In the city of Juárez, Mexico, women fight every day of their lives to simply survive as the high murder and assault rates only seem to go higher. Some of them take back the power to feel like they can be fighters by becoming Luchadoras, showing strength in physical, mental, and emotional forms.
Tag Archives: Documentary
Workhorse Queen (2020) [Slamdance Film Festival 2021]
It’s been a long, rough journey for drag queens to become accepted among modern society. After decades of being pushed in to the underground to celebrate their art form, now we’re at a rare moment in time where the drag profession is now being celebrated. After RuPaul’s efforts to inject the drag queen lifestyle in to the world with her hit series “Drag Race,” drag queens went from being pushed in to darkness, to now taking pictures with awe struck children, and hosting concerts with families and children.
And yet, after all of it, there’s still so much more to be done.
The Bootleg Files: The Baboons of Gombe
BOOTLEG FILES 756: “The Baboons of Gombe” (1974 documentary by Jane Goodall).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On a 1978 laserdisc release.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Unavailable for many years.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It is not likely.
I have a Facebook friend named John Rosa who posts New York-area TV Guide listings from the 1960s and 1970s, and today he shared the selection of programming that was available on February 1, 1974. Over on ABC at 8:00 p.m. was a one-shot special called “The Baboons of Gombe” that featured animal behaviorist Jane Goodall studying a troop of 40 baboons that lived along the shore of Lake Tanganyika.
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Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)
Danny Wolf’s newest documentary is notable mostly for being a movie that’s produced by Jim McBride. McBride is famous, of course, for being “Mr. Skin,” the founder of one of the biggest, and first, websites about nudity in film. Aptly titled “Skin,” the documentary about the history of nudity in Hollywood and filmmaking and how it shook the landscape of pop culture, wants to desperately be taken as a bold mix of educational and entertainment, but beyond fleeting insight and fascinating looks at pre-code film, it’s mostly just another nudie reel.
Shorts Round Up of the Week: 1/29/21
It’s been a while since I’ve delivered the Shorts Round Up of the Week as I was previously incapacitated with the flu for most of December. Now that we’re on a new year and a new chapter for the site, I thought it only fitting to unveil the first “Shorts Round Up of the Week” for 2021.
The Go-Go’s (2020)
It’s shocking how punk the background of The Go-Go’s is and ended up being. For a band that is known as one of the biggest pop acts of the 1980’s, their roots are deeply embedded in punk rock and heavy metal. Whether or not you think it was homogenized is up to you, but The Go-Gos have a great story, even if you were more of a Bangles or Banana Rama fan.
Girls Rock! (2008)
While “Rock School” was one of my favorite documentaries of 2005, it was a missed opportunity. Arne Johnson and Shane King’s “Girls Rock!” almost get the love of music and rock and roll it right. Almost. What the directing duo of Johnson and King explore is this collective ability of these different women to create music in the confines of this limited space and show how they can sometimes fall apart at the seams due to typically creative conflicts and arguments about band names.