The Keepers isn’t much of a true crime documentary, at least in the traditional sense of the genre. And that’s to its immense credit. Netflix’s seven-part docudrama flirts with the genre but resists its pitfalls; this series is no whodunit, no he-said-she-said narrative that concludes with neat resolution. Instead,…
In the four years producer and director Shaleece Haas followed transgender teen Bennett as he grew into his identity and early adulthood, she managed to capture all the vagaries of family dynamics when they’re met with a sudden gap in generational understanding and tolerance.
In a scene from John M. Stahl’s 1934 film Imitation of Life, a fair-skinned girl named Peola sits in a classroom, listening to her teacher read Little Women. Upon seeing her mother Delilah—a black housekeeper played by actress Louise Beavers—enter the room in search of her, Peola conceals her face with a book. “I’m…
James Baldwin’s voice is as spot-on and prophetic as ever in the trailer for Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro, a story about the black American experience told through Baldwin’s perspective.
The nation’s endless fascination with JonBenét Ramsey’s tragic demise will continue in 2017: Netflix has acquired Casting Jon-Benet, a documentary about the still-unsolved case to premiere later this year.
In light of the tragic and untimely passing of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, HBO announced Friday that the documentary Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher will premiere Saturday, January 7 at 8 p.m.
Before this dismal year is up, we’ll get behind-the-scenes footage from Nicki Minaj, whose tour documentary The Pinkprint airs on BET on New Year’s Eve.
The trailer for this cat documentary Kedi, about street cats in Istanbul, truly warmed my heart. I hate to be smarmy and predict that watching it will make you emotional, too, but it will. And you will love it.
The documentary Prince: R U Listening? will reportedly be released next year, and since Prince can do anything there’s a chance he is indeed listening.
The voice of the late Maya Angelou powers the trailer for the documentary Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, titled after one of her most famous poems. The beginning features an interview in which Angelou recalls being raped by her mother’s boyfriend at age 7, after which she stopped speaking for five years. “In those…
A documentary about twerking aptly titled Twerkumentary has been picked up for release in December, just in time for everybody who’s tired of talking about twerking.
All Things Must Pass is director Colin Hanks’s documentary about the history of Tower Records, which in 1960 became the first store in America to sell records exclusively, and which incomparably shaped youth culture and music consumption until its bankruptcy in 2006. It came out last October in limited release, but…
With the Supreme Court’s decision to hear a challenge to Texas’s HB2, an omnibus bill aimed at regulating abortion providers out of existence, Dawn Porter’s new documentary, Trapped, is an essential examination of dwindling abortion rights in the South. The documentary, which recently won Sundance’s Special Jury Award…
If you’ve wanted to know more about the enigma known as Sia, you’ll be pleased to hear that a documentary about the singer’s life is now underway. Director Erik Anders Lang, Sia’s husband, has partnered with producer Ryland Aldrich to form a new production company called Pictures. The Untitled Sia Documentary Project …
In this trailer for Nelson George’s documentary A Ballerina’s Tale, Misty Copeland—who in June became the first black principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater—talks about the familiar feeling of isolation in a whitewashed industry.
On July 22, MTV is premiering a documentary titled White People about “what it means to be young and white” in America, a question to which we already know the answers.
In 1924, under dubious circumstances, painter Edith Lake Wilkinson was committed to an asylum for the mentally ill. Her paintings were locked away in a trunk, mailed to a relative, and cloistered for 40 years. Now, HBO documentary Packed in a Trunk brushes off the dust and returns Wilkinson’s artwork to daylight.
Your younger brother’s third-favorite designer Jeremy Scott is finally receiving a documentary about his life and debut line for Moschino, and it’s filled with his celebrity followers—Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, A$AP Rocky, Rita Ora, 2NE1’s CL—effusing on the type of genius that dreams up putting two-foot wings on Adidas…
Since the suicide of Kurt Cobain on April 8, 1994, his widow Courtney Love has been dogged by persistent rumors that she had a hand in it. More than 21 years later, Love has now issued a cease and desist against theaters showing Soaked in Bleach, a new documentary that gives a platform to Tom Grant, a private…
I DVR’d Montage of Heck and watched it a day after it premiered on HBO. I waited partly out of dread. Everything I’ve read about the Kurt Cobain documentary cast it as the most through and fascinating depiction of him ever—largely due to unprecedented access to home movies, journals, and a clutch of his Dr Demento-…
