DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
When this documentary, about renowned New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, played at Silverdocs last year, DCist’s Eddie Kim said of it in his review:
Beginning and ending on the streets of New York, the documentary is just as much about the city as it is about the man behind the camera lens — after all, it is half the film’s title. Like Wordplay, a 2006 documentary on another Times staple — the crossword puzzle — Bill Cunningham New York explains how an inconsequential tidbit of the paper can represent a cross-section of all New Yorkers. To the filmmakers, a portrait of Cunningham is really a portrait of the city, and along her streets, “he who seeks beauty will find it.”
If you missed the film back then, the Hirshhorn has another opportunity for you to see it next week in a special screening. And because Cunningham is nearly as well known for his methods of capturing the day-to-day fashion choices of New Yorkers — biking around town on his Schwinn — they’re also running a Twitter-based contest that could win you a new bike of your own. Check the Hirshhorn’s twitter feed for more details.
View the trailer.
Next Thursday, March 10, at 8 p.m. at the Hirshhorn. Free.
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Docs in Progress is a locally-based non-profit that assists filmmakers realize their documentary film projects by establishing a community of filmmakers, offering instruction and workshops, and creating opportunities for filmmakers to get input on their films while they’re still in the process of making them. Tomorrow night at George Washington University, one of those public feedback opportunities takes place, in which you can help the filmmakers out by watching and participating in a moderated feedback session after the screenings. Then, when the film goes on to become a huge success at Silverdocs, or beyond, you can tell your friends it was all because of your feedback. The two films on tap for tomorrow include a rough cut of a documentary short called It’s Only (a) Natural, about an actress who’s choice of hairstyle prompts a debate about race, and The Legend of “Cool” Disco Dan, a graffiti artist whose work in the ’80s and early ’90s made him known throughout D.C., as visible a part of the urban landscape of the city in those days as go-go was. The documentary catches up with Dan in the present day and looks back at his days as folk hero to some, menace to others.
Tomorrow at 7 p.m. at The Documentary Center at George Washington University. $10 suggested donation.
