by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Rebel was the theme of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The message was everywhere: On screen before every film; on the front cover of the film schedule, which read “This Is Your Guide to Cinematic Rebellion”; and in the originality and creativity of almost every film selected by Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford and Festival Director John Cooper for this year’s festival. Rebellion meant great films, particularly documentaries.

In addition to established competitive categories (U.S. Documentary, U.S. Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Shorts) and non-competitive categories (Premieres, Spotlight, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight), there was a new category for low-budget independent films appropriately titled Next. In every category, there were films whose themes seem particularly relevant for our time – films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recession and resulting unemployment, political revolutions, the search for environmental alternatives, and the incredible resilience of people when faced with extreme adversity.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is living the dream. After discovering his love of letterpress, Kennedy left his comfortable corporate job and devoted his life to his art. Today the self-described “humble negro printer” lives in rural Alabama and sells his socially relevant and politically charged letterpress posters for $15 each.

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 call to action and a breathtaking portrait of hope in the face of overwhelming odds.

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 Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, and Sally Hawkins make the 95-minute feature one of the best films of 2009.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Crude: The Real Price of Oil is outright sickening. Huge crude oil pits dot the landscape, natural waterways are so polluted that drinking the water causes cancer, and Ecuador’s indigenous communities’ entire way of life is on the brink of destruction. Responsibility for this pollution is the core of a lawsuit filed against Texaco (now Chevron) in 1993. The case has yet to be resolved.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Burma (also known as Myanmar) is a closed country, literally. Since the 1962 military coup, few outsiders have even entered the Southeast Asian country. News reports are scarce and often unreliable because the news is almost exclusively dispensed by the military dictatorship, which cuts off internet access and cell phone networks during periods of social unrest – further isolating the country’s 50 million citizens. A documentary film about Burma filmed by native Burmese seems as unlikely as it would be dangerous.

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 Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Highland Park, Michigan would seem an unlikely candidate for water access problems – the city is located on the Great Lakes, the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. The Great Lakes are so vast that when standing on their shores you cannot see the other side. With freshwater so ubiquitous, why did Highland Park’s mostly low-income and elderly residents have to fight to keep the water flowing from their taps? The new 53-minute documentary film, The Water Front, skillfully documents Highland Park’s long and heated fight over water access and cost.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Maripaz Vega, currently the world’s only professional female matador, emerges triumphant from yet another death-defying bullfight. Her jeweled matador jacket and pants are covered with as much blood as sparkle while the crowd’s enthusiastic roar echoes through the second-rate bullfighting ring in a small Spanish town. Bullfighting is undeniably gory, and yet the sport’s myriad dangers and even risk of death don’t stop the dedicated few like Vega from committing their lives to the dream of facing a bull in one of Spain’s most prestigious plazas.

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, the nursing home is situated right next to the Israeli security wall that cuts through the West Bank. But most of the employees and residents’ families live in Palestine, and therefore need special authorization to cross the border legally.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

During its midcentury glory days, Weequahic High School was a prestigious public school located in a predominantly Jewish enclave of Newark, New Jersey. Students were expected to excel post-graduation, as evidenced by noteworthy alumni, including author Philip Roth and NBA star and coach Al Attles. By the time Newark native Ronald Stone became principal in 2001, the high school’s demographic had changed and daily life was so riddled with gang violence that Stone wore a bulletproof vest when walking outside the campus’ main buildings.

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 television in the first situational family comedy. At the height of her long career, Berg was named by Billboard magazine as “the first lady of radio,” won the first Best Actress Emmy ever awarded, and was voted the second most-respected woman in America after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

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 him into her Volvo station wagon, ditches his wheelchair, and hits the road. The dialogue is sparse, the vista is breathtaking, and the emotions between Frankie and Irene are both real and complicated.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

For almost two years, I have been reviewing documentary films for The WIP. I have spent countless hours in dark movie theaters so moved by what is on screen that I promise myself that I will completely change my very existence, especially when the film is environmentally themed. I do make changes, real changes. Yet, at times I feel that I am failing as a burgeoning environmentalist.

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 of creative freedom, complete with noontime cocktails in the office and young feminists breaking through the almost impenetrable glass ceiling.

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 Yangtze – and now, the Amazon.

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 tow) to find out what it actually means to have Good Hair, particularly in the African American community. From local barbershops and the Bonner Bros. International Hair Show to scientific laboratories and an Indian religious temple, Rock and director Jeff Stilson investigate the cultural messaging that has built a $9 billion industry.

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 a big dose of environmentalism mixed in. It’s as if James Bond and the Ocean’s Eleven team joined up to stop the annual capture and slaughter of 23,000 dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

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: No Impact Man follows one family’s year-long effort to live a more sustainable life in the middle of New York City, while Earth Days chronicles the history of the modern conservation movement. Both films are thought-provoking perspectives on our relationship with the planet.

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 for the competition’s finale. And at least two of the finalists now fear for their lives.

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 Stoller of Bust magazine). I bought my ticket to the special, sold-out San Francisco Film Society screening the morning tickets went on sale, arrived to the event early, and waited in a long line with other excited fans. Post-screening I was so inspired that I wished I could have crafted on the train ride home, but alas, my handbag lacked the necessary supplies.