film programmer from New York, struck a deep friendship while making films with minimal resources in the slums of Kampala. Alan sees the genius […]
WORLD PREMIERE The style. The fashion. The moves. Saturday Night Fever left an indelible stamp on our cultural memory of the 1970s—and there was one man behind it all. Robert Stigwood, a producer impresario, best known for managing the Bee Gees, took the swagger of a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn disco, and brought it to the […]