Movies

No matter how fondly you recall your time at sleepaway camp, chances are your experiences weren’t as formative as the ones recounted in “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” a documentary streaming on Netflix. The film, directed by a former camper, Jim LeBrecht, and Nicole Newnham, makes the case that a Catskills summer camp for the disabled fostered a sense of community and creativity that fed directly into the American disability rights movement in the 1970s.Camp Jened, founded in 1951 and shut down after the summer of 1977, appears in many respects to be like any other summer camp from the free-love era, with warm-weather flings and arguments over dining-hall meals. But it was also, for many of the campers, a place where they could live in a free atmosphere with others who had a disability, and where the friendships they cultivated boosted their confidence.Jened campers got the same tough-love approach that kids at any camp would get. As Lionel Je’ Woodyard, a former counselor, explains, “You wouldn’t be picked to be on a team back home, but at Jened, you had to go up to bat.” An African-American from Mobile, Ala., Je’ Woodyard remembers seeing similarities in the treatment of blacks in the South and the shunning of the disabled.[embedded content]“Crip Camp” draws extensively on terrific contemporaneous black-and-white footage shot by a collective called the People’s Video Theater, for which participants were invited to speak their minds. But even more than those activist videos, “Crip Camp” unfolds from a perspective of lived experience. The failure to recognize the disabled as sexual beings becomes a recurring theme. Denise Sherer Jacobson, who has cerebral palsy, says that as an adult she had a healthy appendix removed because a surgeon didn’t consider the symptoms of gonorrhea.Indeed, despite the film’s title, the early scenes, focusing on the camp, turn out to be a kind of a getting-the-band-together story for the post-camp years, when several Jened alumni became nationally visible activists and resettled around Berkeley, Calif. Judy Heumann had sued for discrimination in New York after she was denied a license to teach and became a leader in San Francisco in the 504 Sit-In of 1977, when activists demanded federal regulations guaranteeing civil rights for the disabled. (Heumann also served as a special adviser under President Barack Obama, who, along with Michelle Obama, is one of this film’s executive producers.)Newnham and LeBrecht deftly juggle a large cast of characters past and present, accomplishing the not-so-easy task of making all the personalities distinct, and a build a fair amount of suspense in their nearly day-by-day account of the sit-in. LeBrecht, who appears as a talking head (a longtime sound designer, he also contributed to the movie’s audio mix), notes that this was no ordinary demonstration. Protesters had to persist without access to necessities like catheters or backup ventilators.“Crip Camp” repeatedly links the struggles of the disabled to other fights for civil rights. The Black Panthers brought in hot meals to keep the protesters fed. HolLynn D’Lil, a journalist who became a paraplegic after a road accident, says that her change in perspective taught her that disabled rights were rights for everyone.Ultimately, “Crip Camp” has a universal message: Inspirations that begin in youth can lead to radical, world-changing results. At the end, a number of former campers reunite at the camp’s unprepossessing present-day site. They see something more, and so will you.Crip Camp: A Disability RevolutionRated R. Talk of sex. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. More

Jen Philhower, 48, a part-time office manager in Austin, Texas, is one of the many Americans adjusting to almost every group activity being canceled, as people move indoors and into isolation to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus.“My youngest goes to wilderness school, and even that is closed,” she said. “When even playing in the woods is closed, things start to feel a little strange.”So Ms. Philhower was surprised — ecstatic, even — to see one group entertainment venue still open for business: the Blue Starlite, a local drive-in movie theater currently allowing 35 to park at one time.Located on a hill with the Austin skyline in the background, the theater resembles a “cool junkyard,” according to Josh Frank, the owner, who opened it a decade ago. Since the virus hit the United States, the theater has screened movies including “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club.”Last Tuesday, theatergoers watched short films that were scheduled to premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin before it got canceled, and a feature from the festival is scheduled for later this month.When Ms. Philhower’s children, who are 20, 16 and 12, were younger, the family would frequent the theater. The kids loved sitting on the roof of the car and chomping on candy under the stars.“We must have seen ‘Goonies’ three times one year,” she said. But they hadn’t thought to return until they found themselves going stir crazy at home under the new public-health guidelines.“It makes perfect sense,” Ms. Philhower said. “We can all sit in our cars, away from each other, and do something fun.”Drive-in movie theaters may seem like a blast from the past, something out of the 1950s or ’60s. Numerous baby boomers haven’t gone for decades; Gen Xers and millennials, perhaps never.But there are still 305 of them in the United States. according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association in Stephens City, Va. The U.D.T.O.A. says every state has a drive-in movie theater except Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana and North Dakota. More

Jeremy Marre, an English filmmaker who documented music from across the world with hardheaded clarity, died on March 15 at a hospital in London, where he had lived. He was 76.His son Oliver said the cause was stomach cancer.Mr. Marre established his reputation in the 1970s and ’80s with “Beats of the Heart,” a 14-part series of hourlong documentaries initially shown on British television and later on public television in the United States. With a minimal camera and sound crew, Mr. Marre visited Jamaican dance halls, Brazilian favelas, Appalachian churches, Egyptian temples, South African workers’ hostels and Bollywood soundstages to film music and musicians on home turf that was often gritty and unglamorous.The series presented music as inseparable from historical, economic, political, spiritual and cultural pressures, documenting musical events that most outsiders would not know about or even be allowed to attend.Jeremy Peter Marre was born in London on Oct. 7, 1943. His father, Ivan Marre, was a dermatologist; his mother, born Olga Shlain, was a homemaker. He earned a bachelor of laws degree from University College London, but while preparing to become a barrister he decided that his real interests were film and music.He studied filmmaking at the Royal College of Art and at Slade School of Fine Art at the University of London. He was working in film production when he got his first chance to direct: a film about British cars, financed by Shell Oil and the British government. He began proposing his own television projects, and bought the name and company registration of the defunct Harcourt Films, under which he would release all his work.In the mid-1970s, as Caribbean immigration was changing London’s music, night life and politics, Mr. Marre made his first music film, about British reggae. He went on to visit Jamaica, reggae’s home, in 1977.“I wanted to show the music as a dynamic political force that reflected the history, politics and aspirations of the island,” he said in a 2001 interview. The resulting film, “Roots Rock Reggae,” featured Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and other leading reggae performers, as well as glimpses of slums and riots.“Roots Rock Reggae” drew an unexpectedly large audience, leading to “Beats of the Heart.” Further episodes took place in China, Nigeria, Yugoslavia and Thailand, and on the Texas-Mexico border, as Mr. Marre gained access to public performances, private rituals, parties and homes.“He was very persuasive and absolutely tenacious, too,” Oliver Marre said. People opened events and archives to him, he added, because “they’d realize he was an enthusiast and not a voyeur.”ImageIn addition to his son Oliver, Mr. Marre is survived by his wife of 49 years, Diana Silman; another son, Jesse; and four grandchildren.While making “Roots Rock Reggae,” Mr. Marre and his crew were menaced in the streets by Jamaicans accusing them of working for the C.I.A.; Mr. Marre proved he was British by displaying his knowledge of cricket.When he made “Shotguns and Accordions: Music of the Marijuana Regions of Colombia,” Mr. Marre was allowed to film at the estate of the drug lord Pablo Escobar. But when he decided to gather atmospheric scenes of fishing boats at sunrise, he and his crew were shot at; they were inadvertently filming a drug shipment.“Beats of the Heart” revealed musical cultures barely known to Westerners. Paul Simon cited “Rhythm of Resistance,” about music in apartheid-era South Africa, for introducing him to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Zulu choir that appeared on the album “Graceland.” Mr. Marre later made documentaries about “Graceland” and the making of Mr. Simon’s Broadway musical, “The Capeman.”Mr. Marre followed “Beats of the Heart” with dozens of documentaries. They included “On the Edge,” a series on improvisation; “The Nature of Music,” about music as ritual worldwide (narrated, unlike most of his films, by Mr. Marre himself); “Chasing Rainbows,” a series on British pop; “The Voice,” examining vocalists as diverse as Luciano Pavarotti, Bob Dylan and Chuck D; “Latin Music USA;” and biographical films about James Brown (“Soul Survivor,” which won an Emmy Award), Jay-Z, the conductor Herbert von Karajan, Carlos Santana, Otis Redding, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Big Bill Broonzy, Youssou N’Dour, Marc Bolan, Amy Winehouse, Count Basie and others.He also made documentaries on subjects other than music: prison gangs, bioterrorism, the erotic arts of India, animal communication and the “third gender” subculture of Thailand known as Ladyboys.Mr. Marre spoke more often about his subjects than about himself, but in 2003 he assessed his work.“I’ve made many films about people who are outsiders, even within their own countries,” he said. “And I’ve shot real-life stories, from Madagascar to Mexico, from China to Thailand, that tell of people’s struggles to make their voices heard, and of the impact that just one voice can have upon the rest of the world.” More