Tag: Sundance 2020

My Quarantine Binge-watch: Hillary

Hannah Gersen2 Comments

hillaryHillary (2020) ★★★1/2
Director: Nanette Burstein
Streaming on Hulu

Ever since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with her, reading interviews and post-mortems, as well as Clinton’s own memoir about the 2016 campaign, What Happened? I also read Amy Chozick’s memoir, Chasing Hillary, about covering both of Clinton’s presidential runs for the New York Times. When I heard that Nanette Burstein had made a 4-hour documentary about Clinton’s life, I didn’t think I’d be interested in revisiting material that I already knew so well. At the beginning of the quarantine, I gave the first episode a try, but it didn’t grab me, especially when I saw how reliant it was on first-person interviews with Clinton, as well as Amy Chozick. I felt like I’d already heard from both of them and I wanted a new perspective.

But then quarantine started to wear on me. I kept thinking about what this period would be like if Clinton were president. . . Continue reading “My Quarantine Binge-watch: Hillary” →

Review: Taylor Swift: Miss Americana

Hannah Gersen2 Comments

miss_americana-1280x720
Miss Americana (2020) ★★★
Directed by Lana Wilson

For a few years, my friends teased me because one evening in 2009, after I’d been writing for a few days and hadn’t paid much attention to the news, I asked if anyone could fill me in on whatever it was that had happened between Kanye West and Taylor Swift earlier in the week. Um, yeah. They could fill me in. Pretty much anyone I talked to at the bar could have filled me in at that point. I’d thought I was bringing up a piece of light gossip, but my friends quickly informed me that this was a world historical Internet Event, one so engulfing that even President Obama had weighed in.

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Female Filmmakers at Sundance 2020

Hannah Gersen3 Comments

sundance

In writing this blog, I’ve learned that the best way to find new female-directed films is by checking out film festival programs, especially Sundance, where a lot of movies get picked up for distribution. (Though I must admit it’s been disappointing to see the number of films that never get picked up.) For my 2018 and 2019 lists of female-directed films, I incorporated Sundance selections into my list of January releases, deleting them as they found distribution later in the year. This year, I’m going to keep the Sundance releases separate, in part because so many of the selections on the 2020 program are directed or written by women.

Continue reading “Female Filmmakers at Sundance 2020” →