A FACE OF WAR

(1968) Director: Eugene S. Jones

Not Available on DVD. Post a comment for info on how to see the film.

SUMMARY:

“The sights and sounds you are about to witness were filmed and recorded in Vietnam. The events and circumstances were experienced by a single American infantry unit over a period of 97 days.”
-Opening text in A FACE OF WAR

No other film, whether drama or documentary, carries the viewer closer to the reality and savagery of the Vietnam War. Here is what the American soldier saw, heard, and felt on the front lines. We see him planning, patrolling, attacking, interogating, waiting. We see his humor, his anguish, his fear, and his courage. He is part of this remarkable cinematic experience, recorded shoulder to shoulder with the fighting man. Here is the true Vietnam in all of its vividness and brutality-the memory our men brought home.
-International Historic Films

FILMED UNDER FIRE IN VIETNAM!
-Movie poster

VIDEO:

A scene from A FACE OF WAR:



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• Time magazine review.
• Roger Ebert compares and contrasts A FACE OF WAR and The Anderson Platoon.
• Excerpt from ‘From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam War in American Film’.

NOTES:

• Sited by Francis Ford Coppola as a major influence for his film Apocalypse Now.
• Essentially picks up where Frederick Wiseman’s ‘Basic Training’ leaves off.
• 1969 Cannes Film Festival as Best Feature Length Documentary.
• In 1975 director Eugene S. Jones was nominated for an Academy Award for ‘The Wild and the Brave’.
• "one of the most authentic, intimate and remarkable war records ever put on film." - New York Times

TITICUT FOLLIES

(1967) Director: Frederick Wiseman

Available on DVD

SUMMARY:

The film is a stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. TITICUT FOLLIES documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers and psychiatrists.

VIDEO:

A scene from TITICUT FOLLIES:



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• The Follies of Documentary Filmmaking - Vice Magazine
• Reason Magazine interview with director Frederick Wiseman
• Bio of director Fredrick Wiseman from Museum of Broadcast Communications

NOTES:

• Created in 1966 the film was banned until 1991.
• "...cinema verité is just a pompous French term that has absolutely no meaning as far as I'm concerned." -Frederick Wiseman
• Frederick Wiseman has made 36 films in 38 years, many of them considered by documentary historians to be masterpieces of the form. His films have become longer and longer as his career progressed, with many of his films being more than 3 – some more than 4 – hours long. In spite of their length, all of his films are shown on PBS, which is one of his primary funders.

DERBY

(1971) Director: Robert Kaylor

Not Available on DVD. Post a comment for info on how to see the film.

SUMMARY:

"The kid's name is Mike Snell and he builds tires for a living in Dayton, Ohio. He is 23 years old and pays $85 a month rent on a house he occupies with his wife Christina, two children and his younger brother, Butch. Butch lives in a basement room which he has decorated himself: There are posters on the walls and the floor is wall-to-wall mattress. Here Butch hangs out reading Playboy sideways, scratching his potbelly, and waiting to be drafted. The Army does not appeal to Butch: "I'm a lover, not a killer."
Mike has an ambition in life, and that is to be a professional Roller Derby star. The starting pay is $12,000 a year, which is what be makes building tires, but the glamour and the glory of the Roller Derby is worth an uncountable amount. Mike thinks he would be good: "In a couple years I could be making the big money. Charlie O'Connell makes 50 grand a year."

VIDEO:

A scene from DERBY:



REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• Roger Ebert review
• New York Times review
• Time magazine review

NOTES:

• Director Robert Kaylor went on to direct 'Carny' which was written by and starred the lead guitarist/songwriter for The Band, Robbie Robertson.
• Judith Crist (New York magazine) has called the film "the first total triumph of the vérité that cinema aspires to"

SEVENTEEN

(1983) Directors: Joel DeMott, Jeff Kreines

Not Available on DVD. Post a comment for info on how to see the film.

SUMMARY:

"...a small group of white and black teen-agers, the children of working-class parents, and their lives in school, at home, boozing, smoking pot, getting fatally smashed up in auto accidents and, at one point, preparing for a neighborhood race war. At the center of the film is Lynn, the pretty, tough-talking high school student whose pleasure principle is measured by the men in her life..."

VIDEO: SCENE

REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• New York Times review
• Seventeen reasons why seventeen might be the greatest movie about teenagers ever made
• San Francisco Bay Guardian review

NOTES:

• "...without a doubt one of the greatest movies, perhaps the greatest, about teenage life (not to mention American life) ever made" San Fransisco Film Society
• Co-directed by Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines whose previous film was 'Demon Lover Diary'.
• Both DeMott and Kreines studied under Richard Leacock at MIT. Perhaps the best-known of the filmmakers to come out of the MIT program was Ross McElwee, who directed 'Sherman’s March'.

HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS

(1981) Director: James Szalapski

Available on DVD

SUMMARY:

"Shot in 1975, the amazing documentary Heartworn Highways is a very personal look (and listen) at some of the rebels of country music. At the time a new term was being coined, Outlaw Country (an original working title for the piece), and just before some of it's stars and most memorable characters became recognizable, they were featured on James Szalapski's amazing film. Heartworn Highways was virtually without celebrity. Its biggest names such as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Steve Earl were young and relatively unknown. Szalapski opted to keep big names far away from it and instead chose to make an "organic" documentary with Van Zandt and Clark being his "stars" or main characters."

VIDEO:

Scene from HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS.

REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, CREDITS:

• San Fransisco Chronicle review
• Mix Magazine review
  
• IndieWorkshop review
  

NOTES:

• Much of the footage of Townes Van Zandt featured in the film was used in the 2004 film 'Be Here to Love Me'
• Produced in the same year (1975) as Robert Altman's 'Nashville'.
• The single frame sequence at one hour and six minutes in, created by Ted Churchill, has since been replicated in various music videos, commercials, and films.