This Week In Documentary
Theatrical & Streaming Releases - New & Recommended - May 31-June 6, 2024
The beginning of June 2024 is just about here, with one day of May to spare. June is Pride Month, so we recommend checking out our lists of the best documentaries about LGBTQ+ history and the best documentary portraits of LGBTQ+ culture. Many streaming platforms are also offering curated programming celebrating the occasion. The Criterion Channel is probably the most noteworthy for its inclusion of classic documentaries spotlighting LBGTQ+ stories, and we’ve highlighted this bunch below.
Appropriately, After Stonewall (currently available to stream on Tubi, Kanopy, PlutoTV, and Ovid) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. The film, a sequel to Before Stonewall, premiered at the Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on June 6, 1999. Another documentary sequel, The Endless Summer 2 (currently unavailable to stream anywhere), turns 30 on Monday, June 3. Wim Wenders’s Buena Vista Social Club (Max and The Criterion Channel) turns 25 on Tuesday, June 4.
In addition to those film anniversaries, a few important filmmakers were born in the first days of June and are worth celebrating this week. Alain Resnais, who helmed the essential Holocaust documentary Night and Fog (also now streaming on Max and The Criterion Collection) and directed or co-directed the shorts Van Gogh (Ovid), Paul Gaugin (Ovid), Guernica (Ovid), All the World’s Memory (Ovid), and The Song of Styrene (Ovid and The Criterion Channel), was born on June 3, 1922.
Pioneering British documentarian Paul Rotha also celebrated his birthday on June 3 but was born in 1907. He directed the Oscar-nominated films The World is Rich (currently unavailable for streaming) and Cradle of Genius (streaming via the Irish Film Archive), among other documentaries.
June 6 marks the anniversary of the birth of Chantal Akerman in 1950, and her documentaries are all highly recommended. You can find Down There, From the Other Side, One Day Pina Asked…, Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman, South, and No Home Movie all on Ovid — the last two are also streaming free on Kanopy — while Hotel Monterey, Tell Me, and News from Home are on The Criterion Channel with the last one also being available on Max.
Below are some documentary highlights for the week ahead, including our top recommended Pick of the Week. After that is a daily listing of theatrical, streaming, and home video releases plus a brief preview of what’s coming soon. These sections are for paid subscribers, and I hope that you’ll consider upgrading your subscription. Nonfics depends on the support of documentary fans and filmmakers to continue. Thank you to everyone who is already a paid subscriber!
Nonfics Pick Of The Week: Ren Faire (2024)
The perfect docuseries for HBO, Ren Faire is a real-life cross between Succession and Game of Thrones. Maybe a little bit of The Righteous Gemstones too. Directed by Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven), this three-part documentary follows a handful of people involved in the Texas Rennaissance Festival outside of Houston. There’s “King George,” the founder and owner of the festival and also the mayor of the town it’s in. He’s an unforgettable documentary character, eccentric and unpredictable. Then there are his employees and business partners looking to take over the festival if George retires, dies, or sells the place.
The story and its players are all very fascinating, and as is usual for an Oppenheim documentary, Ren Faire looks amazing. Just as he did with Some Kind of Heaven, he pulls you into a world and physical space that you can almost feel, touch, smell, taste (oh, the turkey legs, kettle corn, and…Olive Garden). The thing I find particularly interesting with this series is how candid each character is in talking about the others. The kind of commentary where it’s going to be awkward for them to work together after they all watch it. But the festival also seems like an uncomfortable place to work anyway — that is when it’s not the fun, escapist stuff the visitors normally see.
Because of the inter-character drama, Ren Faire could easily have veered close to reality TV territory — though no reality TV series looks this good. I could imagine the documentary continuing beyond its three episodes, and I certainly wouldn’t mind watching more of George. That said, there is a complete narrative here, one that is cyclical enough that showing more of this world and these people is unnecessary. Instead, I can’t wait to see what world Oppenheim dives into next. Given that we’ve now had two great works by him (see our review of Spermworld), I also hope he continues to be so prolific.
Ren Faire debuts on HBO and Max on June 2 with its first episode. The second and third episodes premiere one week later.
Other Documentary Highlights
Flipside (2023)
My new favorite documentary of the year, Flipside would be our Pick of the Week if it had a greater reach at this time. When it arrives on streaming, it will very likely be my top highlight of that week. It’s also difficult to describe this film. At its center is an independent record store in New Jersey where director Christopher Wilcha worked as a teenager. More than being about that one thing, though, Flipside is a first-person documentary focused on the idea of selling out, as Wilcha reflects on his career choices and the many films he never finished.
Flipside reminds me of Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson, but where that documentary was made up mostly of clips from existing films Johnson shot, this one consists of pieces of incomplete docs, including one on jazz photographer Herman Leonard and another about a would-be author with writer’s block. It’s as if these clips shot many years ago were not meant for their own films after all; they were moments captured unknowingly for this documentary that was to be made much later tying them all into his crisis of commercialization. Wilcha couldn’t have planned it so perfectly, yet the result of his assemblage is a brilliant and very relatable personal essay.
Flipside opens in theaters on Friday, May 31.
Invisible Nation (2023)
We tend to get a lot of political documentaries in years of U.S. presidential elections, but the most interesting in any year are those spotlighting governments and leaders in other countries. Invisible Nation, directed by Vanessa Hope (All Eyes and Ears), is another perfect example. The film follows the election and tenure of Tsai Ing-wen, the first woman president of Taiwan, sharing a look at a relatively young democracy within a country with a still-complicated national identity.
Invisible Nation opens in theaters on Friday, May 31.
LGBTQ+ Favorites
As noted in the introduction, June is Pride Month, and various streamers are celebrating with curations of LGBTQ+ titles. The Criterion Channel has the best bunch under the banner “LGBTQ+ Favorites.” The documentaries included in the program are: Portrait of Jason, Greetings from Washington, D.C., The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, Tongues Untied, and Paris is Burning. None of these films are new to the platform, so it might not seem like a big deal to regular viewers, but it’s always nice to point them out.
Sports Emmy Award Winners
This year’s Sports Emmy winners were announced this past week, and they’re all deserving of their honors. Netflix’s The Deepest Breath received the award for Outstanding Long Documentary. The Extraordinary Stories installment One-Armed Wonder: The Extraordinary Story of Jimmy Hasty (UEFA.tv) was named Outstanding Short Documentary. Apple’s Super League: The War for Football (Apple TV+) won the award for Outstanding Documentary Series while Football Must Go On (Paramount+) was named Oustanding Documentary Series - Serialized.
Super Size Me (2004)
We learned about the death of Morgan Spurlock shortly after sending out last week’s newsletter. He was best known for directing the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me, which chronicled his month-long diet of McDonald’s menu items. Whatever your feelings about the documentary and its validity, it’s still an important and highly influential film, and not just because it inspired a change at the fast food giant. Not only did many docs chronicling other personal challenges follow (Super High Me, No Impact Man, Forks Over Knives, etc.) but Spurlock also made a TV series out of a related premise. It wasn’t the first work of nonfiction following a personal experiment but it was probably the biggest and still most memorable.
Super Size Me is now streaming on Prime Video, Peacock, Tubi, Kanopy, and PlutoTV.
Documentary Release Calendar 5/31/24 - 6/6/24
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