Documentary Films and Programs

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      ‘Katrina Babies’ Review: Hearing From Survivors

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      Edward Buckles Jr.’s intimate documentary sheds light on the experiences of Black children when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.Who gets to use the notion of “resilience”? Survivors? Mental health professionals? People who want to celebrate it but also move on from whatever required that fortitude in the first place?The director Edward Buckles Jr. makes a telling point of these tensions in his first film, the revealing documentary “Katrina Babies,” which features Black people who were children —— some toddlers, others in their early teens — in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. “Since the storm, it seems like everybody just moved on,” Buckles Jr. says. “In America, especially during disasters, Black children are not even a thought.”The director, who is also credited as a writer, knows the subject from his own experience. When he was 13, he and his family evacuated the city before the storm arrived and the levees broke.“Katrina Babies” is deeply personal and thoughtfully political. The filmmaker recounts the pleasures of cousinhood and family before the hurricane. He and his subjects also tussle with the economic and racial inequities that were exposed and exacerbated by the disaster.Buckles Jr.’s cousins — whom he celebrates with evocative mixed-media animation (by Antoni Sendra) and, later, with compassionate interviews — did not get out at the time. And when they did leave, they did not return. So, if you detect in Buckles Jr. a layer of survivor’s guilt, you might be right.But “Katrina Babies” is also the intimate undertaking of a native son creating a space to heal. If the grief (and relief) expressed in the interviews is any measure, Buckles Jr. knows how to listen to people whose experiences may be harrowingly similar but are not identical to his own. He pulls off this dance of self-awareness and empathy with impressive humility.Katrina BabiesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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      ‘The Territory’ Review: Saving the Amazon, One Camera at a Time

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      This documentary is a thrilling look at an Indigenous group’s fight to keep illegal settlers from destroying their land in the Amazon rainforest.“Save the rainforest” has been a constant refrain among environmentalist groups for the past half-century, but no recent film captures the immediacy of the threat better than “The Territory,” Alex Pritz’s documentary feature debut, which had its premiere earlier this year at Sundance.National Geographic Documentary Films acquired the rights to the movie after it screened, and given the distributor’s current interest in gripping thrillers (“Free Solo,” “Fire of Love”), it’s no surprise that this feature, covering the embittered conflict between Brazilian cattle ranchers and an Indigenous group in the Amazon rainforest, fits right into its lineup. But “The Territory” is more than meets the eye, revealing its most profound observations in stages across its running time. The film’s luscious cinematography captures the sun-dappled island of jungle where the Uru Eu Wau Wau reside, a land slowly being consumed by flames as farmers and other settlers illegally raze the forest for pastures, with few repercussions.While the two opposing groups are given near-equal amounts of screen time, Pritz does not draw a false equivalency between the two; in fact, the longer time is spent with the farmers, the more alarming their gap of understanding toward the Uru Eu Wau Wau becomes. A particularly zealous cattle rancher, whom Pritz repeatedly returns to, describes his settlement as a divine right and bemoans the Indigenous group’s defense of their territory: “Why should they be allowed to stay? They do not work the land, they just live in it.”Pritz heightens the stakes with the story of Neidinha Bandeira, a Brazilian environmental activist who has received death threats because of her work. But it’s only after the Uru Eu Wau Wau choose to trek deeper into their land — a decision brought on by both a violent tragedy and the looming threat of the Covid-19 pandemic — that the film takes on a life of its own. Bitaté, a young leader for his people, works with other Uru Eu Wau Wau members to set up drones and additional cameras to document illegal settlers in their home. (When a journalist requests to send cameramen into the jungle to follow their guerrilla activism, Bitaté responds, “Send us the shot list — we’ve got it covered from here.”) Cinematography credit is shared between Pritz and Tangãi Uru Eu Wau Wau.To see the villagers take matters into their own hands, capturing proof of the encroachment on their land that the government chooses to ignore, is a special kind of thrill.The TerritoryRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’ Review: A Ghost Story

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      Using footage from a three-minute amateur movie shot in 1938, this rousing documentary about a Jewish town in Poland is a haunting meditation on the memory of the Holocaust.In 2009, the writer Glenn Kurtz discovered a badly-degraded three-minute film in the attic of his parents’ Florida home. That film, a kind of vacation home-movie shot in 1938 by Kurtz’s grandfather, David Kurtz, contains seemingly innocuous footage of the Polish town of Nasielsk — David’s birthplace as well as one of the hundreds of Jewish communities eventually devastated by the Holocaust.Not that the majority of us would be able to discern the film’s menacing context. Silent and grainy, it shows children crowding around the camera, bearded elders staring from a distance, people spilling out of a building that you might recognize is a synagogue — if you look carefully.“Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” by the Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter, is committed to just that: looking carefully. The images from David’s three-minute film — at first shown from beginning to end, then chopped, screwed and colorized, with several moments rewound and played over and over again — comprise the entirety of Stigter’s stirring documentary.“Three Minutes” draws from Kurtz’s book, “Three Minutes in Poland,” which chronicles the author’s efforts to identify the people in the film, many of whom ultimately perished in concentration camps. Stigter’s documentary unfolds using voice-over narration by Helena Bonham Carter as well as voice-over testimony from Kurtz and some of the individuals who assisted his research.David’s three-minute film gives us access to a reality that hasn’t really been captured on camera, one of a regular Polish town during that prewar period when life was still normal and danger remained in the shadows. Stigter and Kurtz guide our gazes, revealing the vast universes contained in each frame — from neighborhood politics to the background of a local grocery store. “Three Minutes” is more than a documentary about the Holocaust — it is an investigative drama, a meditation on the ethics of moving images and a ghost story about people who might be forgotten should we take those images for granted.Three Minutes: A LengtheningRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 9 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Le Temps Perdu’ Review: Proust Club

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      This cozy documentary sits in with a group of older readers in Buenos Aires who gather at a cafe to savor Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.”At the very least, María Álvarez’s “Le Temps Perdu” might give hope to anyone who has always meant to finish — or start — Proust. Shot almost entirely in a Buenos Aires cafe, the cozy black-and-white documentary sits in with a group of seniors who gather to savor “In Search of Lost Time” in Spanish translation. They’ve gone through the novel a few times, meeting for nearly two decades.Seated around a table, the men and women read aloud from what look like laminated printouts from the beloved multivolume book. They muse over certain passages and share echoes with their daily lives: the enduring memory of a late husband’s smile, or a hospital visit where madeleines were on the menu. One man keeps explaining that his daughter is named Albertine, like the key character in the book who is the narrator’s romantic obsession.The film, perhaps like a certain writer, seeks out the nexus between the quotidian and the transcendent in the group’s activity, book ended by poetic montages and liberal use of Debussy’s “Syrinx.” There’s some poignancy and amusement in how the experiences of time and love transpire in the novel and in the readers’ lives. (The movie is probably best seen in a cinema, another communal space.)You couldn’t ask for richer reading material, even if the film doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its premise. Believe it or not, there’s already stiff competition: a similar documentary from 2013, “The Joycean Society,” tackles “Finnegans Wake” in just under an hour.Le Temps PerduNot rated. In Spanish with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $31.5 Million in Grants

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      The third round of funding for the year will support 226 projects across the country.A PBS documentary on the 400-year history of Shakespeare’s plays, a New York Public Library summer program for educators on efforts to secure equitable access to education in Harlem in the 20th century, and research for a book on the history of red hair are among 226 beneficiaries of new grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Tuesday.The grants, which total $31.5 million and are the third round awarded this year, will support projects at museums, libraries, universities and historic sites in 45 states and Washington, D.C., as well as in Canada, England and the Netherlands.Such projects include a documentary, to be co-produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, about the Colfax Massacre — named after the town and parish where dozens of former slaves were killed during Reconstruction. Another, at Penn State, uses computational methods to analyze the clouds in landscapes by John Constable and to trace the adoption of his Realist techniques by other 19th-century European artists. Funding will also go toward research for a book examining how different cultures have envisioned Jesus, both in his own time and throughout history, by Elaine Pagels, a historian of religion at Princeton University.Shelly C. Lowe, the endowment’s chairwoman, said in a statement that the projects, which include educational programming for high school and college students, “will foster the exchange of ideas and increase access to humanities knowledge, resources and experiences.”In New York, 31 projects at the state’s cultural organizations will receive $4.6 million in grants. Funding will support the creation of a new permanent exhibition exploring 400 years of Brooklyn history at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, as well as books about St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York during the height of the AIDS crisis and the Hospital of the Innocents, a 600-year-old children’s care institution in Florence, Italy.Funding will also go toward the development of a podcast about the Federal Writers’ Project, a U.S. government initiative that provided jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression, by the Washington-based Stone Soup Productions. Another grant will benefit a history of the Cherokee Nation being co-authored by Julie Reed, a historian at Penn State, and Rose Stremlau, a historian at Davidson College in North Carolina.The grants will also benefit the Peabody Collections, one of the oldest African American library collections in the country, at Hampton University, and a book by John Lisle on a 1980s lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency over its Cold War-era MK-Ultra program, which involved experiments in mind control. More

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      ‘Free Chol Soo Lee’ Review: An Indictment of the Justice System

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      Activists helped free a Korean immigrant, and this documentary explores the wrongful conviction and its ripple effect.“Free Chol Soo Lee” tells the story of a wrongfully convicted man who, after spending nearly a decade in prison, was ultimately vindicated in court.But it isn’t an uplifting movie. As much as it celebrates the exoneration of its subject, a Korean immigrant in California named Chol Soo Lee, this documentary, directed by Julie Ha and Eugene Yi, is concerned with how the consequences of the failure of justice rippled through the rest of his life. It also considers whether the expectations of those who helped him, and his brief moment of celebrity, may have weighed him down. Just because Lee was innocent doesn’t mean he was perfect.Born in 1952 during the Korean War, Lee was eventually taken by his mother to San Francisco. Having lived, by the movie’s account, somewhat aimlessly, he was convicted of a 1973 killing in Chinatown. Persistent advocacy by K.W. Lee, an investigative reporter for The Sacramento Union, and a coalition of activists drew attention to significant flaws in the case. The process took years, and a separate death penalty case against Chol Soo Lee, for a prison-yard killing, only complicated matters.“Free Chol Soo Lee” takes its cues from Lee’s own words, read as narration by Sebastian Yoon, and from the recollections of his supporters. Archival material involving K.W. Lee, who said he saw a “very thin line” between himself and the man he was covering, is especially poignant. But “Free Chol Soo Lee” is somewhat dry and, as criminal-justice documentaries go, sadly familiar when it strays from Lee’s unique and grim perspective, which includes details of his struggles with prison life and depression. In a passage used as voice-over, he described death row as a system “designed so that the condemned man would kill himself before his execution.”Free Chol Soo LeeNot rated. In English and Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story’ Review: Surviving the Grind

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      In this documentary, a professional skateboarder turns down the Olympics for the chance to live openly.When Leo Baker began skateboarding professionally in the early 2000s, skateboarding was mainly a hobby for punks. There were no Olympic trials for national teams, and advertisers were only beginning to notice the profits that could come from marketing sneakers and T-shirts to kids doing kick flips.Leo was a prodigy, but as a youth skateboarder, he wasn’t out as transgender and nonbinary. Erroneously, he was perceived as someone who could become the poster child for young women in skateboarding.The documentary “Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story,” directed by Nicola Marsh and Giovanni Reda, uses a combination of archival, observational and interview footage to demonstrate how Leo navigated a career as a decorated professional skateboarder while managing the stress of gender dysphoria and public misconception.When the documentary begins, it’s the year leading up to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Leo has qualified for the United States’ first women’s team, and he is conflicted about that decision. The public misconception of his gender causes him great pain, but he is afraid that coming out will end his career. Supported by family and friends — many of whom are also queer veterans of the skateboarding scene — Leo ultimately chooses to live openly as a transgender person and withdraws from the Olympic team.The directors have made a compact film, but their footage packs a punch. Leo is a dynamic and generous subject, and he allows the filmmakers access through an intimate struggle, as he is misgendered publicly and seeking support from loved ones privately.This is a candid look at one person’s experience with coming out, a humane document that shows the bravery and resilience of queer people who seek relief from the categories that are imposed on them.Stay on Board: The Leo Baker StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Princess’ Review: An Unsparing Look at Princess Diana

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      The director Ed Perkins uses only found footage to create a harrowing account of Diana’s life and death.The first clue that “The Princess” will not be your standard-issue Diana Spencer documentary is that the director is Ed Perkins. Perkins’s last film, “Tell Me Who I Am” (2019), which was also his first feature, told a painful true story of identical twins whose lives were upended by abuse and memory loss. While its perspective was compassionate, its revelations were presented in a way that could best be called unsparing.There are few revelations in this picture, which chronicles Diana’s life from right before the announcement of her engagement to Prince Charles up until her death in a car accident in Paris in 1997. Actually, the movie, made up entirely of archival footage, begins with careening video taken while she and her companion, the businessman Dodi Fayed, were fleeing paparazzi on the evening of her death.This is a harrowing movie that depends on our collective hindsight to underscore its manifold and particular ironies. For instance, in joint interviews with Prince Charles shortly after the marriage, Princess Diana seems maybe very reserved — or maybe depressed. As it turns out, it was depression. Viewing this now makes one shudder.Perkins doesn’t editorialize overtly; the movie’s editing and a tense music score by Martin Phipps (with additional music by Rutger Hoedemaekers) do that work, a subtle but ultimately indignant skewering of celebrity culture.One of the picture’s final images is of a young Prince Harry at his mother’s funeral; the pain in his eyes is moving. But it indirectly reminds us that Diana’s life and death have taught the world precisely nothing.The PrincessNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on HBO and HBO Max. More