Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Her books have sold tens of millions of copies, and in the 70s and 80s she strode widely across the cultural landscape of everything from talk shows to college tours.  As Nicole Newnham (Oscar-nominated for “Crip Camp”) demonstrates in “The Disappearance of Shere Hite,” Hite’s persona was highly constructed, and nearly cinematic in its vision and specificity.  But Newnham also makes a strong case for Hite as a pioneer in sexual research, one who revolutionized the way  data was gathered and was deeply dedicated to finding the widest range of subjects as possible–racially & ethnically, as well as in terms of gender and sexual identity.  Newnham’s cinematic approach adeptly both mirrors and challenges her complex subject.     Follow: @NicoleNewnham on Instagram and twitter @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

In “Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV” director Amanda Kim tells the story of the visual art pioneer.  Kim traces Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage influence not only Paik’s musical art, but his visual work as well.  She shows how the poor reception by German critics to his early experiments with televisions drove him to NYC, where he found himself working with some of the luminaries of downtown Manhattan’s best of the 1960s:  not only Cage, but Merce Cunningham and Allen Ginsberg among many others..  And she traces his ultimate success both in the art world and beyond, notably on public television.  The Paik who emerges seeks to show how the media that seemed bound to lead to corporate control and division could ultimately bring the world’s inhabitants together.   “Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV” is distributed by Greenwich Entertainment and will open at the Film Forum in New York on March 24th.   Hidden Gem:  Town Bloody Hall   Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

“And the Oscar® goes to…” Variety’s Senior Awards Editor Clayton Davis is back on “Top Docs” to break down this year’s Oscar races for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short and to offer his predictions for who will walk away victorious on March 12th. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the Oscars and his finger-on-the-pulse of the overall Awards season, Clayton takes us through each of the five nominees in both categories and gives you his unique insights into the process. Awards pool, anyone? You don’t want to miss Clayton’s picks!   To be even more in-the-know, be sure to catch our “Top Docs” interviews with all of the Oscar-nominated directors in the documentary feature and shorts categories.   Clayton Davis is Variety’s Senior Awards Editor. He is also one of the hosts of the "Variety Awards Circuit Podcast" and the video web series, "The Take." He's been an awards, film and television analyst and critic for more than 15 years and has co-hosted the Oscars Pre-Show on ABC. Clayton is also co-founder and president of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association and is a board member of the Critics Choice Association.   Follow: Clayton Davis on Instagram @awardscircuit and on twitter @ByClaytonDavis @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

A man, alone, on a desolate beach.  Armed and mumbling into a recording device in a soundscape of wind and waves. As director Evgenia Arbugaeva (co-director, her brother Maxim Arbugaev) tells Mike, the initial images of the Oscar-nominated short “Haulout” deliberately create solitude and quiet before the sudden arrival of nearly 100,000 stressed-out walruses:  with Arctic ice no longer ensured, they must pile themselves tusk-to-tusk on the beach between feeding sessions.  The film tracks the interactions-at-a-distance between the scientist Max Chakilev and these enormous mammals. But on a deeper level, it portrays a world undergoing tremendous change, one for which none of us are fully prepared.   "Haulout" can be seen on The New Yorker website.     Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

It says something about filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt that if you go to his website (jayrosenblattfilms.com) and click on “Contact”, the page guides you to “16mm / 35mm rental information”. Jay is that kind of filmmaker — for over 40 years, he’s been making personal, finely crafted documentaries that, regardless of format, have the look and feel of a bespoke 16mm film. Following the success of last year’s touching short “When We Were Bullies”, which was nominated for an Oscar, Jay is back with another nomination in the Best Documentary Short category, this time for the poignant and universally-relatable “How Do You Measure a Year? In this short, Jay films his daughter Ella every year on her birthday, from age two to 18, answering the same set of basic questions that he poses. Joining Ken on the podcast to discuss how the project started out and the challenges, surprises and joys along the way, Jay sheds light on the evolving relationship between a father and daughter as seen through the magical medium of film.   Hidden Gem: Summer Nights   Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

“Stranger at the Gate” charts one man’s delusion:  That his neighbors are not the peace-loving, hard-working people they seem to be, but actually dangerous radicals deeply embedded in America’s heartland.  But it also subtly portrays a more universal phenomenon of dehumanization–and then offers a hopeful example of where respect and love were able to provide a remedy. Director Joshua Seftel sat down with Mike to talk about his Academy Award-nominated short documentary that tells the story of Mack, his family, and the good people of the Muncie Islamic Center as they found themselves on what seemed to be an inevitable collision course.  Joshua and Mike discuss the classic “Middletown”, the changing landscape of central America, and the challenges not only of immigrants but of veterans as well.   “Stranger at the Gate” is available on the New Yorker website as well as YouTube.   Hidden Gem: LBJ   Follow: @strangeratthegate on Instagram @jrseftel on Instagram & @JSeftel on twitter @topdocspod on twitter and Instagram   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

It’s an age-old query:  Can humans live in harmony with other creatures on the planet?  On their way to speaking to this question, in  “The Elephant Whisperers” director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Doug Blush show us the beauty, intelligence, and even danger of the creatures who share our world. Kartiki and Doug joined Mike to talk about their Oscar-nominated short documentary.  They tell Mike how the elephant caretakers, Bomman and Belli, both helped the young elephant Raghu and were helped by him as well.   Why did they choose not to forefront some of the most dire threats to the elephants, including global warming, but instead focus on what they call “a family drama”?  And what hope do they have for the future of India’s wildlife, and for the greater planet as well? The Elephant Whisperers can be seen on Netflix.   Hidden Gems: Writing with Fire (our conversation with directors Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh) Bad Axe (our conversation with director David Siev) Last Flight Home (our conversation with director Ondi Timor)   Follow: @theelephantwhisperers on Instagram Kartiki: @EarthSpectrum on twitter & @kartikigonsalves on Instagram Doug: @madpixfilm on twitter @topdocspod on twitter and Instagram   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

Luke Lorentzen made a brilliant feature debut at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival with his sparkling documentary “Midnight Family”, a fast-paced look at a family-owned private ambulance business in Mexico City. Luke is back at this year’s Sundance, and this time he’s focusing on life inside one hospital in New York City. “A Still Small Voice” is an intimate portrait of the spiritual care department at the Mount Sinai Hospital and of one aspiring chaplain and her mentor.    Luke sat down with Ken at Sundance to discuss how he came to his latest topic, how he approached the role of time and pacing in a much different way than “Midnight Family”, and how he applied the principles of the spiritual care program to his own filmmaking practice. After the festival, Luke was honored with the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition Directing Award.   Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter @LorentzenLuke on twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.  A big thanks to Portrait for hosting this conversation at Sundance.

As a realistic account of the deprivations Alzheimers can bring, “The Eternal Memory” is harrowing.  But it’s also the story of Augusto’s and Paulina’s determined love in the face of this challenge.  And, finally, it’s the tale of Chile’s tragic yet ultimately triumphant democracy. Maite Alberdi (director of the Oscar-nominated “The Mole Agent”) sat down with Mike at Sundance to discuss her film and how it shows memory as not the finished product of individual solitude, but ever-created between people and even within nations. “The Eternal Memory” was recently acquired by MTV Documentaries. Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter @lamaitealberid on twitter @maitealberdi on instagram Also mentioned in the pod:  No The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix. A big thanks to Portrait for hosting this conversation at Sundance.

10 years ago, filmmakers Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster premiered their epic personal documentary “American Promise” at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. Now, Michèle and Joe have returned to Sundance with the world premiere of their highly inventive, transcendent documentary portrait “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project”. Once again, the pair find themselves being honored for their dazzling work — this time taking home the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary category. Fresh off the first public screening of the film, Michèle and Joe joined Ken to discuss how each discovered the revolutionary poetry of Nikki Giovanni, the process of finding the film’s visual language that was itself a poem, and the rich sources they were able to draw from, and blend together, to build an entire universe to honor the work of this extraordinary artist.   Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter @michele_0608 on Instagram and twitter @brewsterjoe on Instagram and @2joedigital on twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix. A big thanks to Portrait for hosting this conversation at Sundance.