According to Wikipedia, a shtetl is the Yiddish term for the small towns across Eastern Europe where many Ashkenazi Jewish communities lived before the Holocaust. But for those of us born after the Shoah, the word carries something almost mystical. It...
Action. It’s the word we most often associate with movies — big spectacle, big movement, big moments. But some of the most powerful films move differently. Not through explosions or chase scenes, but through emotional tension. Through interior conflict. Through the...
Did you know that Henry David Thoreau once went to jail for refusing to pay taxes in protest of the Mexican-American War? There’s a famous story—perhaps a myth—about Ralph Waldo Emerson visiting him in jail and asking, “Henry, why are you here?” To which Thoreau...
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” That classic show business adage comes to mind when reflecting on the Oscar-nominated documentary COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT. Directed by Ryan White, the film follows celebrated poet Andrea Gibson after a cancer diagnosis...
Oscar®-nominated director Geeta Gandbhir joins our Academy Award Documentary Spotlight to discuss THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR and the making of this year’s Best Documentary Feature nominee. “Get off my lawn.” It’s something many of us heard as kids after wandering...
The phrase “observational documentary” immediately evokes cinéma vérité pioneers like Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles Brothers—filmmakers who defined the art of patient, fly-on-the-wall storytelling. With their Academy Award–nominated...
