SECRET MALL APARTMENT taps into a lot of today’s hot button issues like gentrification, privatization of once public spaces, corporate control, white privilege, public art, and just sticking it to the man. It’s also a larger than life tale that is very funny in turns. Back in the early 2000s, a group of artists found […]
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One of the continuing features of the Milwaukee Film Festival is an emphasis on music documentaries, courtesy of its Sound Vision program. And music documentaries are unlikely just to be a dry recitation of facts, but get into the cultural and geographic aspects of where the music comes from. And that’s one of the principal
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One of the big primetime screenings of the 2024 Dialogues Documentary Film Festival was WE CAN BE HEROES. And it was very easy to see why, as it was a big crowd pleaser. It’s clearly in the lineage of documentaries that were inspired by SPELLBOUND, teens and children involved in a niche activity that brings
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THE STRIKE was one of the more polished documentaries of the 2024 Dialogues Documentary Festival and one of the most effective. A little over a decade ago, the California prison system would just lock you up in solitary if they thought you were part of a gang in any way and essentially throw away the
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Day two of the 2024 Dialogues Documentary Film Festival brought me to WAR GAME which came the closest to playing like a straight fictional narrative, albeit with a largely improvised script. WAR GAME is a ripped from the headlines film. After January 6, it was advised by a bipartisan panel that a repeat of those
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I don’t particularly like cradle to the grave films. They inevitably end up as a highlight reel and never dig too deeply into the interesting stuff as they have to keep moving on. While Joan Baez isn’t in the grave yet, JOAN BAEZ: I AM A NOISE uses the end of her performing career as
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