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Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Alan Rudolph’s Dramas of Desire

One of America’s great, oft-unheralded filmmakers, Alan Rudolph deserves far more recognition than he’s accumulated thus far. We recently published two extensive interviews with the director and now the Criterion Channel has a mini-retrospective, featuring Remember My Name (1978), Trouble In Mind (1985), Afterglow (1997), and Breakfast of Champions (1999).

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Celebrating Gene Hackman

As we attempt to move on from a Gene Hackman-less world, the Criterion Channel has gathered some of his finest work to remember him by. Their series features The French Connection (1971), Scarecrow (1973), The Conversation (1974), Night Moves (1975), Eureka (1983), No Way Out (1987), and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Club Zero (Jessica Hausner)

Across her five previous features,...

There are no hummingbirds in England, but if there were, they surely would have replaced the falling apple as the mythic catalyst for Isaac Newton’s greatest ideas. Watching them suspended in mid-air as their wings beat faster than the human eye can see and being able to move in any direction within space, one realizes they perfectly illustrate the laws of motion governing our world. For that matter, maybe Charles Darwin wouldn’t have had to go all the way to the Galapagos to get his initial inspiration for evolution by natural selection as well.

Terry Masear would probably- very gently, of course- admonish me for speaking of these lovely little avians in such reductionist terms. She’s a born romantic who loves hummingbirds the way some people love cats and dogs, while others love horses, and the way my niece adores axolotls. She talks about the ones she...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)

Following up her enigmatic, beautiful debut A Night of Knowing Nothing, Payal Kapadia shows an entirely different register with her dazzling Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize winner All We Imagine as Light. Luke Hicks said in his review, “Writer-director Payal Kapadia isn’t interested in the flashy world of Mumbai that gets so much global attention. Per its opening soundscape, All We Imagine as Light means to bask in the luminescence of life found among India’s lower classes, which means acknowledging the inequality and socio-economic injustice that defines their everyday as much as it means showcasing their intrinsic glow and dogged refusal to let the inalienable love, beauty, and camaraderie of existence be taken from them.

This Australian film about an avian rescuer is a densely layered meditation on love, resilience and letting go

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Encounters with hummingbirds are not easily forgotten. I vividly remember my first, on a visit to Los Angeles 15 years ago: walking the streets of Beverly Hills, it buzzed towards me like a supersized bee, eyeballed me, pivoted, and zipped across the road, leaving me slack-jawed with wonder that something so miraculous could even exist.

Miracles abound in Australian director Sally Aitken’s film Every Little Thing, which is inspired by Terry Masear’s 2016 book Fastest Things on Wings. Masear, who has dedicated her home (also in Beverly Hills) to the rehabilitation of injured hummingbirds for 18 years, is the star. But it’s the supporting cast she cares for that will capture hearts.

Sally Aitken is shining a light on an under-explored, but important, natural subject in Every Little Thing. Having gotten her start behind the camera with the PBS period miniseries Colonial House, Aitken has helmed both narrative and documentary projects throughout her career, though has largely been focused on the latter genre, ranging from Getting Frank Gehry to Disney+'s Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story. Some of her most recent efforts include the Chris Hemsworth-hosted Shark Beach, Australia's Inconceivable - The Secret Business of Breeding Human and Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles.

Every Little Thing sees Aitken continuing her documentary streak and turning her focus to Terry Masear, an author and wildlife rehabber living in Los Angeles. Inspired by her book, Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood, the movie explores Masear's efforts to save every injured hummingbird in the California city, showcasing some of...

The slow-motion footage in “Every Little Thing” of hummingbirds captured in flight, or beak deep in a flowering bud or hovering at 50 beats per second are awe-nudging. Director Sally Aitken’s nature documentary comes as a balm in a season aching for uplift. Since 2008, hummingbird sage Terry Masear has run a hotline, answering the calls of strangers who find the iridescently feathered, delicate, surprisingly bold birds wounded or unconscious in their pools, on roadways, laying beneath trees. There have been more that 20,000 calls.

Like pilgrims brimming with fear and hope, Angelenos bring their precious gifts to Masear’s home in the hills of Los Angeles. “It’s delicate, emotional work,” rehabbing these birds, says someone on the radio as the hummingbirds begin their migration to the area where they nest.

As captivating as the documentary’s slow-motion images are (stunning wildlife photography by Ann Johnson Prum), hummingbird lovers know that...

Some things seem to transcend reality despite living within it; they feel extraterrestrial, metaphysical, or simply fantastical. Call it the Kantian noumenon. Hummingbirds are undoubtedly among these. Their wings beat 50 times per second on average (and up to 80 beats per second), using a complicated figure-eight motion that creates wake vortices beneath each wing. Like delightful little drones, they can hover almost perfectly still and move in any direction. The way they fly is more efficient than helicopters. They're so fast that you might not realize how remarkable and downright dream-like they are, but you'll be converted once you see them slowed down in the new film, Every Little Thing.

Sally Aitken's documentary is beautiful, relaxing, and subtly poignant as it follows a "hummingbird rehabilitator" named Terry Masear. Working in Los Angeles for most of her avian career, Masear helps people when they discover injured or abandoned hummingbirds, and tries...

“It’s a hard world for small things,” says Lillian Gish’s Rachel Cooper in The Night of the Hunter. Those words come to mind while watching Sally Aitken’s modestly informative and gently profound Every Little Thing about a Los Angeles-based hummingbird rescue. If there’s any fault to be found in this aptly titled documentary, it’s that it doesn’t exactly benefit from its formulaic voiceover and other supplementary audio. The footage of hummingbirds—usually in slow motion—is intrinsically commanding and in little need of buttressing, particularly with adjectives that fall far short of the images they accompany.

Terry Masear is a wildlife rehabber who, along with others in her field, rises to the seemingly nonstop challenge of caring for L.A.’s fragile population of hummingbirds, who are so delicate in their form that even a cautious rescuer might impact a bird’s survival chances.

It’s the start of a new year, which means much of the month’s attention will go to expanding December releases, including Nickel Boys, The Brutalist, The Room Next Door, Vermiglio, and a few films mentioned below that only got awards-qualifying runs in December. For new releases, though, January isn’t all cinematic doldrums if one digs deep enough, and we’ve collected the titles to have on your radar.

10. Eat the Night

One of the most distinctly directed debut films of recent years was Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel’s strange sci-fi wonder Jessica Forever. Six years later, the duo finally return with Eat the Night, a thriller that premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and will now arrive in the U.S. to kick off 2025. Alistair Ryder said in his BFI London review, “Jane Schoenbrun didn’t invent movies exploring teenage malaise and identity through the lens of pop culture,...

Paul Hogan’s crocodile-wrangling larrikin returns, plus two family-friendly gems and new films starring Guy Pearce, David Wenham and Richard Roxburgh

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Australian cinema in 2025 will offer plenty of tasty treats, in a variety of genres and styles. In addition to the films on this list, there are a few titles from last year’s still yet to arrive, including the Nicolas Cage movie The Surfer (which will be on Stan at some point) and Sally Aitken’s documentary Every Little Thing (which had a festival release in 2024).

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning...

One of the most delicate, heartwarming films I saw at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year was Sally Aitken’s Every Little Thing, which follows the journey of a specialist hummingbird rehabilitator as she cares for her tiny winged patients in Los Angeles. Picked up by Kino Lorber for a January 10 release beginning in NYC, the first trailer has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear has an ambitious goal: to save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. But the path to survival is fraught with danger. This heart-expanding Sundance hit introduces audiences to Terry’s diminutive patients through breathtaking slow-motion photography and emotional storytelling. Over the course of director Sally Aitken’s moving documentary, we become deeply invested in baby hummingbirds like Cactus and Wasabi, celebrating their tiny victories and lamenting their tragedies. Through Terry’s eyes, each bird becomes memorable, mighty and heroic.

For nearly a year, a series of names have buzzed around my brain like so many tiny birds: Cactus. Wasabi. Larry Bird. How are they? What are they doing? Where are they? Spend any amount of time with Sally Aitken’s delicate, immensely touching documentary “Every Little Thing,” and you’ll fall to the same obsessions and curiosities.

In Aitken’s doc, you’ll meet Cactus, Wasabi, Larry Bird, and many more. You’ll meet the people who, often quite unexpectedly, rescue these tiny hummingbirds from various kind of peril. And you’ll meet bonafide real-life hero Terry Masear, who has turned her Los Angeles home into a hummingbird haven for all sorts of tiny charges.

Aitken doesn’t skimp on incredible, immersive hummingbird footage, all bright colors and fast-flapping wings, quick little tails, shining pinprick eyes. Hummingbirds are so delicate, so feather-light, so special, it’s easy to see...

Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Every Little Thing, Sally Aitken’s documentary about a hummingbird rehabilitator that premiered in Sundance and has gone on to play multiple festivals including Cph:dox.

The distributor plans a January 2025 theatrical release, followed by digital, educational, and home video roll-out.

Every Little Thing profiles Terry Masear, who tends to injured hummingbirds in Los Angeles and nurses her winged charges – including Cactus, Jimmy, Wasabi, Raisin, and Mikhail – back to health, experiencing person growth in the process.

Bettina Dalton produced for WildBear Entertainment alongside Anna Godas, and Oli Harbottle. Executive producers are David Guy Elisco,...

Today, the Nantucket Film Festival, which featured conversations with Ken Burns and many others, announced winners for this year’s 29th edition of the fest. In addition to Audience Award winners, they have also released winners for Best of Fest, the Tony Cox Screenplay Competition, the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Award, and many others.

“It is a privilege to honor this cohort of both established and emerging screenwriters and storytellers, who represent the heart of our industry, at the 2024 edition of the festival,” said Mystelle Brabbée, Executive Director of the Nantucket Film Festival, and Anita Raswant, Lead Programmer of the Nantucket Film Festival. “Thank you to all of our attending filmmakers and writers for sharing their powerful stories with us and our passionate audiences who continue to turn out to the theaters and support our mission. We would like to take a moment to recognize our jurors, sponsors, staff, and volunteers,...

A 17-title buying spree from Scandinavian and Baltic distributor NonStop Entertainment includes deals for Mati Diop’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Dahomey, and Aaron Schimberg’s Sundance title A Different Man.

Diop’s documentary Dahomey tells the story of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey (located within present-day Benin in Africa) that were returned to Benin after being held in a French museum. Films du Losange handles sales.

Sold by A24, Schimberg’s A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson in the story of a man with neurofibromatosis, who undergoes surgery for a new start...

The hummingbirds of Every Little Thing are migrating from North America to Europe. Sally Aikten’s film about the extraordinary avian aerialists and a Los Angeles woman who tends to injured hummingbirds is making its European premiere at Cph:dox in Copenhagen, after initially hovering over Sundance.

Larry Bird, Raisin, Cactus, Alexa and Mikhail are among the tiny ornithological wonders that appear in the film. Their human caretaker, Terry Masear, wrote the Fastest Thing on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood about the many years she has spent looking after hummingbirds – ones that may have collided with a window, say, or babies that have tumbled from their nests.

“We follow Terry over the course of the spring-summer season, which — if anyone is in L.A. — they’ll know as peak hummingbird time,” Aitken told us at Sundance. “And literally, if you have an injured or wounded hummingbird that somehow comes across your path,...

A still from ‘Every Little Thing’ (Photo Courtesy of Sundance Institute)

Grab your tissues and prepare to have your heart stolen by delicate yet fierce creatures in Every Little Thing. Directed by Sally Aitken and inspired by Fastest Things on Wings (written by hummingbird rehabilitator Terry Masear), this inspirational and moving documentary focuses on one cycle of hummingbird rescues. The sorrow and joy of watching these tiny birds go from sick and injured to, in the best-case scenario, being set free to thrive in the wild is told with a loving touch and truly astounding cinematography.

Masear has been rescuing hummingbirds in Southern California since 2004. During that period, she’s come to understand these gorgeous little birds in a way not many people can. With the most delicate of touches and a soothing voice, Masear assures the tiny creatures that they are safe and that she’ll do everything in...

When she first appears onscreen, Terry Masear, the plainspoken hero of Every Little Thing, is driving through Los Angeles and carrying on a jokey banter with her passenger. If there’s no return banter, that’s understandable: Riding shotgun, in a minuscule nest inside a lovingly built coop, is a hummingbird named Wasabi.

If this sounds dangerously cute or precious, I promise you it’s not. Nestled within the documentary’s upbeat, sunshiny opening sequence, and the way Masear assures her charge, “You’re safe, you’re totally safe,” is the suggestion of a dark backstory, and it’s revealed in ways that deepen but don’t overshadow the matter at hand: Masear and her tireless devotion to orphaned, injured and battered hummingbirds.

Masear’s book Fastest Things on Wings is the inspiration for the film by Sally Aitken, who captured another woman’s dedication to misunderstood animals in Playing...

There is an especially delightful, humble, rejuvenating documentary film that recently premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival that is all about hummingbirds. Yes, it's focused on these remarkably small birds (the smallest!) that buzz around mainly during summer season. It's a supremely nourishing film about hummingbirds and a woman in Los Angeles who takes care of and helps save many of them. Every Little Thing is the latest fantastic doc creation from Australian filmmaker Sally Aitken. Some might remember her other acclaimed doc titled Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story, which premiered during the online-only Sundance 2021 a few years ago. She's back again at Sundance with the film Every Little Thing, and it's another special, one-of-a-kind documentary experience about animals living with us on this planet that we really need to take a closer look at. We need to pause and appreciate them. It moved me to tears it's so good.

Terry calls them “the finders.” They call her at all hours. They text. They come by, and sometimes they come by again. They arrive bearing tiny boxes filled with precious, delicate cargo. They ask advice. They don’t always take it. And they so, so badly want their discoveries to live.

In Sally Aitken’s delicate, immensely touching documentary “Every Little Thing,” those finders are regular, everyday people who a) somehow find injured hummingbirds in the Los Angeles area, and b) have the luck of discovering Terry Masear’s nearby hummingbird rescue, where she attends to hundreds of birds each year, hopefully nursing them back to health and releasing them into the world. “Finders” is Terry’s word. Terry is, though she’d likely never say such a thing, something a bit different, a bit harder to admit: a hero.

Aitken doesn’t skimp on incredible, immersive hummingbird footage, all bright colors and fast-flapping wings,...

Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically, or creatively? Every Little Thing is set in Los Angeles, California, and tells the story of a woman who rescues injured hummingbirds amid the glamour of Hollywood. As she tends her fragile charges the film transforms into a visually magical tale of love, and […]

The post “An Opportunity To Show Another Story of Los Angeles” | Sally Aitken, Every Little Thing first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically, or creatively? Every Little Thing is set in Los Angeles, California, and tells the story of a woman who rescues injured hummingbirds amid the glamour of Hollywood. As she tends her fragile charges the film transforms into a visually magical tale of love, and […]

The post “An Opportunity To Show Another Story of Los Angeles” | Sally Aitken, Every Little Thing first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Exhibiting Forgiveness.The Sundance Institute has announced the films selected for their 2024 Festival, which will take place January 18-28, 2024, in person in Utah. A selection of the films are available online across the U.S. from January 25-28.U.S. Dramatic COMPETITIONBetween the Temples (Nathan Silver): A cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher reenters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student. World Premiere. DìDi (弟弟) (Sean Wang): In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom. World Premiere. Exhibiting Forgiveness (Titus Kaphar): Utilizing his paintings to find freedom from his past, a Black artist on the path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father,...

Featuring: Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Greg Page, Jeff Fatt, Jackie Cannizzaro, Evie Ferris, Lachlan Gillespie, Tsehay Hawkins, Caterina Mete | Directed by Sally Aitken

Described as The Beatles for toddlers, The Wiggles are an Australian musical group who were once the country’s top entertainment earners – making more than stars like Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman. With Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles director Sally Aitken crafts a behind-the-scenes look focusing on the most widely known iteration of the group – made up of Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Greg Page, and Jeff Fatt – while not being limited to that version.

The original line-up was a group of friends that met at university while taking an Early Childhood course, with some already members of the band ‘The Cockroaches.’ Bringing together a range of musical styles, they combined their teachings with a love of music to become a band that successfully sold albums.

Film about the Australian musical phenomenon, who are akin to the Beatles for toddlers, is bubbly and insightful, if a tad long

As a longtime admirer of the hit song Hot Potato, a profoundly poetic if slightly repetitive celebration of simple cuisine and the temperature at which it can be served, I was excited to have its origins unpacked in a new film exploring its creators.

Early in, Sally Aitken’s bubbly and quite well-made documentary about the Wiggles – the phenomenally successful troupe up there with Bluey and Bananas in Pyjamas as Australia’s biggest family friendly exports – we hear a soundbite of the veteran interviewer Andrew Denton suggesting that these barmy, toot-tooting, Shimmie Shaking entertainers ought to be taken seriously.

'Sally Aitken's Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles' is a documentary that tracks the journey of Anthony, Murray, Greg, and Jeff, and a dinosaur called Dorothy from when they decided to call themselves The Wiggles after the way children move to achieve worldwide recognition, before reemerging into the cultural zeitgeist in 2022.

The post ‘Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles’ (Trailer) appeared first on If Magazine.

Sally Aitken's 'Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles', a documentary that explores the meteoric rise of the children's music group, will have its world premiere at October's SXSW Sydney, which is also set to include a First Nations Screen Festival and an Xr Showcase.

The post ‘Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles’ to premiere at SXSW Sydney appeared first on If Magazine.

Cinema Eye Honors, the organization that recognizes outstanding artistic achievement in nonfiction and documentary films & series, announced the first round of their 2023 awards and nominations at its annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch held in Los Angeles.

In the five Broadcast categories, HBO film “Four Hours at the Capitol,” an inside look at the January 6th riot, led with three nominations: Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography. Other projects like the Disney+ docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back” and Showtime’s “We Need to Talk About Cosby” also received more than one nomination.

Other announcements at the event include the annual Shorts List, which spotlights 10 of the year’s top documentary short films, and the recipient of the Legacy Award this year, Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 film “Crumb.”

“I’m glad to find out you don’t have to be dead to receive this award,” Zwigoff said in a written statement. “I...

Exclusive: The Cinema Eye Honors announced its first round of nominations today for artistic achievement in documentary film and series, with HBO’s Four Hours at the Capitol earning the most of any contender [full list below].

The documentary by Jamie Roberts about the January 6 insurrection scored nominations for Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography. Peter Jackson’s Disney+ series The Beatles: Get Back, landed two nominations — for Broadcast Series and Broadcast Editing. Get Back swept five Primetime Emmy categories last month.

‘Downfall: The Case Against Boeing’

Rory Kennedy’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, snubbed by the Emmys, earned a Cinema Eye Honors nomination for Broadcast Film. It will go up against Four Hours at the Capitol, and Emmy winner George Carlin’s American Dream, the two-part HBO film directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, among other contenders.

Nanfu Wang’s HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which premiered after the...

“Four Hours at the Capitol,” “The Beatles: Get Back,” “Playing With Sharks,” “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” and “How To With John Wilson” are among the nonfiction television programs that have been nominated in the Cinema Eye Honors broadcast categories, Cinema Eye Honors announced at the organization’s annual fall lunch in Los Angeles on Thursday.

“Four Hours at the Capitol,” Jamie Roberts’ HBO film about the Jan. 6 insurrection, received three nominations to lead all programs. “Get Back,” “Cosby,” “Stanley Tucci,” “John Wilson” and “Playing With Sharks” each received two nominations.

Along with “Four Hours at the Capitol” and “Playing With Sharks,” broadcast film nominees were “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes,” “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” and “George Carlin’s American Dream.” Nonfiction series nominees were “Get Back,” “Cosby,” “Black and Missing,” “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey,” “LuLaRich” and “Mind Over Murder.” Nominated anthology series...

Click here to read the full article.

Australian TV veterans Sally Aitken (Playing With Sharks) and Aline Jacques (Lindy Chamberlain: The True Story) have partnered up to launch Sam Content, a new production banner that will operate out of Sydney.

The partners, who plan to serve as joint founders and co-CEOs, say the new outfit will develop and produce all genres of unscripted and scripted projects for both domestic Australian platforms and the international marketplace.

Sam Content will launch with four projects in various stages of production with Australian broadcasters and screen agencies. They include an untitled project about the beloved Australian band The Wiggles in partnership with Augusto Entertainment’s Cass Avery and Daniel Story, and Inconceivable: The Secret Business of Breeding Humans, a documentary for Sbs about investigative journalist Sarah Dingle’s discovery at age 27 that her mother was impregnated with an anonymous donor sperm. Both projects received production funding from Screen Australia.

Sally Aitken a two-time Emmy nominated writer and director (“Playing with Sharks”) and producer and media executive Aline Jacques (“Lindy Chamberlain: The True Story”) have launched Sam Content.

The Sydney-based independent production company will develop and produce all genres of unscripted and scripted projects for local platforms and the international marketplace.

They open their doors with four film and TV shows in production with Australian broadcasters and screen agencies.

They include an untitled Wiggles project in partnership with Augusto Entertainment’s Cass Avery and Daniel Story, and with funding from federal screen agency Screen Australia. The Wiggles is a successful children’s musical group that has been on the scene for 30 years and has been involved with both TV and film.

Sam is also readying “Inconceivable: The Secret Business of Breeding Humans,” a documentary for Sbs about investigative journalist Sarah Dingle’s discovery at the age of 27 that her mother...

Exclusive: London-based documentary specialist Dogwoof is continuing its push into the production space as it announces a partnership with Australia-based outfit WildBear Entertainment.

The deal will see the two companies, who most recently collaborated on 2021 Sundance title Playing With Sharks, develop, finance and co-produce an initial slate of five documentaries. The companies are currently in-production on their first project, Fastest Thing On Wings (working title) which will reunite Playing With Sharks director Sally Aitken with WildBear producer Bettina Dalton. WildBear CEO Michael Tear will exec produce the project.

Fastest Thing On Wings is inspired by Terry Masear’s book of the same name, which follows the journey of a hummingbird rehabilitator in L.A.

“It’s about hummingbirds and all of this bejewelled magic that comes with them” Dalton tells Deadline of the project. “It’s sort of like magical realism where we tell the story of this hummingbird rehabilitator in a season in L.

Production company WildBear Entertainment has been deemed among the country’s top exporters, taking home this year’s Australian Export Award for the creative industries.

The Act-based company was one of 13 national category winners announced on Thursday at the annual awards, presented by the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Acci), in collaboration with states and territories.

It’s the first time WildBear has won the prize, having previously been included as a finalist in 2015 and 2016.

In an interview with Austrade, CEO Michael Tear said the honour was “incredibly rewarding and satisfying”.

“I wanted to apply because I felt like the company had done really well and I wanted to share our story,” he said.

“I thought it was a positive story about how important the creative industries are to the Australian economy.”

Formed in 2014, WildBear Entertainment commissions include the BBC, National Geographic,...

Shaun Grant and Harry Cripps are among the writers aiming to win consecutive prizes at this year’s Awgie Awards.

Grant, who won the adaptation prize with Cripps for Penguin Bloom in 2020 and for the True History of the Kelly Gang in 2019, is nominated this year for his work on Nitram, against the Here Out West writing team of Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Duygu Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran; Falling for Figaro‘s Ben Lewin and Allen Palmer; and The Furnace‘s Roderick MacKay in the original feature film category.

Cripps and Robert Connolly have been recognised for The Dry, which is one of two nominees for the feature film adaptation award alongside Babyteeth, written for the screen by the original playwright Rita Kalnejais.

In the television categories, Tony McNamara’s The Great is pitted against Wakefield, Five Bedrooms and Wentworth for...

Members of the Australian Directors’ Guild have had the chance to hear from some of the country’s most established filmmakers over the past five months as part of the Adg-40 ‘First-Hand’ sessions.

Consisting of 40 weekly one-hour webinars fronted by industry mentors, the initiative is due to start again this week following a short break, with Claire McCarthy (The Turning) to share insights from her career on Thursday.

It comes after contributions from Gillian Armstrong, Rachel Perkins, Rolf de Heer, Samantha Lang, Corrie Chen, Ben Lawrence, Ana Kokkinos, Megan Riakos, Josephine Mackerras, Robert Connolly, Garth Davis, Sally Aitken, Jub Clerc, Kriv Stenders, Tom Zubrycki, Anna Broinowski, Peter Andrikidis, Jasmin Tarasin, and Glendyn Ivin.

The sessions are moderated by Adg strategy and development executive Ana Tiwary who is responsible for collating questions from those tuning in.

She has tried to focus on topics covering the practical aspects of directing that cannot be learned from a book,...

Six films are set to vie for this year’s Aacta Award for Best Documentary, with voting for the winner open from today until August 2.

For consideration are Christopher Nelius’ Girls Can’t Surf, the highest grossing feature doc of the year so far; Sally Aitken’s Sundance-selected Playing With Sharks, and Molly Reynold’s My Name Is Gulpilil, a portrait of one of Australia’s leading actors, David Gulpilil.

They will compete against Matthew Walker’s I’m Wanita, about to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival following a HotDocs bow; Tosca Looby’s examination of the attacks that faced Julia Gillard in office, Strong Female Lead; and Jane Castle’s portrait of her mother, filmmaker Lilias Fraser, When The Camera Stopped Rolling.

‘Strong Female Lead’.

As If has reported, Aacta has adjusted its voting framework this year, with rounds per category staggered throughout the year.

The Best Documentary...

This review of "Playing With Sharks" was published following the film's premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

"Playing With Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story" tells a tale right out of mythology, with the hunter becoming the protector, helping to save the animals whom she had previously helped to portray as monsters. In capturing the work of legendary filmmaker and conservationist Valerie Taylor, this Sundance premiere from director Sally Aitken also offers a front-row look at an extraordinary life.

It helps, of course, that Valerie makes the ideal documentary subject -- candid and outgoing in interviews, discussing a life that's not only exciting and full of purpose, but also one that took place, to a large extent, in front of cameras. Aitken and editor Adrian Rostirolla make wonderful use of a plethora of archival materials, from 1950s newsreels demonstrating teenage Valerie's prowess at spearfishing to footage shot by Valerie and her late husband Ron Taylor,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Arab Blues (Manele Labidi)

The original French-language title of Arab Bles is Un divan à Tunis, and true to the echo of Chantal Akerman’s psychotherapeutic meet-cute A Couch in New York, Manele Labidi’s debut feature is the frothy tale of an analyst coming to terms with her own sense of dislocation, while tending to the many seriocomic needs of her flock. In this case, the psychoanalyst is Selma (Golshifteh Farahani), who leaves Paris and returns to her family’s apartment building in Tunisia, where a neighbor looks at her poster of Sigmund Freud and asks her: Who is he, your father? – Mark A. (full review)

Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)

Cousins (Ainsley Gardiner and Briar Grace Smith)

They...

By Glenn Dunks

Sally Aitken’s Playing with Sharks and Eli Roth’s Fin are two very different documentaries but share common ground. Not just in that they are both about sharks, but because they each want to use their platforms to advocate for the preservation of the ocean’s perfect predators. Neither film reaches the heights of other better, similarly themed films, but it’s something of a sad indictment that their very existence is important as the environmental crises happening in our oceans appear so far from being solved.

Aitken’s film chooses to focus its lens on Valerie Taylor, a famed Australian diver whose role in some prominent Hollywood productions led to being a conservationist. Fin on the other hand is a most unexpected non-fiction diversion for Roth; a film more akin to The Cove than the gory horror features that he is better known for.

"Nature made the perfect animal." Disney+ has released the official US trailer for the acclaimed shark doc titled Playing with Sharks, which first premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It's debuting streaming on Disney+ just a week after Discovey's Shark Week event this summer. The full title is officially Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story, as this profiles a remarkable Australian woman named Valerie Taylor, who started out hunting sharks, but then grew to love them, and is now an outspoken shark activist and conservationist, fighting to save them. From twice Emmy-nominated director Sally Aitken, the Playing with Sharks film captures the life of a woman ahead of her time—a fearless diver, cinematographer, and a pioneering conservationist whose work would forever change our understanding of the ocean's most magnificent apex predators. It was one of my favorite docs of Sundance 2021 in my Best of the...

Disney+ has revealed the official trailer for Playing With Sharks. This is the latest from National Geographic Documentary Films and takes a deep-dive look at the life of Valerie Taylor. She is a true pioneer in both underwater filmmaking and shark research. Taylor is revered as a living legend and icon in the underwater world whose life's work has become the basis for much of what we know about sharks today. The movie, which is set to debut next month on the streaming service, is part of https://tvweb.com/sharkfest-national-geographic-2021-schedule/|National Geographic's SharkFest lineup.

The trailer opens with some remarkable archival footage of Valerie Taylor swimming with sharks, which she narrates. It takes us through her life, dating back to the 50s. While it certainly focuses on her career trajectory, the footage also makes a point to demonstrate how mankind's relationship to nature, specifically the sea and the life contained within,...

“There is a creature alive today which has survived millions of years of evolution…without change, without passion, without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine, it will attack and devour anything. Try to imagine meeting the Devil…with Jaws.” – Jaws trailer

Ron and Valerie Taylor are the only names that come to mind when you think of the real shark footage in Steven Spielberg’s Summer Blockbuster Jaws. The film was released on an unsuspecting public June 1975 and the horrifying images of the film instilled fear into beachgoers that summer along with the phrase “See it before you go swimming.” The Taylors were synonymous with real shark footage and worked on other ocean themed movies such as Orca, Jaws 2, and The Blue Lagoon.

Valerie’s late husband Ron’s cinematography and exquisite compositions have certainly stood the test of time. From the birth of scuba with...

"Playing with Sharks", directed by Sally Aitken for National Geographic Documentary Films, is part of Nat Geo's "SharkFest 2021", streaming July 23, 2021 on Disney+:

"...Valerie Taylor's life's work since the 1950's has become the basis for much of what we know about sharks today. Through remarkable underwater archival footage, along with interviews with Valerie herself, 'Playing with Sharks' follows this daring ocean explorer's trajectory from champion spearfisher to passionate shark protector. 

"From the birth of 'cage diving' to 'Jaws' hysteria to the dawn of cageless shark diving, Valerie became a trailblazing advocate for the ocean's most maligned and misunderstood creatures..." 

Click the images to enlarge...

Universal Pictures’ ninth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise more than set the pace at the Australian box office on the weekend, raking in nearly $9 million, including an opening day total of $1.48 million.

The film’s opening overtakes Warner Bros.’ Godzilla vs. Kong as the highest of any film post-Covid, and is only slightly below that of The Fate of the Furious, which took $10 million over the Easter long weekend in 2017.

Director Justin Lin’s latest contribution to the saga has Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) leading a quiet life off the grid with Letty and his son, Little Brian, when a threat forces him to confront the sins of his past in order to save the ones he loves most.

F9 shared its opening day with Madman Films’ local documentary Valerie Taylor: Playing With Sharks, which took in $39,403 from 64 screens, or $73,474 with previews.

Sydney’s Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace...

Sally Aitken’s Playing With Sharks, the Sundance title about pioneering marine conservationist Valerie Taylor, is set to open newportFILM’s lineup of documentaries for its 12th annual summer series, newportFILM Outdoors.

The outdoor film showcase will close with Corey McLean’s Havana Libre, which portrays a drive to legitimize surfing in Cuba.

The June 17 to Sept. 9 documentary lineup also includes Questlove’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) from Searchlight, Jeremy Workman’s Lily Topples the World from discovery+ and Greenwich Entertainment, and Mariem Pérez Riera’s festival favorite Rita Moreno: The Girl Who Just Decided to Go ...

Sally Aitken’s Playing With Sharks, the Sundance title about pioneering marine conservationist Valerie Taylor, is set to open newportFILM’s lineup of documentaries for its 12th annual summer series, newportFILM Outdoors.

The outdoor film showcase will close with Corey McLean’s Havana Libre, which portrays a drive to legitimize surfing in Cuba.

The June 17 to Sept. 9 documentary lineup also includes Questlove’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) from Searchlight, Jeremy Workman’s Lily Topples the World from discovery+ and Greenwich Entertainment, and Mariem Pérez Riera’s festival favorite Rita Moreno: The Girl Who Just Decided to Go ...

When Sally Aitken’s Playing with Sharks opens in Australian cinemas next week, it will cap a period of significant milestones for WildBear Entertainment.

The life story of pioneering scuba diver Valerie Taylor has already made a splash internationally, having been chosen as one of only 10 films for the World Cinema Documentary Competition section at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

After the festival, National Geographic Documentary Films swept on the worldwide rights. Other screenings have included the Earth Focus Environmental Film Festival in the US, as well as this year’s Gold Coast Film Festival.

The selections are a strong endorsement for the work of WildBear, which restored, cleaned, scanned, and remastered archived 16 and 35 mm film footage captured across a 50-year period to create the film.

Producer Bettina Dalton was central to the process, having spent more than 20 years archiving Taylor’s material.

WildBear Entertainment CEO Michael Tear said...

Rooftop Films Returns for 25th Anniversary Summer Series in NYC

Rooftop Films, the non-profit organization and film community celebrated as New York’s home for independent films, announced the return of their annual Rooftop Films Summer Series.

Among the films set to screen are Janicza Bravo’s “Zola,” presented by A24 on the lawn in Fort Greene Park, and “Once Upon a Time in Queens,” ESPN’s new series detailing the uniquely wild championship run of the 1986 Mets.

Joshua Rofé’s “Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed,” and Sally Aitken’s “Playing with Sharks,” are the documentaries will also screen when the series begins June 17 at Green-Wood Cemetery.

The screenings will follow all CDC and state guidelines which allow for more New Yorkers to gather safely for cultural events. The Rooftop Films Summer Series is presented by SundanceTV.

The Summer Series will run from June 17th through mid-September and...

This summer, Disney+ is your family headquarters for the ultimate no-stress streaming night guaranteed. With a fresh batch of weekly Disney+ Original Series episodes for the whole family, a New to Disney+ movie of the week, and curated seasonal favorites to relive again and again, Disney+ is your passport to streaming adventures this summer.

Beginning Friday, June 4, the latest feature film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Raya and the Last Dragon, kicks off the Summer of Disney+ and will be available to all subscribers at no additional cost, along with the critically-acclaimed short film, Us Again. Fans will want to tune in weekly to find out what happens next to the God of Mischief in Marvel Studios' Loki, the monsters of Monstropolis in Monsters at Work, and the crime-solving, dog-loving Turner family in Turner & Hooch. Families looking for global adventures can be transported to the Italian Riviera in Luca,...