Standing on the stage at the Oriental Theatre at the Milwaukee Film Festival Friday night with the rest of his family, Dameion Perkins remembered something his brother, Dontre Hamilton, once said to him.
“He said one day that he would put us in a position to have his name shine in the lights,” Perkins said.
That prediction came true, but not in a way that anyone in the family would have wished for. Eric Ljung’s searing documentary, “The Blood is at the Doorstep,” looks at the Hamilton family’s quest for justice after Dontre Hamilton was fatally shot 14 times by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014.
Constant Beta Motion Picture Company, Creative Control, and Abramorama are collaborating for the North American distribution of “The First to Do It,”a documentary about Earl Lloyd, the first African-American to play in the NBA.
Abramorama plans a wide theatrical release for the film in February.
Through the voices of current NBA stars, the documentary examines the legacy of desegregation in America and the ongoing role basketball has played in America’s inner cities.
Made in full cooperation with Lloyd family, “The First to Do It” will make its world premiere this week at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
DOC NYC has announced that it will screen director Greg Barker’s “The Final Year” as its 2017 opening night film.
The documentary feature follows key members of Barack Obama’s administration during his last year in office.
After the doc screens, there will be a conversation with Barker along with one of the film’s subjects, Ben Rhodes, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, and other senior Obama administration officials.
Agnes Varda, Errol Morris, Steve James, and Laura Poitras are among the documentary filmmakers whose films have been placed on DOC NYC’s 2017 Short List of the year.
The annual list typically serves as an accurate predictor of documentaries that will receive Oscar attention.
The list includes Varda and JR’s wry travelogue, “Faces Places,” Morris’ look at portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman, “The B-Side,” James’ chronicle of a small family firm that became the only bank prosecuted in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” and Poitras’ film about Julian Assange, “Risk.”
Ninety-nine feature films will dot the sparkling lineup at the 55th New York Film Festival, which kicked off last night with Richard Linklater’s “Last Flag Flying.”
The festival’s documentaries as a whole are a vibrant, varied bunch, teaming with big personalities like Joan Didion, Steven Spielberg and Jane Goodall.
Alex Gibney’s inquiry into the past in “No Stone Unturned” is more journalistic. He calls it “a hardcore criminal investigation.” The documentary peers into the 1994 Loughinisland massacre in Northern Ireland, where six men were gunned down in a pub.
Initially scheduled to premiere at April’s Tribeca Film Festival, the film was postponed at the last minute due to legal concerns around naming the suspects. “We won the argument,” Gibney said after a recent screening, saying his film was little changed.
In a few weeks, Cambridge, Massachusetts will play host to Disorder: The Rare Disease Film Festival.
Thirty films, many of which are documentaries, will be shown between October 2 and October 3, and each will highlight a rare disease.
The two men behind the festival, Daniel DeFabio and Bo Bigelow, created the two-day event as a means to raise awareness for their own children, each of whom lives with an uncommon condition.
