Entries from The WIP Contributors tagged with 'review'
When Did You Know You Were A Feminist?
by Anna Clark -USA- I was the only woman who worked on a ropes course during the summer I spent employed at a girls’ camp in Pennsylvania. Officially, my job was to strap kids into climbing harnesses and belay them...
Art Installation The Dresses / Objects Project Explores Femininity and Gender
by Emily Wilson -USA- I admire boldness. So Katrina Rodabaugh’s The Dresses / Objects Project, a multi-disciplinary installation combining a dizzying array of artistic forms appealed to me. Through poetry, dance, fashion, photography and letterpress, Rodabaugh embraces a broad swath...
Mine: The Pets That Hurricane Katrina Left Behind
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The most emotionally and politically-charged documentary of the year is about a surprisingly original subject: the domestic pets that were lost or left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Mine artfully portrays the...
Tapestries of Hope: Director Michealene Cristini Risley on the Tenacity and Optimism of Zimbabwe’s Rape Survivors
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The most striking element of the new documentary Tapestries of Hope is not the hell that the young rape survivors profiled have lived through, but their unbreakable spirit. The film is a vibrant international...
Coming of Age in 1960s London: Interview with An Education's Director Lone Scherfig
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Post-war London is at its most enchanting in director Lone Scherfig’s new film, An Education. Nick Hornby’s clever screenplay, Scherfig’s apt direction and a talented star-studded cast that includes Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina, Peter...
Colin Beavan on Life Post-No Impact Man: "No American is living a sustainable life"
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The title of Colin Beavan’s book, No Impact Man – not to be confused with the documentary or blog – has a mildly self-deprecating tone that sums things up nicely, No Impact Man: The...
This Way Up: A Meditation on Growing Old Along the Israeli/Palestinian Border
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Growing old in a nursing home is rarely an enviable fate. For the Palestinian Christian residents of the Catholic–run Our Lady of Sorrows nursing home, old age is particularly disheartening. Located in East Jerusalem,...
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg: Director Aviva Kempner Documents the Life of TV Pioneer Gertrude Berg
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Gertrude Berg is the most famous cultural icon you’ve most likely never heard of. The Jewish-American writer and actress played her most famous character, Molly Goldberg, for over 25 years on radio and later...
Barking Water: Sterlin Harjo’s Sentimental Take on the Classic Road Trip
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The opening scene of Sterlin Harjo’s new film Barking Water perfectly sets the film’s tone. Frankie (Richard Ray Whitman) lies dying in the hospital when old flame Irene (Casey Camp-Horinek) busts him out, loads...
Interview with Actress Parker Posey: “It’s not easy as a woman in this business to have integrity”
by Vera von Kreutzbruck - Germany - Unlike many actors in the film industry, Parker Posey’s aspiration is not to be an A-list Hollywood star. Her career path has circumvented mainstream filmmaking, which – in her own words – does...
Deepa’s Inferno: Domestic Violence and the Indian Diaspora in Heaven on Earth
by Mandy Van Deven - India - Couched in a story from Indian mythology, Deepa Mehta’s newest feature film, Heaven on Earth, blurs the line between reality and fantasy to provide a nuanced and authentic look at the struggles of...
Art & Copy: A Look at the Creativity Behind American Advertising
by Jessica Mosby - USA - This summer Don Draper and company return to AMC for the third season of the hit TV show Mad Men. The stylized drama has made the 1960s advertising industry seem like the glory days...
Big River Man: Martin Strel versus the Amazon
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Martin Strel does not look like an athlete. The overweight fiftysomething is an alcoholic, a flamenco guitarist, and a one-time professional gambler. But this Slovenian long-distance swimmer has swam the Mississippi, the Danube, the...
Chris Rock Searches for Answers in Good Hair
by Jessica Mosby - USA - "Daddy, how come I don't have good hair?" That question, tearfully posed to comedian Chris Rock by his young daughter Lola, was all it took for Rock to travel the country (camera crew in...
The Cove: Action, Adventure, and the Race to Save Japan’s Dolphins
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Anyone who thinks that documentaries are boring and stuffy should see The Cove – just to have their preconceived notions shattered. The film is 90 minutes of danger, covert operations, and thrilling feats with...
No Impact Man and Earth Days: Two Sides of Environmentalism
by Jessica Mosby - USA - On Wednesday, the United States will celebrate the 39th Earth Day. In honor of this annual call to environmentalism, I have chosen to preview two documentaries that premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival:...
Afghan Star: Afghanistan’s American Idol
by Jessica Mosby - USA - American Idol in Afghanistan? Seriously? Afghanistan’s first competition/reality show, Afghan Star, is arguably the most popular – and controversial – television program in Afghanistan. Eleven million people, or one-third of the country, tuned in...
Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y., Art, Craft, and Design
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y., Art, Craft, and Design is about one my favorite things (do it yourself) and profiles some of my favorite artists and crafters (Jill Bliss, Nikki McClure, and Debbie...
Adam: Not Your Average Love Story
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Most American romantic comedies and dramadies go something like this: two attractive people "meet cute"; after some witty banter, and maybe a date, they find themselves in bed together; immediately following this sexual encounter...
The 2009 Academy Awards: Documentary Features in the Race for an Oscar
by Jessica Mosby - USA - On Sunday night, the 81st Academy Awards will air live from Los Angeles. Five documentary films are vying for the coveted Documentary Feature Oscar: The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), Encounters at the End of the World,...
Over the Hills and Far Away: A Family Treks Across Mongolia to Help their Autistic Son
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The premise of the new documentary film Over the Hills and Far Away is straight from the handbook of the American bourgeoisie: Journalist father and professor mother take their young autistic son on a...
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Oscar season usually guarantees that there will be at least one film about the Holocaust starring an A-list actor. 2009 is no exception: Tom Cruise stars in Valkyrie; Viggo Mortensen (of Lord of the...
Flow: Who Owns the World’s Water?
by Jessica Mosby - USA - After seeing the new documentary Flow, my 2009 New Year’s resolution is to stop buying bottled water. Over $100 billion is spent annually on bottled water, but it would cost only $30 billion to...
Pray the Devil Back to Hell: Liberian Women Bring Peace to their War-Torn Country
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The recent history of Liberia is bloody. Valuable natural resources, corrupt leaders, ethnic conflicts, and thousands of displaced people led to 8 years of conflict during Liberia’s two civil wars (1989-1993 and 1999-2003). Many...
Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi
by Jessica Mosby - USA - At the tender age of 19, Claudio Duran opened the door of his Santiago home in the middle of the night to find military secret police ready to arrest him. The officers took him...
Lemon Tree: The Struggle of One Woman Caught in the Middle of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
by Jessica Mosby - USA - United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made nineteen trips to the Middle East in the last two years in hopes of securing a regional peace accord. But as the Bush administration comes...
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
by Jessica Mosby - USA - I vividly remember the 1988 presidential election, or more accurately the months of campaigning that led up to the election. At the time, my family did not have cable television and all that was...
Soldiers of Conscience: Opposing the Iraq War
by Jessica Mosby - USA - “There are two types of bayonet fighters, the quick and the dead. Which type are you?” This is what a boot camp drill sergeant yells at new recruits, who then reply in unison –...
In the Family: Preventing Breast and Ovarian Cancer with Genetic Testing
by Jessica Mosby - USA - If you could know that you were at risk for a terminal illness, would you want to know? And then what would you do next if the news confirmed your worst fears? At the...
Overcoming Bigotry with Beauty: A Man Named Pearl
by Jessica Mosby - USA - A middle-aged African American man climbs a ladder that he has precariously perched next to an enormous tree. His only source of light is his tractor’s small headlight. When he reaches the top of...
Documenting the Surge: US Soldier's Films Expose the Realities of the Iraq Occupation
by Jennifer Fenton - USA - "We have an entire generation of people in their twenties and thirties who have never gone through a war…the media and government have gotten so good at the creation of messages, people don't know...
Freedom Machines: Empowerment through Technology
by Jessica Mosby - USA - There will always be those who yearn for a simpler time, a time before the world was consumed by the internet and ever-advancing technologies. For the 54 million people living with disabilities in the...
The Greening of Southie: Two Shades of a "Green" Building
by Jessica Mosby - USA - In the not so distant past, the idea of reducing, reusing, and recycling seemed idealistic, even if it just meant putting a glass bottle in a recycling container instead of the trash. But a...
Still Rocking and Protesting in the Free World: CSNY Déjà Vu
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Neil Young does not mince words. During his Freedom of Speech 2006 tour with on-again-off-again band mates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, the group energetically performed Young’s new songs titled, “Let’s Impeach...
I.O.U.S.A.: A Surprisingly Entertaining Look at America’s Debt
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Paying upwards of $10 USD to see a movie about economics, particularly in these increasingly desperate financial times, hardly seems like a prudent decision – much less a pleasurable way to spend a Sunday...
A New China Floods the Traditional Way of Life in Up the Yangtze
by Jessica Mosby - USA - On 8-8-08 when the Beijing Summer Olympics begins, the world will see that the Maoist doctrine of the Cultural Revolution has been replaced by capitalism and McDonald’s – all in the name of progress....
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Every Sunday afternoon my college journalism advisor, who everyone lovingly called “Coach,” would meet with the newspaper staff and critique the past week’s articles. As a portly middle-aged man who had won numerous awards...
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
by Jessica Mosby - USA - American slave trading is a human rights atrocity forever associated with the Confederacy of the Southern United States. Northerners are stereotypically portrayed as benevolent abolitionists fighting the South’s slave labor plantations. But history is...
The Linguists: Searching for Endangered Languages Around the World
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Linguistics, the study of languages, is generally not interesting for people who are not linguists. Filming the daily work of a linguist – reading and listening – is an idea better suited for a...
Madcap Adventures and Serious Cultural Discussions: Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Revealing the ending of a film is downright mean, but it’s obvious that Oscar-nominated director Morgan Spurlock does not find Osama Bin Laden in his latest documentary film Where in the World is Osama...
Girls Rock!: Keeping the Beat for Aspiring Female Musicians
by Jessica Mosby - USA - The experiences and emotions of young American girls are much more complicated, and even tragic, than most people, particularly men, would assume. Girls as young as eight are regularly confronting low self-esteem, eating disorders,...
Interview with Polish Director Andrzej Wajda: An Elegy for Poland’s Painful Past
by Vera von Kreutzbruck - Germany - Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old when World War II broke out. Together with his mother he lived most of his life in the vain hope that his father might have survived the...
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
by Jessica Mosby - USA - “Rape has always been used as a weapon of war” is the opening line of the new documentary film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. For 76 minutes the film exposes the incredibly...
Iconic Photographer Annie Leibovitz Bares All in New Book and Exhibit
by Molly Nance - USA - I'm not usually one to arrive to a press event 30 minutes early, but recently I woke up in time to drive two hours north from Monterey to San Francisco, to arrive promptly at...
The Women of Brukman: Revolutionary Spirit in the Wake of Argentina’s Economic Meltdown
by Jessica Mosby - USA - - March 8th - Today we celebrate International Women's Day with our sisters and mothers, aunts and grandmothers, cousins and daughters, and most of all, with our writers, who have become family. On this...
Made in America: Unending Violence in the Land of Prosperity
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Forty years of unending gang violence between rival gangs, the Bloods and Crips, has killed over 15,000 people in South Central Los Angeles. It seems counterintuitive that one of the most dangerous places in...
Sundance: Snow, Films, Celebrities and The Business of Film
by Jessica Mosby - USA - If you want to see interesting independent films and the movie stars in them, the Sundance film festival, held in the picturesque ski town of Park City, Utah, is the place to go. The...
The Beauty Academy of Kabul
by Jessica Mosby - USA - When thinking of Afghanistan, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by despair. Violence claimed over 6,000 lives in 2007 alone. The quality of life for women continues to decline as a result of...
Filmmaker Wendy Slick Shows That “repressing women’s sexual being is a political issue”
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Including the word “orgasm” in the title of your documentary film is a bold move. After seeing the film Passion and Power: Technology of Orgasm at the Mill Valley Film Festival, I wanted to...
Author Cynthia Reeves Explores Relationships, Language and Dreams in Badlands
by Anna Clark - USA - There comes a time when a reader is starved for something new. A lot of tremendous fiction is being published these days, but most people don’t ever hear about it. In a time when...
John & Yoko: A New York Love Story
by Hayward Hawks Marcus - USA - For years, many people have painted Yoko Ono as the cold and controlling monster who broke up the Beatles, ran John Lennon’s life, and probably made the pop legend unhappy, even if he...
Daughters of Wisdom: Tibetan Nuns Inspiring a Feminist Movement Through Their Isolated Monastic Life
by Jessica Mosby - USA - “Free Tibet” has become part of our lexicon due to countless bumper stickers adorning Volvos and fundraisers featuring Richard Gere. Despite the feminist persuasion of many Tibetan supporters, women in Tibet, particularly nuns, are...
Four Sheets to the Wind: An Insider’s View of One Native American Family
by Jessica Mosby USA The story of a young and adrift guy finding his way in a confusing world has been done – too many times. Though I usually would not go see a film about this sort of fellow,...
King Corn: Changing What We Eat and How We Grow It
by Jessica Mosby USA • Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis become the kings of corn in their new documentary by exploring the factors that have led to America's obesity epidemic. Photograph by Sam Cullman, courtesy of Mosaic Films Incorporated. •Blaming...
Postcards From Tora Bora: Looking for the Afghanistan of Yesterday in the Ruins of Today
by Jessica Mosby USA When you think of Afghanistan, smiling women in shift dresses attending college is not the first image that comes to mind. Decades of violence has devastated the country, leaving little more than bomb craters, crumbling buildings,...
Angels in the Dust: A Glimmer of Hope in HIV/AIDS Epidemic
by Jessica Mosby USA 100 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa will have been infected with HIV/AIDS by the year 2010. Another 26 million children will be orphaned by the virus. The idea that two ordinary people could affect, much less...
The 11th Hour: Only Governments Can Make the Big Changes Affecting the Environment, But There Are Still Lots of Real-World Solutions for the Average Joe!
by Jessica Mosby USA In an admirable effort to contribute to the dialogue on what to do to save the planet, Leonardo DiCaprio has recently released a documentary film, The 11th Hour, which he produced and narrates. However, if you...
Film Review - The Devil Came on Horseback: A US Marine Is Witness to Slaughter in Darfur
by Jessica Mosby USA • Image courtesy of IFC •The United Nations defines genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” To date, some 200,000 people have...
When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
by Jessica Mosby USA • Image courtesy of Little Dust Productions •All gypsies are thieves and beggars who will steal your children and your passport! According to Johnny Depp, believers in that statement should drop everything they're doing and run,...
The “Concert for Diana” Wasn’t Just a Concert: Her Legacy Lives On in Her Sons’ Commitment to Humanity
by Daisy Tormé USA/UK Sunday the Concert for Diana was aired live on VH1 and yes, I found myself huddled in front of the TV watching the entire thing along with millions of other viewers. The concert was organized from...
Souvenir’s Portrayal of Soprano, Florence Foster Jenkins, Offers Modern Parallels
by Sarah Wyatt USA She was a socialite. Or was she awkward, gullible, clumsy? View larger imageBroadway veteran, Patti Cohenour as Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir. Photo courtesy of the Seattle ACT TheatreShe prized her autonomy and tenacity. Yet she...
Two Canadian Women Start Leadership Dialogue with Book
by D-L Nelson France It is easy to talk about a problem; it is much harder to do anything about it. Two Canadian women, tired of hearing about leadership crisis, decided to kick-start a national dialogue. Françoise Morissette M.Ed., P.C.C....
Riveting New Play, The Good President, Boldly Satirizes a Government That Victimizes Its Own People
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean theatre lovers have had something to talk about for the past two weeks. Cont Mhlanga's riveting new play, The Good President, premiered here in Harare, Zimbabwe, on April 12. This politically charged satire,...
The Clean House Examines Domestic Labor Gender Imbalance
by Sarah Wyatt USA Young playwright Sarah Ruhl continues to gain widespread recognition for her play, The Clean House. She is emerging as a powerful presence in the American performing arts. The acclaimed and affecting comedy by the MacArthur genius...
A Review of 'Made to Break": Technology and Obsolescence in America
by Anna Clark USA Green consciousness is finally hitting that bastion of carbon emissions with a war-inducing appetite for oil: the American automobile. Between the nationwide Step It Up campaign of community activism and Al Gore’s Academy-Award winning documentary, An...
Rachel Corrie Sparks Controversy
by Sarah Wyatt USA In 2003, Palestinian activists mourned the passing of an American, a woman whose brilliance returns to life in My Name is Rachel Corrie. The production is based on the writings of Rachel Corrie, the 23 year-old...
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