On May 24^th, tomorrow, HBO is airing a new documentary on HIV / AIDS in Africa, titled The Lazarus Effect by director Lance Bangs and executive producer Spike Jonze. It’s a story of hope and results, but reminds us that in the meantime 3,800 people in Africa are still dying every day because universal access to treatment is not available. Read the full story

Of the documentary films that premiered at Tribeca this past April, The Other City was one of the most striking. The film opens by posing a question to the audience, “Which Capital City has the highest rates for HIV/AIDS: Port au Prince, Haiti; Washington DC; Dakar, Senegal.” The answer is Washington DC. Surprised? The film goes on to explain that for a disease to be considered an epidemic, it needs to infect 1% of the population being examined. In Washington DC, the percentage of the population infected with HIV/AIDS is actually closer to 3%. There is this image of our Capital City being a place of power and civil action, but within every city, there is another city, and this compelling film explores the side that most people are unaware of. Read the full story

(series star and narrator of Never Sleep Again, Heather Langenkamp, poses in front of the original house)

With the Platinum Dunes remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street effectively putting an end to the original series of films featuring the razor clawed Freddy Krueger, a retrospective of the franchise seems fitting. Produced by 1428 Films (named after the house number featured in the original film), Never Sleep Again (directed by Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch) offers almost 4 hours of interviews with cast member, writers, directors and production staff from all 7 films in the franchise plus the 2003 match-up film Freddy Vs. Jason and the syndicated TV series feature Krueger as emcee entitled Freddy’s Nightmares (plus an additional 4 hours in bonus features). This could appear to be a daunting task for the average film lover to watch but the information and interviews are handled so effectively that the lengthy documentary never becomes dull or taxing to watch.

Read the full story

The success of horror mockumentaries such as Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project show that audiences want a realistic horror experience. Maybe it’s because unlike laughing at a teen slasher movie axe-killer spilling buckets of fake blood, we get a bigger thrill when we can imagine that life can be as scary as what’s on the screen.

Real documentaries are never as scary though, are they?  When we see movies about serial killers, they are either highly dramatized (The Black Dahlia, Silence of the Lambs) or a dry documentary combining horrific crime scene photos with an interview or two. Just like when we realized Hannibal Lecter was based off of a real guy, when the whispered tales of the Cropsey Maniac, an axe-wielding killer turns out to be based off of truth as well, we stop, listen, and watch.

CROPSEY, directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio, is a documentary about the Cropsey maniac legends and the “Boogeyman of Staten Island” Andre Rand, the supposed source of some of the disappearances. The trailer shows that the film promises the same realistic, creepy filming style we’ve all come to love in scary movies. The only difference is we can’t tell ourselves “it was just a movie” when we go to bed that night.

Will you go see CROPSEY? Or do you want your horror purely fictional?

Source: Gordonanthewhale

Mat Hoffman doing a BMX demo at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival

The Birth of Big Air details the life and career of BMX athlete Mat Hoffman. In 1985, at the tender age of 13, Hoffman entered into the BMX circuit as an amateur, and by 16 he had risen to the professional level. Throughout his storied career, Hoffman has ignored conventional limitations, instead, focusing his efforts on the purity of the sport and the pursuit of “what’s next.”

I had the privilege of speaking with director Jeff Tremaine, producer Johnny Knoxville and Mat Hoffman at the Tribeca Film Festival. Please check out the interview video and trailer below to learn more about this impressive documentary. Read the full story

Freakonomics, a documentary based on the best-selling nonfiction book, written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner ,will close the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. Read the full story

In his first feature-length documentary, director Jason Spingarn-Koff explores the growing virtual community of Second Life in Life 2.0. This virtual online world is accessed daily by hundreds of thousands of users from around the world, where they use avatars to assume alternate personas. Assuming his own avatar, Spingarn-Koff immerses himself in this alternate landscape, and reveals to us how quickly the lines between reality and virtual reality can be blurred. Read the full story

At the Academy Awards this past Sunday, The Cove, a documentary which details the annual killing of dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama, Japan, took home the 2009 Oscar for Best Documentary. In a category that is often filled with heart-felt stories about important issues, this writer felt it important to highlight elements about the film that made it worthy of taking the trophy home. Read the full story

Editor’s Note: Our new writer Kristen will be covering Sundance 2010 this year. Look for reviews and interviews in the coming days!

On Friday, January 22, actor/director Adrian Grenier will premiere his new documentary Teenage Paparazzo at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Read the full story

From Focus Features’ impressive 2010 line-up comes the trailer for a new documentary titled Babies, directed by Thomas Balmes. I saw the trailer before Precious last week and was wondering when it would be released online. Check it out below or in HD on Yahoo.
Read the full story