Welcome to WeeklyWilson.com, where author/film critic Connie (Corcoran) Wilson avoids totally losing her marbles in semi-retirement by writing about film (see the Chicago Film Festival reviews and SXSW), politics and books----her own books and those of other people. You'll also find her diverging frequently to share humorous (or not-so-humorous) anecdotes and concerns. Try it! You'll like it!
This documentary that showed at the 43rd Denver Film Festival was helmed by Annabel Rodriguez Rios and Sepp R. Bruderon (editor/writer) who visited the remote village of Congo Mirador many times over the course of years, watching it shrink from a village with population of 700 to 30 families and, ultimately, to an abandoned village.
Chief among the inhabitants of the village is Tamara Vilsamil, who is a rabid Chavez supporter and seems to be doing quite a bit better, financially, than the rest of the village. She brags, at one point, that she owns 50 hectares of land and that it is “as good as money in the bank,” saying that she can always sell a cow if she needs money.
Several old-time residents of the city on stilts talk about “the fatal night,” which, they say, has come. Throughout the time that the documentary is filming sedimentation continues to plague the village with remarks like “sedimentation is killing us all.”
The backdrop of the documentary is an upcoming election and, at one point, ring-leader Tamara says, “I’m going to get our comrades and kick their asses.” There is a lot of talk about North American government planning to take over the town and the nation and a lot of jingoistic talk about “the Fatherland.”
Near the end of the film Vilsamil and another representative from the watery town journey to Maracaibo. She says, “Going to Maracaibo is as important as Obama going to Cuba.” We see the duo being served breakfast in what appears to be the palace in Caracas and Vilsamil says, “Confo is running out of time. The town is already lost. It’s just mud and snakes left.”
The final scenes of the film show a deserted, watery, abandoned wreck of a town
“Til Kingdom Come” has played both the 56th Chicago International Film Festival and the 43rd Denver Film Festival, spelling out the close relationship between evangelical Christians and the Jewish community in Israel. The 77-minute film is directed by Director Maya Zinshtein.
It’s difficult to understand how this symbiotic partnership has flourished, given the prophecies in evangelical texts that have 2/3 of Jews being killed and 1/3 ultimately converting to the evangelical view of things, in the final analysis. The film’s write-up says, “They donate sacrificially to Israel’s foremost philanthropic organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, because they fervently believe the Jews are crucial to Jesus’s return.”
There are also the disturbing positions of evangelicals on same sex marriage, gays, legalized abortion, and many other issues, including the Arab Palestinians’ right to live peacefully on the West Bank. (This is the issue that Vanessa Redgrave championed, to her detriment, many years ago when she was receiving a 1977 Best Supporting Oscar for her film work in the Holocaust drama “Julia.”)
At the outset of the film, we hear rural Kentucky Pastor Boyd Bingham IV say, “We are the people who brought DJT to power and he pushes our agenda.” It should be mentioned that VP Mike Pence is a noted evangelical, as is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
According to the film, there are 650 to 800 million evangelicals around the world. They have single-handedly become some of the biggest donors to Israel, raising $4 and $5 million at a crack, even while, on the film, an official from Louisville, Kentucky, proudly proclaims that the state is now down to only one facility where a legal abortion can be obtained. (Shades of the sixties!)
There is film of the youngest Bingham preacher at the Binghamtown Baptist Church on a 1982 pilgrimage to Israel and his great joy at the moving of the Israeli consulate to Jerusalem. (It is Israeli Premier Bebe Netanyahu’s goal to annex the West Bank.)
Two million Arabs live under Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem now. When the embassy was moved, 58 PalestiniIsrans were killed and 2,771 were injured, all in protest of the move.
It was an interesting documentary, which is more than I can say for “I Am Greta.”
Now playing the 43rd Denver Film Festival, “Meat the Future” is a Liz Marshall documentary that explains the brainchild of cardiac surgeon Uma Valeti, who has formed Memphis Meats to bring meat grown in laboratories to market.
Dr. Valeti actually was a trained cardiac surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, but he had been haunted for years by the idea that, in order to eat meat, animals must be grown to adulthood and then slaughtered. Not only did the idea that “in the midst of life, we are in death” affect him as a child, he also became aware of the growing demand for meat that cannot be met by standard methods.
In the course of this film, we meet Ira Van Eelen, whose father in Amsterdam may have been the Godfather of Clean Meat, starting experiments with growing meat in a lab as far back as 2010. Dr. Valeti took the idea and has made it a reality—if an expensive reality—making it possible to cultivate meat that tastes like meat, from the cells of chickens and ducks and beef cattle, in a cultured lab setting over the course of 4 weeks, whereas it takes from 14 to 24 months to raise an animal from birth to slaughter.
SLAUGHTER
In order to feed humans, pigs and cows and other living mammals are slaughtered. It’s a reality that has driven many to become vegetarians. Even Dr. Valeti admits having tried vegetarianism for a while. The success of things like tofu burgers, however, has not been nearly as close to “the real thing” as the cultured meats that Valeti’s Memphis Meats has been able to produce.
Early news articles (April, 2016) showed a pound of what appeared to be ground beef with the label $18,000 – 1 lb. of ground beef from Memphis Meats. The three original investors put $3.1 million together but, since their successes, investors like Bill Gates and Richard Branson, along with David McLennan, the CEO of Cargill, have come onboard to underwrite the group’s efforts. Draper Fisher Jurveston, an investment firm for those looking to underwrite promising technologies, reports that the group now has “more money coming at them than they want to take” and mentioned a figure of $4 billion.
What are the “good” and the “bad” things about “clean meat”? (“clean meat,” as a term,has tested more positively than “cultured meat” in P.R. studies).
THE GOOD:
Animals are a big part of the carbon footprint problem and, with this technology, the need to raise so many animals on feed lots, is bypassed, thereby decreasing the carbon footprint of the industries that are now producing our meat. The film mentions a timeline of 20 to 30 years by which time animals would not need to be raised for meat. This is, as the film put it, ‘a huge paradigm shift.”
Supply – The documentary posits the belief that, despite all the efforts that currently exist to feed the world’s people, we need to step up production. Comparing 4 weeks of preparation time (clean meat) to 14 to 24 months (real meat) is educational.
No more slaughtering living creatures for our beef, pork, poultry or fish.
THE BAD:
As you can imagine, meat producers are not at all sure that this idea is a “good” thing for them, their industry, or the public They maintain that the government must learn how to regulate cell-based meats. Both Sonny Perdue (Secretary of Agriculture) and Dr. Scott Gottlieb of “Face the Nation” appearances talk about “clean meat.”
The Good Food Institute says we need the equivalent of a Manhattan Project to move the initiative forward. Why do I get the feeling that, just like the electric car, the “old way” meat people will kill the idea of cultured cells becoming edible meat, just as the fossil fuel industry killed the electric car?
Expense – currently, it is prohibitively expensive to create “clean meat” with figures of $1700 per pound mentioned. The use of markets and technology to solve problems cannot be supported enthusiastically enough, but I do wonder if this Bold Brave Idea might end up like the hydrogen car. (Remember that one?)
The intriguing film “A Perfect Enemy” starring Tomasz Kot (Cold War), was directed by 45-year-old Spanish-born director Kike Maillo. Maillo helmed the 2012 film “Eva,” when 37, and it won him the Best New Director award from the Cinema Writers Circle Award in Spain and an award for Best SpecialEffects (2012). This time out, the basis for the complicated story is a novel by Amelie Nothomb, “Cosmetique de l’ennemi,” but the script was written by Maillo, aided by screenwriters Cristina Clemente and Fernando Navarro.
Architect Jeremiasz August has just concluded a lecture about architecture (“Perfection is when there is nothing left to take away.”) and is in a cab on his way to the airport.
Furthermore, it is an airport that Jeremiasz actually designed, with a beautiful model of his work in the center of a spacious waiting area.
Amidst a deluge outside the lecture hall, a young blonde traveler asks if she can share a cab with the architect. Tessel Textor (Athena Straites)—a petite blonde—does clamber inside the cab in the downpour and begins a pretty much non-stop barrage of information about herself. The Good Samaritan act of allowing her to share the cab causes both the architect and the young blonde to miss their flights, so their conversation continues—more or less—-in the VIP lounge of the airport.
August appears to be growing very tired of the non-stop chatter. There is some symbolism overtly explained. When Tessel first enters the cab,she explains that her name can mean “weaver of words,” although she is not a writer. (August tells her it’s not too late to start.)
There is a third character—a beautiful woman named Isabelle, who was married to August but disappeared twenty years earlier. We see Isabelle (Marta Nieto) primarily strolling about a charming cemetery and, later, in her apartment. Her relationship with August is confirmed further along in the film by photos of the couple that adorn her apartment.
Things begin to become very surreal and fantastical at the airport. There are clear signs that Tessel is “not right in the head” (if she is even there) and her annoying monologue is beginning to irritate the reserved architect. There are several trips to view a model of the airport. Each time, airport model has small changes occurring involving splotches of blood, etc. (Take note). The exchanges in the rest room(s) are even more central to the plot and even weirder.
Ultimately, August is on his flight. We anticipate that violence will occur at any moment, especially since Tessel followed August into the men’s lavatory and spends a fair amount of time playing with a knife throughout the film.
Now, August is on his flight. Tessel says to August, “Lower your voice.”
“Why?” asks August.
“Because you’re still on the plane,” responds Tessel. That was not where we thought August was when he raised his voice, so settings are shifting and mysterious things are occurring; the endless stories that Tessel tells are beginning to form a mosaic of sorts, coming together to form one tapestry.
The best comparison, for the viewer, to capture what may be going on in this film is to mention “Fight Club” and how it dealt with reality.
I enjoyed the film. First of all, it was well acted, (although Tessel would have been more convincing if she hadn’t been wearing 10 pounds of colored eye make-up in every scene plus what looked like camouflage pajamas).
Aside from that faux pas on the costuming, the principals carry out the somewhat confusing exchanges of dialogue proficiently, the music is good (Alex Baranowski), the sets are great, the cinematography is above average (Rita Noriega) and the ultimate resolution of the plot is clear.
Another plus: the actors are all speaking English. I finally gave up on the subtitles of an Iranian film that was supposed to feature a burning theater. Did not make it through to the end of that one. Gave it my best shot; that’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Enjoyed this one all the way through to its thought-provoking conclusion.
Stanley Kubrick was a legendary perfectionist whose demands for more and more takes for a scene in one of his movies would nearly drive the actors to drink. This documentary, showing at the 56th Chicago International Film Festival, discusses that facet of Kubrick’s work and personality.
Sterling Hayden, interviewed in the documentary “Kubrick by Kubrick,” admitted that he had lost it the day they were shooting “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” There had already been 38 takes. Hayden notes that Kubrick’s response to his apologies for repeatedly messing up his lines was, “The terror that is in your eyes may just give us the quality we want.”
The foremost authority on Kubrick’s life and works, Michael Cement, guides the viewer of this documentary on Kubrick’s works, aided by the taped interviews of the Master, himself. As Roger Ebert says, in one filmed segment, “He worked entirely on his own schedule. It was kind of inspiring.”
was referencing the fact that Kubrick shot almost all of his films within 25 miles of his country estate in England and had a complete studio with the necessary sound systems and cameras, so that he could turn out such films as:
With just 13 films in 43 years Stanley Kubrick cemented his reputation as one of the greatest directors of all time. Whether it was the 7 months spent shooting “A Clockwork Orange” or the 5 years he spent directing Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Kubrick’s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” Kubrick was a perfectionist, “quintessentially a perfectionist,” according to his set designer Ken Adams.
The stories involving 105 and more takes on a single scene abound, and yet, as Malcolm McDowell (“A Clockwork Orange”) said, “If he trusts you, you’re all right. If not, watch out.”
With clips from nearly all of Kubrick’s feature length films and his own recorded remarks, this documentary directed by Gregory Munro with music by Vincent Theard is totally enjoyable for the Kubrick fan.
It ends with Tom Cruise reminiscing how he was called in the middle of the night with the news that Kubrick—who was then directing “Eyes Wide Shut” with Cruise and Kidman—had died in his sleep at age 70. Cruise pronounces the news unbelievable. Even today, it is.
Kubrick seemed a fierce force to be reckoned with forever.
Greek director Christos Nikou has crafted a film about a pandemic that causes amnesia and a bureau, the Disturbed Memory Department for Amnesiacs, that works to re-educate those so affected.
It opens with the main character, Aris (Aris Servetalis) knocking his head against a wall and, shortly thereafter, he is on a bus but has no idea where he is going.
Many others are affected. Apples enter the plot as being good for the memory, according to a local grocer, while Aris hungrily wolfs them down onscreen.
During the course of the re-education of Aris, the Bureau sets him up with housing, walking around money, and a set of instructions as to what he is supposed to do. The Learning How to Live New Identity Program will have us watching Aris bicycle, solicit a lap dance, attend a costume party, go to a movie, take Polaroids of all new experiences and do the Twist, a dance made popular in the U.S. in 1960 by Chubby Checker. [Why would a song that is 70 years old be playing at the disco? No idea. Maybe that is considered “cutting edge” in this film’s country of origin.]
I’m a big fan of plots that have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This plot has a beginning and a long middle. It has no end.
It won a Slovene Film Festival award for Best Sound and has nominations in several other Feature Film competitions, including both the 56th Chicago International Film Festival and the 43rd Denver International Film Festival.
One of the things I found most off-putting about the film is the fact that Alzheimers Disease is basically rampant in this country now. It’s truly not a “funny” thing to lose all sense of identity and not know where you are going or who you are.
I did not like this film for that and other reasons that have nothing to do with the argument that it posits amnesia as a cure and not a disease.
Losing your mind is not funny and too many people I have personally known, including my father, have experienced it, so no recommendation from me for this one.
Rachel Brosnahan, familiar to television audiences as Mrs. Maisel, has a different role as Jean in the feature length film, “I’m Your Woman,” an Amazon original movie now showing at the .56th Chicago International Film Festival and a nominee for the Golden Hugo award.
The film unfolds a bit like peeling back the layers of an onion. Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) is married to Eddie, who is a professional thief. It’s the seventies and they live in a very seventy-ish house, with Jean basically a bird in a gilded cage—a bird who can’t cook. Although she knows that Eddie (Bill Heck) is a thief—she knows almost nothing about his associates or the true nature of his job or, apparently, anything about the true nature of the man himself.
Much of the film concerns Jean’s “coming of age” as a woman. She is suddenly gifted with a small child, courtesy of Eddie, whom she names Harry. Later, we hear a story about how “Harry” (played by Jameson and Justin Charles) came to Eddie and Jean’s house in the first place, but we never know if it is the truth or another example of the things we’ll never know for sure.
Enter Cal (Arinze Kene), an associate of Eddie’s who appears at Jean’s house in the dead of night and insists she and Harry must flee. Cal is Black and, later, we meet Terri (Marsha Stephanie Blake), who is his wife and the mother of his son Paul.
From there, things get interesting.
One of the strongest things about the Julia Hart directed film, (which Julie Hart and Jordan Horowitz wrote), is the fact that you don’t feel as though you’ve seen this film a million times before. It’s an original way to tell the story. It unfolds slowly at times, more quickly at others, with exciting chase scenes involving 70s autos and more and more revelations that will keep the viewer enthralled.
In addition to the theme of Rachael Brosnahan’s growth into full womanhood, there is plenty of action, mystery and suspense. Good performances, an interesting tale, and lessons to be learned all contribute to the appeal of “I’m Your Woman.”
Chelsea Christer’s documentary about Oakland’s “The Matches” rock band tries to answer the question, “What was ‘The Matches’ downfall?” In doing so, it may just open up a second chance for “Matches” stardom. The 91-minute documentary is currently playing the Denver Film Festival and doing well at other film festivals, nationwide.
Tattoos with the message “May your organs fail before your dreams fail you” abound amongst the die-hard fans of “The Matches.” This American pop punk band was formed in 1997 in Oakland, California.
The band is composed of vocalist and rhythm guitarist Shawn Harris, lead guitarist and backup vocalist Jonathan Devoto, bassist Justin San Souci, and drummer Matt Whalen. The Matches have released three studio albums and are currently unsigned after their contract with Epitaph Records expired.
On July 9, 2009, the Matches announced that they were taking a “hiatus“, saying that, “our time to start new projects has come”. On June 17, 2010 Shawn confirmed that he had left the band.
The Matches announced a one-time reunion show with the original lineup in May 2014. The show sold out, as did an additional eight shows and a following tour in Australia.] The band announced additional reunion dates and new songs in 2015. They performed additional reunion shows in 2018.
Now, the documentary “Bleeding Audio” is putting “The Matches” of today out there with the logical question, “What is next? Is the band back together for good?”
I hope to cover that question and others in a “live” interview with Director Chelsea Christer TBA for my Weekly Wilson podcast, but, from the sound and look(s) of the band, it was not a lack of talent that derailed their success.
The band worked hard for 10 years, performing roughly 300 dates a year and touring continuously. They took their jobs seriously. Like other artists struggling to break through, they soon learned that “We had to learn how to be promoters now.” That led to the realization that there was so much more work to do, as, before, they were trying to win over a small community, but now they were trying to win over the world. They were fortunate that the members were creative and one member of the group has mad artistic illustrator skills.
As the documentary digs into the reasons for the band’s “hiatus” in 2009, several disconcerting facts emerge.
The band’s manager did not register all of the band’s songs with BMI. Only 4 albums were registered with BMI (the manager’s job). The reason the band members had no money much of the time was directly attributable to this lack of attention to duty. [Think of Trump’s actions on stopping Covid-19: Trump fiddled while the nation burned, and I was just diagnosed with Covid-19 on Sunday.)
In this case, band manager Miles Hurwitz had become a Big Brother figure who interfered in the creative process overmuch, but did not attend to his duty to register the creative output of the band with the appropriate agencies so they could be paid. Band members had only a $10 per diem walking around allowance. They were approaching 40 years of age “and we’re still crashing on people’s floors.” [I had such a band crashing on my apartment floor in Chicago during Lollapalooza one year, so I can relate.]
It was this lack of progress that caused Justin to burn out and quit the band. Dylan replaced Justin. Justin said, “It’s really scary to admit that this dream or passion you’ve had for ten years isn’t what I want.”
As one of the band members put it, “We were so naïve.” In fact, drummer Matt Whalen, when the band breaks up, begins to study intellectual property law because of the many ways in which the band now feels they were taken advantage of by the industry and by those with whom they worked. “We were naïve.”
One of the artists in the group, Justin, turns to his art talent to support him and, upon getting a gig illustrating a book, said, “My first paycheck was more than I made in 3 years with the band.”
This is a “feel good” documentary and the band seems to have real potential, despite some health issues for their virtuoso guitarist. Long may The Matches burn!
The Opening Night Film of the 56th Chicago International Film Festival on Wednesday, October 14th, was the World Premiere of the documentary “Belushi.” It not only showed at a drive-in on Throop Street in Pilsen, but was streamed to those of us at home.
John Belushi—one of the 7 original members of the “Saturday Night Live” troupe in 1975 and a Wheaton, Illinois native—lived fast and died young. During life, he knew no limits. Born on January 24, 1949, Belushi died March 5, 1982, at the too young age of 33.
One amazing thing about this documentary was how many dead voices who knew Belushi well speak to us about his lack of caution and restraint. He died from a combination of cocaine and heroin (a “speedball”) injected by a woman named Cathy Smith. Smith, who was extradited from Canada, admitted to administering the speedball to Belushi at the Chateau Marmont. She served 15 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
During the documentary, we hear the voices of such now-deceased close friends as Carrie Fisher (herself a drug addict), Penny Marshall, and Harold Ramis. Their testimony is thanks to oral history interviews recorded by Tanner Colby. Richard Zanuck, who produced “Neighbors,” Belushi’s last film, and the others repeat that, “John didn’t have a limit on anything.”
A parade of still-living celebrities and close friends also talk about Belushi, including Candice Bergen, Dan Ackroyd, Jane Curtin and Michael Apted, the director of “Continental Divide,” one of Belushi’s post-SNL films.
Ultimately, we are left wondering why someone who could make so many people happy could not make himself happy. He had a loving wife and close friends, but Belushi himself wrote, “I may be on a natural course of self destruction that no one can control. I’m too far gone.”
A close-up, complete look at a comic star in this R.J. Cutler film for Showtime. The oral interviews plus pages from Belushi’s own journals make this one the definitive word on John Belushi’s life and death. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame posthumously in 2004 and was voted “the greatest Saturday Night Live star of all time” in 2015 by “Rolling Stone” magazine.
The documentary “Unfit,” (now available for rental on Amazon Prime) is the perfect companion piece for Mary Trump’s book “Too Much and Never Enough.” Both informative works feature trained professional psychiatrists or psychologists speculating on the line that the documentary mentions early on, articulated by George Conway (husband of Kellyanne Conway), “What is wrong with him?”
Of course, right now, what is wrong with him is that his stubborn denial of the science and refusal to wear a mask routinely in public has landed our chief executive in Walter Reed Hospital with Covid-19. This just three days after making fun of former Vice President Biden for wearing a mask in public.
But Dan Partland’s documentary, inspired by an article in “Rolling Stone” wants to know what causes Donald Trump to “go off the rails.” We all saw this behavior in real time during the September 29th presidential debate—which wasn’t very presidential at all and certainly put the “off the rails” behavior on full display for the nation and the world.
After a discussion of the Goldwater Rule, which came after the 1964 election when Barry Goldwater’s reputation for wanting to use nuclear weapons caused some mental health professionals to use terms that were libelous and slanderous. Goldwater sued and won. The slogans like “In your heart you know he’s right—-far right” were discredited and an unwritten rule arose that the professional psychiatrists and psychologists should refrain from diagnosing those who were not in their care. However, as the film attests, “We never intended it to be a gag rule.” Yet it did become a gag rule.
However, the truly unique nature of this year’s issues caused the formation of a group of professional psychiatrist and psychologists who formed a group called “Duty to warn.” Like the Lincoln Project, this group of mental health professionals set out to warn about the clear signs of a malignant personality disorder in Donald J. Trump.
What are the signs of a malignant personality disorder?
They are: 1) Narcissism
2) Paranoia
3) Anti-social personality disorder
4) Sadism
Narcissism:
The narcissism is pretty clear. Trump constantly tells us he is “a very stable genius” and nobody can do whatever it is like he can.
Paranoia:
Donald J. Trump’s devotion to conspiracy theories formulated by groups like QAnon and his constant whining about how unfairly he is treated contributes to his sense of paranoia. Even today, there has been some talk that Trump was quite concerned about his recent diagnosis of Covid-19 and that that is why he was helicoptered to the hospital.
Anti-social personality disorder
Trump does not seem like “a people person.” He has been far more astute at mocking and making fun of his enemies than in demonstrating any compassion or empathy for those who are suffering. This tendency helps explain why he doesn’t seem to radiate the emotional depth of someone who really cares. His lack of remorse and refusal to accept responsibility for missteps or misstatements is correlated with this disorder. Trump seems to have few friends and he has racked up three wives in his 72 years. One analyst used a line from Macbeth: “Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love. Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”
Sadism:
Tony Schwartz, who really wrote “The Art of the Deal,” described Trump as a sociopath and said, “He doesn’t feel anything.” This is in keeping with his actions when his older brother, Fred, lay dying and Donald went off to the movies instead of spending time with his dying brother. DJT seems to take a perverse glee in taking petty revenge against those he thinks have wronged him.
Director Dan Partland has assembled a stellar cast of mental health professionals, including John Gartner, PhD, the founder of Duty to Warn; Lance Dodes, M.D., a Harvard graduate from Boston; Justin Frank, a Harvard grad in charge at George Washington University; and some better-known faces like Anthony Scaramucci, who noted that DJT is “a reflection of the cultural zeitgeist.” Bill Kristol, a Harvard PhD who served as Chief-of-Staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle, Richard Painter, who worked under Bush, and Malcolm Nance (author of “Defeating Isis”) are also featured, commenting on the president’s bullish, obnoxious, arrogant, narcissistic behavior, visible to the world at large.
Dan Partland, who is the Writer/Director/Producer of “Unfit,” has been a much-decorated documentary filmmaker for over twenty years. In the 15 years that the Emmys have recognized primetime nonfiction series, Partland’s shows have been nominated for best in class 5 times, and in 3 different sub-genres; Reality, Nonfiction format, and Documentary. Partland has twice won nonfiction series Emmys and in 2011 and 2012 was nominated by the Producers Guild of America for Nonfiction Producer of the Year. In 2001, Partland won an Emmy (Best Non-Fiction Program) for his work on the ground-breaking 13-part doc series American High on Fox. Partland served as the Supervising Producer and a Director of the critically acclaimed show that is widely regarded as one of the progenitors of the current doc series genre.
Partland’s work has spanned several nonfiction genres. He produced and directed How To Raise An Olympian, a winter Olympics special for NBC and was Showrunner for the multi-award-winning CNN archival series The Sixties. Partland was the Executive Producer and Showrunner of A&E’s Intervention for over 150 episodes, garnering countless awards and accolades including the Emmy for best reality series.
Partland will be joining me to discuss “Unfit” on Thursday, October 15th on my Weekly Wilson podcast (7 to 8 p.m.) on the Bold Brave Media Global Network. It’s a live format, so call in at 866-451-1451.
Chelsea Christer’s documentary about Oakland’s “The Matches” rock band tries to answer the question, “What was ‘The Matches’ downfall?” In doing so, it may just open up a second chance for “Matches” stardom. The 91-minute documentary is currently playing the Denver Film Festival and doing well at other film festivals, nationwide.