Showing all posts tagged: documentary
Trailer for My Old School a documentary about Brian MacKinnon
20 August 2022
Brian MacKinnon studied at Bearsden Academy, a school near Glasgow in Scotland, until his graduation at age seventeen in 1980. After leaving Bearsden, MacKinnon went to Glasgow University, but his enrolment was revoked after failing course exams. MacKinnon was bitterly disappointed, so he decided — quite literally — to start over again.
In 1993, at the age of thirty, he re-enrolled at Bearsden Academy, posing as a sixteen year old Canadian expatriate named Brandon Lee. For the year he spent there, no one saw through the ruse. None of his classmates were suspicious, nor the handful of original teachers still there, who had taught MacKinnon over a decade earlier.
The deception only came to light after “Lee” had left Bearsden for a second time. Now his story has been made into a documentary My Old School, trailer, by Jono McLeod, a former TV news reporter, who was a classmate of “Lee” in 1993.
[McLeod] says he always gets asked how he did not know that Brandon was an imposter at the time. “It is everyone’s nightmare to wake up at 30 years old and be back at school, so why would anyone choose to place themselves in that situation?” he says.
While parents of some students were alarmed that a thirty-year-old was in close proximity to teenagers, many people were certain MacKinnon’s motives were not untoward, including numerous former students and teachers. He sought only to right a perceived wrong.
While MacKinnon agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, he refused to be filmed, and instead actor Alan Cumming stands in for him. In perhaps attempting to rationalise the escapade, MacKinnon says: “the thing you have to do if you really want to prevail is do the unimaginable.”
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A trailer for The Princess a documentary by Ed Perkins
27 July 2022
Directed by British documentary maker Ed Perkins, The Princess, trailer, which opens in Australian cinemas on Friday 12 August 2022, looks at the life of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Made up mostly of archival footage, in a similar style to Asif Kapadia’s 2010 documentary Senna, The Princess also examines the lasting influence Diana’s life, and death, had on the British monarchy.
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The Art of Life, a documentary about Michael Behrens
9 July 2022
Paused for weekend viewing… produced by Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, The Art of Life is a documentary about mathematician Michael Behrens who walked away from academia, and made a life for himself living in a home he built in the midst of a dense Hawaiian jungle.
As a rising star in the field of abstract mathematics, Michael discovered that he could see beauty and pattern where others could not. But his path was not to be inside academia, or even inside society. He went on a grand adventure to unify his Buddhism with his ability to see an expanded view of reality. He created beauty in a place where nobody else would, and made his friends amongst dolphins.
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Only the Dead, a documentary by Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag
16 October 2015
“Only the dead have seen the end of war” is a phrase Greek philosopher Plato is said to have uttered the better part of two and a half thousand years ago. They are words bluntly contending, that for some, combat is an experience they will always live with, no matter how much time, or distance, they place between themselves and the battlefield.
War does not only scar the belligerents, and the hapless civilians caught up in the middle of it, but also those whose part is considered ancillary, including medics and journalists. Only the Dead tells one such story, of Australian reporter Michael Ware, and is based on video footage he recorded while working for Time Magazine in Iraq, between 2003 and 2007.
Although American lead coalition forces quickly took control of Iraq, and ousted long-time leader Saddam Hussein, when they invaded in 2003, the real struggle commenced afterwards. Groups of insurgents, some backed by al Qaeda, began engaging in guerrilla warfare, using terrifying tactics that included suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings, against the occupying army.
Gradually Ware was able to make contact with members of some insurgent groups. This eventually resulted in Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was considered one of al Qaeda’s most vicious leaders, handing him video footage of their attacks against the occupying forces. It soon became apparent to Ware that the insurgents were far more organised than was first realised.
Co-directed by American documentary maker Bill Guttentag (Death on the Job, Nanking), Only the Dead is a harrowing, first-hand, account of the war in Iraq. It is also very much a personal story, and audiences are not only witness to some of the conflict’s most disturbing, horrific moments, but also Ware’s own dark, inner, turmoil.
Originally published Friday 16 October 2015.
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