Film series: Doc Spots
image from For Sama
In addition to the documentaries included in other series, these four terrific—and diverse—films (three of which are Ithaca premieres) will also screen at Cornell Cinema. In what may well be the final check-in with the subjects of documentary cinema’s greatest sociological experiment, 63 Up is a moving, wistful documentary that leaps forwards and backwards in time as it looks at the lives lived (and lost) by the British children at heart in the original 1963 documentary project that returned to its subjects every seven years.
Two films screening in this series are currently shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar: For Sama, about a mother and daughter living in Aleppo, Syria during the uprising there, will screen for free with a panel discussion on February 11, and Midnight Family, a documentary about the fraught world of for-profit Emergency Medical Services in Mexico City, as experienced by one family-run ambulance. Additionally, both films picked up awards at the 2019 edition of the International Documentary Association Awards: For Sama won Best Feature, while Midnight Family won Best Editing.
Cornell Cinema is also bringing back to Ithaca the art house hit Fantastic Fungi—just in time to start finding these fabled friends around town! And if you’re interested in checking out more documentaries, be sure to seek out the films playing in the following series: Black History Month, Dance by Cunningham, Earth Day at 50, and Agnès Varda Tribute: Selected Documentaries. Also, check out these titles screening as part of other series: All Night Long, The Biggest Little Farm, Chinese Portrait, Costa da Morte, Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan, Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, The Garden, The Guardian of Memory, Heimat is a Space and Time, Levantine, and The Silence of Others.
