“The Charismatic Leader Leads People, But What Toward?”: Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey on Their HBO Docuseries The Synanon Fix

Currently unspooling across four episodes on HBO and continuing to stream on Max is The Synanon Fix, the latest true-crime catnip from the cable channel that’s not a juggernaut of the genre. And while the Sundance-debuting docuseries does involve the usual “suspects” (a cult, a cache of weapons, attempted murder via a venomous snake), it’s also the latest HBO Original from director Rory Kennedy and writer Mark Bailey (Ethel, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing). Which means it’s less interested in lurid details and more focused on actual individuals with an optimistic vision who are drawn into — and failed by — a larger system. In this case the system was Synanon, an organization that was a drug rehab program, a New Age-y community and finally violent cult, founded by Charles “Chuck” Dederich, a former adman and Alcoholics Anonymous acolyte who in the ’60s welcomed “dopefiends” into his Santa Monica storefront. He then proceeded to experiment mentally and emotionally on these fragile recovering addicts with a scarily confrontational talk therapy he branded “The Game.” (Un)fortunately, it often worked, at least for awhile, and long enough to attract fawning media attention, celebrity visits and non-addicted “lifestylers” who just wanted to be part of this ever-expanding, model communal community. And then things got, well, really weird. Soon after the April 2nd premiere of episode one (“Here Come the Dope Fiends”), Filmmaker reached out over email to the veteran director along with her co-EP and writer (and husband), to learn all about The Synanon Fix and the risk of looking to quick fix a long-broken society.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Step from Being a Human to Becoming a Monster is Much Shorter than We Think”: Oksana Karpovych on Her ND/NF Doc, Intercepted

While the on-the-ground horrors of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been viewed around the world, often in real time — and even formed the basis of this year’s Best Doc Feature Oscar winner, Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol — Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych has chosen to take a much different and rather innovative approach to documenting the war. Intercepted premiered this year at the Berlin International Film Festival before traveling to CPH:DOX and now, tomorrow night, New Directors/New Films, and while it contains no shortage of cinematically-framed images of both devastation and defiant rebuilding, it predominantly captures our attention through an archive of voices — specifically those of Russian soldiers phoning home from the frontlines. The riveting conversations, all intercepted by the Ukrainian Secret Service back in 2022, veer from maddeningly heartless, to downright confused, to painfully clear-eyed and back again, culminating in a sort of audio X-ray of the imperialist psyche itself. Just after the film’s screening in the Urgent Matters section of this year’s CPH:DOX, Filmmaker caught up with the bi-continental, Kyiv-born director, who also worked as a local producer with international reporters covering the spring 2022 assault on her beloved homeland.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

On Power and Solidarity : Brett Story and Yance Ford at CPH:DOX 2024

Produced in collaboration with Documentary Campus, this year’s five-day CPH:CONFERENCE featured a wide-ranging series of panels and conversations, diving in to everything from indigenous narratives to climate storytelling to the mind of Alex Gibney. Especially notable were the four mornings, FILM:MAKERS in Dialogue, all moderated by Wendy Mitchell (festival producer of Sundance London as well as a journalist for Screen International). In these sessions audiences were invited to listen in as the directors behind two films chose clips from each other’s work to engage with. One such pairing in particular proved both inspired and inspiring. Brett Story (The Hottest August, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes) took the stage with Yance Ford (Oscar-nominated Strong Island) on March 20th to probe one another about both the process and the politics behind their latest Sundance-premiering features, Union and Power, respectively. While the former takes us inside the fight by a scrappy band of activist-workers to unionize Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse back in 2021, the latter essayistic doc is a “sweeping chronicle of the history and evolution of policing in the U.S.”

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

Tip Jar

Support indie film journalism!

“I Operate From a Trans Lens, or Frame, as Though It Is the Only Choice Available”: Jules Rosskam on Desire Lines

For me, watching Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, which won this year’s Sundance Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition, was a cinematic breath of fresh air. The experimental feature combines no holds barred interviews with transmen (of all shapes and colors) who are attracted to men, with a fictional storyline involving a real archive (one that includes shamefully buried history, like the story of author/ activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay). The result is a riveting look back in time, and to the present and possible future, to reveal how, in the words of the director, “gender and sexuality animate each other.” Post-Sundance Filmmaker reached out to Rosskam, who is also a longtime artist and educator, to learn all about reframing queer history through a trans lens. After playing the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival and BFI Flare, Desire Lines will screen at the upcoming Wicked Queer, Cleveland International and Milwaukee film festivals.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Bodiless Entities, Body Politics and Bodily Functions: CPH:DOX Inter:Active 2024

Expertly curated (under the direction of Londoner Mark Atkin, who also serves as Head of Studies of the CPH:LAB), this year’s edition of the Inter:Active exhibition at CPH:DOX (March 13-24) featured the provocative theme “Who Do You Think You Are: The Body Reexamined.” As the title might suggest, the 17 XR works were wide-ranging and eclectic, both in form (VR yes, but also mixed reality and AI chatbots) and substance (perhaps unsurprising coming from a group of creators with myriad intersectional identities). Indeed, quite a number of the works I experienced on the top floor of the invitingly designed (palace turned contemporary arts space turned festival headquarters) Kunsthal Charlottenborg actually spoke to me — a few literally as well as figuratively.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Ways of (nonbinary) thinking: on desire and Desire Lines

“Past and present collide when an Iranian American trans man time-travels through an LGBTQ+ archive on a dizzying and erotic quest to unravel his own sexual desires” reads the synopsis for Jules Rosskam’s Sundance-premiering (and Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition-winning) Desire Lines. It’s a hybrid doc that uses a fictional narrative to unbury inconvenient history. (How many of us know the name of the trailblazing author and activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first trans man to publicly identify as gay? Where’s Lou’s biopic?) And an experimental film that features shockingly frank contemporary interviews with trans men – which opens up a Pandora’s Box of questions and conundrums strictly for, and about, queers. (In other words, straight cis folks are welcome to look but don’t touch. Refreshingly, this conversation, for once, isn’t about you.)

To read the rest of my nonconforming essay visit Global Comment.