Tag Archives: Documentary

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My Father’s House: A Journey of Love and Memory (2017)

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Hannah Reimann’s nonfiction short is a video diary of the final four years in the life of her father, Dr. Peter Reimann, whose life was slowly weakened by dementia.

The German-born Dr. Reimann served as a medic in the German Army during World War II – the film briefly states he was anti-Nazi, but never goes into depth on his war record. He married Korean psychoanalyst Dr. Myunghee Kim in 1957, eventually settling in New Jersey. Dr. Kim’s death in a car accident during a 1996 vacation in Chile was an emotional loss from which Dr. Reimann never truly recovered, and the sense of melancholy resonates throughout his on-camera footage. When asked during a birthday what it means to turn 89, he responds, “You didn’t die at the right time.”

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Every Ghost Has an Orchestra (2017) [Oceanside International Film Festival 2017]

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A paranormal researcher and music composer goes to a barn to find the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) in the old wood as he believes objects have memories of sounds from their past.

The film about researcher and compositor Michael Esposito is directed by Shayna Connelly, the film shows Esposito as the star at the center of the subject.  He is shown as a prominent figure in the field while no others are interviewed.  This renders the exploration of the subject a bit thin and one dimensional.  Having no other experts corroborate his information or his research makes it less credible as it’s all from one point of view with no supporting evidence or opinions.  This doesn’t mean the film is not interesting, but as a documentary short, using other experts would have helped it be more powerful and feel like the makers did more research.

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You Have to See This! NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell (2007)

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“New York wasn’t burning. It was burnt!”

Director Henry Corra’s exploration of what New York was in 1977 is quite fantastic and a surprisingly rare chronicle of the political and economic turmoil that ironically bred timeless art and music. As a born and bred Bronxite, 1977 is a mythical year, and a period of the decade that I’ve heard about very often from elder family members. In particular, the night of the infamous black out of New York, my mom and uncle were stuck in the edge of downtown Manhattan and had to brave their way home during the mass looting and rioting. “NY77” garners a very unique tone that balances out the inherent importance of the year, the depressing living conditions of the city, and the obvious fun that was had by most, who managed to endure poverty with laughs and creativity.

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Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown (2017)

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Gregory Monro’s documentary offers a scattershot overview of Jerry Lewis’ life and career, with a heavy emphasis on the funnyman’s peaks while carefully avoiding the controversies and failures that he generated. Lewis was the son of entertainers who put their careers before his childhood needs, and an emotional low point occurred when his parents managed to miss his bar mitzvah because they had stage engagements. The film notes that Lewis’ meteoric success in the late 1940s when he was barely out of his twenties created friction with his father Danny Lewis, a singer who never achieved stardom.

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Starless Dreams (2016)

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This entry in Mehrdad Oskouei’s trilogy on Iranian youth in their nation’s justice system – following It’s Always Late for Freedom (2007) and The Last Days of Winter (2011) – focuses on teenage girls at a rehabilitation and correction center. This facility looks nothing like the stereotypical Iranian prison: the girls enjoy pizza parties, play Truth or Dare and engage in playful snowball fights. Indeed, at times the facility feels like a happy sorority rather than a hijab-clad version of Orange is the New Black.

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Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America (2016)

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Tiffany Rhynard’s documentary focuses on Moises Serrano, who came to the U.S. at the age of 18 months with his illegal immigrant Mexican parents. The Serrano family settled in rural North Carolina and lived without legal problems until 2007, when state laws began to crack down on the ability of illegal immigrants to have a driver’s license or obtain college scholarship funds.

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