New Documentaries Worth Checking Out

It's always great to explore new things, and documentary films are a wonderful way to do so. New films are always releasing and older films are also wonderful candidates to learn from as well. Below is a short list of some films you might want to check out. Trailers for all (and many more great documentaries) are available to view at www.soundviewmediapartners.com.

Eavesdropping on Souls is an award winning documentation of the spectacular art of Haiti and the underlying emotional culture of its people. The winner of the Silver Award at the Spotlight Documentary Film Awards, it has been playing festivals including the Harlem International Film Festival, the Montreal Black Film Festival and the Toronto Black Film Festival. Filmmaker Jacqueline Jean-Baptiste has dedicated herself to presenting some of the art and culture of Haiti with a cast of extraordinary painters, sculptors, photographers and other artisans. The result is a portrait of extraordinary art from a complex culture.The film releases on January 10, 2017 and is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2iwF5mY

“Kiran Over Mongolia is a visually stunning documentary that tells an almost mythic tale. The film’s visuals are unique. The vivid black- and- golden eagles and their capped and booted handlers glow in the brilliant light against a lunar background of bare mountains shaped like frozen waves, plains like a sea of rippling stone. To most urban humans, they inhabit a world as far from any modern time and space as another planet.” – Stephen J. Bodio. The film is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2hSbHWG

Long unavailable, Chronos is finally obtainable again.

Ron Fricke’s 1985 film is the quintessential large format film and is available in an extraordinary digitally restored and re-mastered Special Edition. One of the hallmark titles in the canon of special venue film presentations, CHRONOS imparts a unique vision of our world – the first non-verbal, non-fiction motion picture filmed in time-lapse photography. Presented as a visual symphony in seven movements, CHRONOS embarks on an unprecedented cinematic journey across the worlds of natural beauty and man-made monuments, as it explores the essence of time. The film was originally produced for and released for IMAX Theaters. Copies are again available on Amazon: Bluray (https://amzn.to/2cTOHYW) and DVD (https://amzn.to/2cmix6Q)

Students and fans of cinema history will be delighted with the new release of The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema. The Thanhouser Company was a trail-blazing studio based in New Rochelle, New York. From 1910 to 1917 it released over 1,000 films that were seen by audiences around the globe.

This documentary reconstructs the relatively unknown story of the studio and its founders, technicians, and stars as they entered the nascent motion picture industry to compete with Thomas Edison and the companies aligned with his Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC). The film releases on Jan. 3 on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2in6k30

Sad Vacation is an up close and personal account of the tumultuous and stormy relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen and how it ended in Room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel.

Directed by Danny Garcia (The Rise and Fall of The Clash, Looking for Johnny), this films holds no punches and reveals the facts through personal friends, insiders and witnesses providing a first hand account of Sid and Nancy’s mysterious deaths. The film releases on Jan. 13 and is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2cv1ZKc

The War of 33 is an intimate, personal and powerful telling of the story of the 2006 war in Lebanon.

A series of letters written by Hanady Salman – a mother living through the war in Beirut – carve a narrative arc through the intense and haunting images of conflict. She tells the stories of her family and the people she lives the war with – the refugees, the wounded, and the everyday Lebanese, struggling to maintain their sanity and their humanity during a time of war.

The War of 33 is more than a document of a particular historical experience. What emerges is a universal story – a complex picture of love, pain, resistance and survival in the face of uncertainty and violence.

To explore more documentaries that can teach you about our world, visit Soundview Media Partners.

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