Documentary - Cinema Crespodiso

‘Water For Life’ – An Interview with Will Parrinello

Twelve years in the making, Water for Life features three Latin American community leaders working to protect their water and ancestral territory from multinational corporations and corrupt governments that threaten the environmental, cultural and economic survival of their communities. Narrated by Diego Luna, Water For Life will have its Orlando premiere at the Florida Film Festival on Sunday April 14, and will screen again during the festival on Friday, April 18. In this interview with producer and director Will Parrinello, he discusses how he chose these three leaders to feature in the film, the process of making this film, and his hopes for what the movie can accomplish in terms of spreading awareness of these environmental battles and the people caught up in these fights.

Chris Crespo: What was the process of choosing these three people as your main subjects to tackle this issue of water use and land rights throughout Latin America? Did you initially want to make a documentary about this problem, or did you find out about the individuals first and then learned about their cause?

Will Parrinello: As independent documentary filmmakers, director of photography Vicente Franco and I have been making short documentary profiles of Goldman Environmental Prize recipients throughout Latin America since 2009. Each year the Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of the environmental world, recognizes six grassroots environmental defenders from around the world who have achieved a seemingly unachievable goal. I wanted to make this film because I found these stories to be incredibly inspiring. At a time when we face numerous environmental challenges, many which seem insurmountable, here are stories of individuals who are courageously standing up, speaking truth to power and creating positive change in the world! Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Lo and Behold, Reveries of a Connected World’

In “Lo and Behold, Reveries of a Connected World,” we have a documentary about the internet, how it was conceived, what it does now, and where it might go in the future. Not exactly an original or exciting concept, considering how much information there is about this thing that so many of us use on a constant, day to day basis, like this moment right now. But when this documentary is made by an acclaimed master filmmaker who doesn’t use the internet and can go an entire year without even turning on his cellphone, who has a tendency to look at the much more existential side of any situation and often comes up with gloomy conclusions, you end up with what is currently the best possible documentary about the internet, modern society and where this all could possibly be taking us.

Now that is not to say that “Lo and Behold” has the full history of the internet, and is an exhaustive compendium of all the key facts of the invention of this world changing creation, and it doesn’t look at every single facet of day to day life and how the internet is used in that way. Basically, not once does anyone mention Netflix, Amazon, eBay or Al Gore. Werner Herzog seems much less interested in WHO made these machines and much more interested in WHY, and more importantly, how does this change everything it comes in contact with, and is it all for better or worse or a mix of the two?

Review: ‘Man Vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler’

“Man Vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler” is a documentary along the lines of “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” in that it focuses on an arcade game record set in the early 1980s during the boom of the video arcade and how some of the people who set and chased those records as youngsters tried to reclaim their past glory. It is even centered around the same legendary Twin Galaxies arcade and includes owner and video game record keeper Walter Day and the “villain” of “King of Kong” and current hot sauce purveyor Billy Mitchell, who is presented here not as the foil but instead an inspirational voice, almost like a Yoda figure. But “Man Vs Snake” is really focused on one guy and one game, and that is Tim McVey and a relatively unknown game known simply as Nibbler.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Newman’

“Newman” is a documentary about inventor Joseph Westley Newman and the greatest challenge of his life, the invention and worldwide implementation of the Newman Energy Machine, a direct current device which would use a small amount of electrical energy from a source like a battery and would then convert that into more energy, not less. This machine proved to be controversial due to these pesky things known as the laws of thermodynamics, as well as the extreme resistance from certain people to Mr. Newman’s claims that his machine worked.

Review: ‘The Wolfpack’

“The Wolfpack” is a deeply fascinating documentary, a look at a family situation that is almost impossible to fathom, totally unbelievable if it weren’t for all the filmed evidence on display, a tiny social experiment gone awry, which resulted in a story that has to be seen to be believed. What happens when people are locked away from society for their whole lives? And what happens when those same people are taught about the world via thousands of movies? What does that do to someone? How does that change a person, make them in to what they are? And is that a good or bad thing? This is the essence of “The Wolfpack.”

The Angulo family lives in a four-bedroom apartment in a government housing building in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. And despite living deep in one of the liveliest and most vibrant cities in the world, the Angulos never left their home. The father Oscar was afraid to let his children and wife leave the apartment because he didn’t want anything bad to happen to them, so he obsessively locked everyone away in side the apartment, taking everyone out on only on supervised visits, and forbidding them to talk to anyone at all when they did manage to get outside. Some years would go by and the family would be lucky enough to get out of the apartment nine times, and once there was a year when the family didn’t make it outside at all. This is how Oscar Angulo raised his family, which consists of seven children, six of whom are brothers, all of them locked inside their small bit of public housing like a prison.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Billy Mize & the Bakersfield Sound’

Billy Mize is a singer-songwriter who enjoys legendary status among those in the know in the country music world, having written a number of hits for other artists and promoting people on his own television shows who would themselves go on to be gigantic stars. “Billy Mize & the Bakersfield Sound” explores the question of why the very talented Mize never became the household name that he probably should have become.

Even though everyone knows that Nashville is country music mecca, for a short while there Bakersfield, California was actually cranking out the best country music in the country. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard became hugely successful and popular by getting into this genre of country that was a little rougher and a little funkier than the slick country music from Tennessee and just cranking it out, along with a whole slew of other acts that came up in that scene and took it around the country one club at a time. And all of these musicians, along with legends like Willie Nelson, profess that their favorite artist is Billy Mize.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Nixon’s Coming’

“Nixon’s Coming” is a 9-minute short film about a weird meeting between President Richard Nixon and a small group of drugged up student protesters in the early morning hours on night in 1970. Based on photographs from student activist (at the time of course) Bob Moustakas and recordings made by Nixon which were declassified in recent years, this little movie paints an interesting portrait of a strange visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

Due to Nixon’s weird penchant for recordings, he decided to record his own recounting of the spontaneous meeting at the Lincoln Memorial, and as a result of the declassification of this tape in 2011, we have a short film with a voice over from Nixon himself. Now do we want to believe him? It’s not like this was some momentous event or that historians would even care about such a small little thing, so why would he feel the need to lie about what happened there? So we can rest assured that what Nixon says happened, he at least BELIEVED it happened.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Spearhunter’

“Spearhunter” is a 14-minute short film about a man’s obsession with not only a particular form of hunting, but with the idea of securing his own legacy, one that would live on well after he would be dead.

Welcome to Alabama, where Gene Morris has honed his hunting skills to such a degree that he became bored with normal hunting techniques. Guns, bow and arrows, he was done with all of that. Instead he wanted more of a challenge, and hence set about to be the world’s great spear hunter. And he loved spear hunting so much that he constantly filmed and videotaped himself doing it and also talking into the camera and cutting promos like a professional wrestler, declaring himself to the greatest in the world. Whom he was addressing or expected to ever view these proclamations is never made clear, and maybe it never was to begin with.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Welcome to Leith’

“Welcome to Leith” is a fascinating documentary about a small town in North Dakota and how they reacted when a well-known white supremacist moved in with the intention of turning it into a safe haven for his fellow racists.

This old fella named Craig Cobb found this tiny town in North Dakota with only 24 residents, which includes the children, and yet this town named Leith still has a functioning government, in that there is a mayor and a town council and all that good stuff. And Cobb saw this little rundown town in the middle of nowhere and saw an opportunity to take it over. What he didn’t see was a small group of people who didn’t want anything to do with their brand of foolishness. What ensued was a six-month stand off, with Cobb and his hate-filled compatriots on one side and some honest people who just wanted to live their lives without having to worry about any of this bullshit on the other.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Red Army’

“Red Army” is a documentary about the nation-wide hockey program of the USSR of the 1970’s and 1980’s, but of course this movie is about so much more, it is about the people within this system, the ones who ran it, and how it reflected the Soviet system overall as well as the Cold War between the Soviets and the capitalist West.

The focus of the film is Viacheslav Fetisov, which I am sure upsets him a little because as the captain of the USSR national hockey team and a product of dozens of years of Soviet-style teachings starting with him at a very young age, he has totally bought into the socialism, “there is no I in team” mentality, but he does deserve to be singled out among the rest of the team because of his insanely long list of accomplishments and rewards. Starting at 8 or 9 years old, he was entered into the Soviet hockey program, which found and cultivated the best players throughout the entire country and brought them up to eventually play for the National team. And on top of that the government practically made it mandatory for all men to at least attempt to play hockey, seeking to root out the best of the best, and using the sport as an opportunity to prove that their model of governance was the best one.Continue Reading …