Doc Corner: 'Barbie Nation' and 'Black Barbie'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

If the box office is anything to go by, there is a very solid chance that most of The Film Experience’s readers have seen Greta Gerwig’s Barbie by now. You probably haven’t seen Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized Tour, a documentary from the time of VHS in 1998 that made comparatively far less noise but which is returning for its 25^th anniversary with a new so called “director’s cut” (I’ve never seen the original so can’t vouch for how different it is) and a digital release. It bares all of the hallmarks of an independent work of documentary from the ‘90s, from its video aesthetics to its barely-an-hour-long runtime. But that’s partly why it is so entertaining.

The other part is because it takes a remarkably similar tone to Gerwig’s film. Reverent, but critical and with interesting narrative avenues that are there because they, presumably, tickled its directors fancy.

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Doc Corner: 'Lakota Nation Vs. United States'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

If you ask me (and if you’re here, I would hope you hold my opinion in some sort of esteem), the best work of documentary so far this decade has been Raoul Peck’s four-part Exterminate All The Brutes from 2021. An epic feat of production, it brought a cinematic lens to a HBO doc-series that unflinchingly charted a history of white possession and genocide. I am hardly surprised it won a Peabody Award, but couldn’t make traction with mainstream awards bodies. Its content was tough, not made any easier as a viewing experience by the blunt-force storytelling of Peck that, maybe, people didn't expect from a multi-part doc series.

I bring this up to introduce Lakota Nation Vs. United States for a few reasons. For starters, they share an interest (if you can call it that) in the atrocities committed against Indigenous populations. It’s also very well made; beautifully shot and carefully edited with keen precision. A history book slicing a papercut into the viewer’s fingertip.

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Doc Corner: 'Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed' and 'Wham!'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Rock Hudson’s story has been told many times either through his films, or more broadly, alongside Old Hollywood tales. Other times, it’s been shared through the stories of his collaborators and closefriends such as Doris Day or Elizabeth Taylor. Most prominently to modern audiences, the story of Rock Hudson has been told through the larger stories of AIDS and the inadvertent role that Hudson would play there as the first famous person to openly reveal they had acquired it in the mid 1980s. It is nice then to see him get the story all to himself, this time, in a film that celebrates rather than mourns...

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Doc Corner: 'Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

It’s rather fitting to have watched Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music at the tail end of pride month as LGBTQ+ rights are yet again being politicised and stripped while its community are demonised. Queer people of various sorts have existed for more than 24 decades, obviously. But in his massive theatrical undertaking, playwright and performance artist Taylor Mac integrates his own queer sense of self into American history.

Through song, spoken word, and flamboyant theatricality, he tells the sort of the United States of America, using music to celebrate all kinds of humanity and asking us as an audience to see ourselves and our struggles across time...

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Doc Corner: 'Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie' is a big Emmy contender

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Even if Michael J. Fox wasn’t American television royalty, including being a five-time Emmy Award winner, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie would probably prove to be quite popular with the television academy. However, as a three-peat winner for Family Ties (“I feel four feet tall!” he said from the stage), a winner once more for Spin City, and a regular nominee in the guest acting category for just about anything he would take time to appear in (including Curb Your Enthusiasm; The Good Wife five times; and Rescue Me, another winner), I feel pretty confident that Davis Guggenheim’s moving biographic documentary will do well at this year’s Emmys.

And rightfully so...

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