Born to agnostic Jewish parents, Simone Weil was a French philosopher, a social and political activist, pacifist, prolific writer and Christian mystic. Today, she is barely remembered. Now, a new documentary has brought Weil back to the attention of American audiences. In “An Encounter with Simone Weil,” New York filmmaker Julia Haslett is moved to…
Watching the documentary “The Island President” is like watching a political thriller — only its story is not fictional and the cast is not made up of movie stars. Most important, the stakes are very real. In fact, they are so high that the existence of an entire country hangs in the balance. The underdog…
Oscar winner Michael Moore has signed on to help an Israeli filmmaker produce his next documentary — a project that will focus, in part, on the small minority of Germans who defied the Nazis during World War II. Moore, who received an Academy Award for the 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” has agreed to match…
On January 12, HBO will broadcast “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.” For filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, this marks the end of an 18-year, three-movie odyssey that resulted in the freeing from prison of three apparently innocent young men. In June 1993, high school students Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley — known as…
“Testimony” is the rare movie that contains all the building blocks of an aesthetically powerful political statement, only to fall short in its execution. Put plainly, “Testimony” — which recently screened at the Haifa International Film Festival and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival — amounts to a good deal less than the sum…
Film still courtesy of Flatbush Pictures It’s not easy convincing a legendary magic shop to let you to make a documentary film at its annual camp for aspiring young magicians. But Judd Ehrlich, director and producer of “Run for Your Life,” the acclaimed biopic about Fred Lebow and the New York City Marathon, knew what…
Image courtesy of PBS Woody Allen has always been something of an enigma, slipping effortlessly and Zelig-like from one persona to the next. He started as a gag and television writer (most famously for Sid Caesar), became an extremely successful stand-up comic, wrote humorous essays for The New Yorker (many of which were collected into…
Film still courtesy of Menemsha Films The alternately heartwarming and heart wrenching documentary “The Rescuers,” about heroic non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust, focuses on the role diplomats did — and can — play in saving victims of genocide. The film, screening October 27 at the Museum of Tolerance in New York and October…
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