Author: Doug Cummings

ïYesterday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times offers a belated but pleasant article on the “year of the documentary,” and although it seems to have just discovered films like Bowling for Columbine, Spellbound, My Architect, and The Fog of War, this is one dead horse that deserves a beating:

Once relegated to public broadcasting, cable channels or independent film festivals, the genre is increasingly viewed as popular entertainment worthy of big-screen play. Though many documentaries still face an uphill battle, Hollywood’s perpetual stepchildren are finally getting seated at the grown-ups’ table. They’re making money. They’re easier

Just a fun note here. One of my favorite movies of all time is Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955), based on a 1925 play written by Kaj Munk (1898-1944), a Danish playwright/pastor who was executed by the Nazis. Although the Criterion Collection’s release of Dreyer’s film on VHS and DVD has given it greater visibility on these shores, the original play itself remains elusive.

New Yorkers, however, will get the chance to see the play performed at the Theatre 315 (315 W 47th St.) in the Handcart Ensemble’s new production, running March 13 through April 3. The play’s notes claim …

Incredibly sad news today…Spalding Gray’s death has been confirmed.

I had the plaeasure of seeing Gray when he visited my university a few years ago. He delivered one of his monologues in the school’s rundown theatre and was every bit as lively and eccentric and human as films like Swimming to Cambodia (1987) or Monster in a Box (1992) would lead you to believe. On the way to his talk, a friend of mine spotted him strolling to the theatre, and ran up beside him: “Are you Spalding Gray? Mind if I join you?” “Sure,” he replied, “As long …

One of the biggest names in the history of documentary filmmaking was John Grierson (1898-1972), a Scotsman who championed film as mass communication with a high potential for social education. Grierson founded two major national organizations for film production: the Empire Marketing Board film unit in Britain in 1930 (later called the General Post Office film unit) and the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. Both of these organizations went on to produce landmark documentaries and short films for many years.

One of the filmmakers Grierson invited to join the NFB was a fellow Scotsman, Norman McLaren (1914-1987). McLaren …

“Ron Coleman tries to calm his shaken son, Trey, after a screening of
‘The Passion of the Christ’ in Killeen, Texas, on Wednesday.”
(AP/Steve Traynor)

Although one of my ongoing interests in film is how spirituality is communicated through such a literal art form, I’ve been doing my best to avoid The Passion of the Christ, due in large part to the unrelenting gruesomness of its approach as universally relayed by critics both for and against the film. I simply value the power of the imagination and filmmakers who know how to use it. (In his published screenplay for …

The Red Jacket (Germany, 2003, 18 min.)

One of the purposes of the Oscar broadcast is to give “prestige” promotion to certain Hollywood films–it has been said that an Academy Award is roughly equivalent to an additional $20 million at the box office. Of course, this statistic can only be applied to features that are currently in release around the country, and rarely applies to the documentary or short film categories, which include films that usually get little to no distribution at all.

Fortunately, Apollo Cinema has been distributing the Oscar-nominated live action and animated short films each of the …