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Here’s a look at this week’s biggest premieres, parties and openings in Los Angeles and New York, including red carpets for Cobra Kai, Pinocchio, Gutsy and Growing Up.

Pinocchio premiere

Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans and director Robert Zemeckis premiered their new live-action adaptation at the Walt Disney Studios lot on Wednesday.

Luke Evans, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo and Robert Zemeckis Alan Bergman, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Cynthia Erivo, Bob Chapek, CEO of Walt Disney Studios, and Sean Bailey, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production

Cobra Kai season five premiere

The fifth season of Netflix’s hit martial arts series was unveiled on Wednesday at L.A. State Historic Park, with stars William Zabka, Ralph Macchio and Martin Kove.

Griffin Santopietro, Thomas Ian Griffith, Dallas Dupree Young, Khalil Everage, Hannah Kepple, Yuji Okumoto, Joe Seo,...

Apple TV+ has released the trailer for ‘Gutsy,’ the highly anticipated eight-part documentary event following Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton as they celebrate the gutsy women who inspire them.

Set to premiere on Friday, September 9. Based on The New York Times bestselling book, ‘The Book of Gutsy Women,’ the docuseries features Hillary and Chelsea as they embark on a thought-provoking journey to speak with pioneering women artists, activists, community leaders and everyday heroes who show us what it truly means to be gutsy.

Joining the Clintons are some of their personal heroes, extraordinary, courageous and resilient women who have made an impact in their community and on the world, including Glennon Doyle, Dr. Jane Goodall, Mariska Hargitay, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Kim Kardashian, Megan Thee Stallion, Amber Ruffin, Amy Schumer, Gloria Steinem, Wanda Sykes, Symone (aka Reggie Gavin), Abby Wambach, Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints), and many more. “Gutsy” shows...

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are playing with bees, putting out fires and rappelling down cliffs with pioneering women in the new trailer for “Gutsy,” an eight-part documentary event hitting Apple TV+ on Sept. 9.

Based the book “The Book of Gutsy Women,” the docuseries follows the mother-daughter duo as they celebrate the women who inspire them. Together, the duo hits the road to embark on a thought-provoking journey with women artists, activists, community leaders and everyday heroes.

Joining the Clintons in their conversations are Glennon Doyle, Dr. Jane Goodall, Mariska Hargitay, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Kim Kardashian, Megan Thee Stallion, Amber Ruffin, Amy Schumer, Gloria Steinem, Wanda Sykes, Symone (aka Reggie Gavin), Abby Wambach, Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) and more.

The series is produced for Apple by HiddenLight Productions in association with Left/Right LLC. “Gutsy” is executive produced by Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton alongside Johnny Webb, Siobhan Sinnerton, Roma Khanna,...

Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton are interviewing women they admire.

The former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State leads “Gutsy,” an eight-part AppleTV+ docuseries based on the Clintons’ New York Times bestselling book “The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience.” The series premieres September 9.

Throughout “Gutsy,” the Clintons’ personal heroes ranging from Kim Kardashian, Mariska Hargitay, Megan Thee Stallion, Amy Schumer, and Gloria Steinem are interviewed, plus fellow mother-daughter duo Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson. Female artists, activists, community leaders, and everyday heroes are also included, with Glennon Doyle, Dr. Jane Goodall, Amber Ruffin, Wanda Sykes, Symone (aka Reggie Gavin), Abby Wambach, and Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) also appearing as guests.

“Being in front of the camera in this series was kind of a leap of faith for me,” Hillary Clinton told Entertainment Weekly about the series. “It was outside my comfort zone.

Apple TV+ has dropped the trailer for Gutsy, an eight-part docuseries that follows Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton as they celebrate the gutsy women who inspire them.

Based on The New York Times bestselling book The Book of Gutsy Women, the series features the Clintons meeting with women artists, activists, community leaders and everyday heroes. It will premiere September 9.

Joining the Clintons are some of their personal heroes including Glennon Doyle, Dr. Jane Goodall, Mariska Hargitay, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Kim Kardashian, Megan Thee Stallion, Amber Ruffin, Amy Schumer, Gloria Steinem, Wanda Sykes, Symone (aka Reggie Gavin), Abby Wambach, Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) and more.

Produced for Apple by HiddenLight Productions in association with Left/Right LLC, Gutsy is executive produced by the Clintons alongside Johnny Webb, Siobhan Sinnerton, Roma Khanna, Ken Druckerman, Banks Tarver and Anna Chai, who also serves as showrunner. Producers are Kevin Vargas and Claire Featherstone,...

Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea are hitting the road in their new docuseries “Gutsy,” talking to inspiring women and trying bold new activities along the way. In the first trailer for the series, we see the former women of the White House rappelling over waterfalls, putting out fires — and bowling with Wanda Sykes.

According to Apple TV+, the series “shows Hillary and Chelsea as you’ve never seen them before, revealing their special mother-daughter bond and the unique, multi-generational way they approach the important and timely issues highlighted in each episode.” Those issues are raised as part of “a thought-provoking journey to speak with pioneering women artists, activists, community leaders and everyday heroes who show us what it truly means to be gutsy.”

We see a few of those famous faces in the footage, including Kate Hudson and her mom Goldie Hawn, Kim Kardashian and more. But, the series isn’t limited to actors.

CNN films is delving into shorter subjects.

The CNN non-fiction banner plans to unveil four new short documentaries., two of which will debut Saturday, July 31, and two on Saturday, August 7. Each 25-minute title examines a unique American community or sub-culture, and will be introduced by Anderson Cooper. Scheme Engine, a minority-owned studio and production company, is the creative partner for CNN Films for the doc shorts.

“This lets us play a bit more in the documentary space,” said Alexandra Hannibal, director of program development for CNN and an executive producer on each of the four films. “These are more like snapshots into different communities and spaces that we are cognizant of but haven’t had the opportunity to really dig deep into.”

On July 31 at 9 p.m. eastern, CNN will show “58 Hours” The Baby Jessica Story” and “Super Reviewers: Rate, Review, Request.” The former examines the aftermath of the rescue of 18-month-old Jessica McClure,...

Documentaries about the fight for pay equity and America’s first Black variety TV show will help anchor the winter lineup of Independent Lens

The Emmy Award-winning weekly series boasts several films that will make their broadcast debuts, including Jared Leto’s “A Day in the Life of America; Melissa Haizlip’s “Mr. Soul!” and Shalini Kantayya’s “Coded Bias.” Many of these films, which will air on PBS between January and March, deal with issues of racial discrimination and gender bias.

“This Independent Lens lineup offers a stimulating and immersive slate of films that illuminate the powerful forces impacting our country today,” said Lois Vossen, executive producer of Independent Lens, in a statement. “From gender equality, to pay equity, to racial justice, there is an urgency, grace, and optimism to these documentaries and the topics they take on that is suited to the challenging times in which we live.

1091 Pictures has acquired worldwide digital rights to A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem, a feature documentary directed and produced by Yu Gu, written and produced by Elizabeth Ai and co-produced by Jin Yoo-Kim. The film, which had its world premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, will be available to buy on platforms January 26, 2021, and rent February 2.

The doc follows Lacy, an Oakland Raiders cheerleader who sued the team in 2014 for wage theft, and Maria, a former cheerleader for the Buffalo Bills who filed a similar suit with three others, as they fight for fair compensation from the NFL amid a structure in which some cheerleaders are compensated at less than minimum wage, compared with the teams’ players, mascots and concession workers. In the process, they reveal a culture of toxic masculinity and the devaluation of women’s labor in society. The Raiders eventually settled their suit and increased their cheerleaders’ pay.

1091 Pictures has acquired the digital worldwide rights to “A Woman’s Work: The NFL Cheerleader Problem,” a documentary that highlights the pay gaps and toxic workplaces faced by cheerleaders in the NFL.

The film directed and produced by Yu Gu and written and produced by Elizabeth Ai premiered at Tribeca in 2019, and 1091 will make “A Woman’s Work” available for purchase on January 26 and for rental on February 2, 2021.

“A Woman’s Work” follows two former NFL cheerleaders, one for the (then) Oakland Raiders and another for the Buffalo Bills, as they fight for fair compensation after they received less than minimum wage for their work. One of the cheerleaders, Lacy, is seen as she’s struggling under mounting debt after paying out of pocket for beauty and transportation in order to fulfill her dream job of working with the NFL.

We see her hire an all-female employment law firm...

Updated with list of new fellows, 7 Am: Firelight Media has announced newest group of 12 Fellows selected for the 2019-21 Firelight Documentary Lab. Several of them will attend at the Documentary Lab’s 10th Anniversary Gala tonight in Harlem.

Here is the list of new fellows and their projects; read details of the program below:

Colleen Thurston

Drowned Land, Oklahoma is a land of scenic lakes, ideal for recreation and weekend getaways. But these lakes are man-made, a result of the federal government flooding private property and the forced displacement of the people who called the lands beneath home.

Dru Holley

Buffalo Soldiers of the Pacific Northwest is the story of African-American soldiers who served between the Civil War and the 20th century and their impact in the Pacific Northwest.

Emily Cohen Ibañez

In Fruits of Labor, a Mexican-American teenager dreams of graduating high school when increased Ice raids in her...

Everything in this world comes down to control and that’s what makes the work being done by minority classes so important today. When those in power look the same, there’s little room to want to look outside their sphere of influence and recognize their impact upon anyone else but themselves. That’s where the manipulations come in and why they’ve become as easy to perform as breathing. And it all compounds in the case of NFL cheerleaders because of how our society’s patriarchal gaze perceives them. Outsiders dismiss them as less than and that ingrained misogyny even makes it difficult for them to disagree. Turn a fight for equal rights into a display of ungratefulness and exploitation is mistaken for reward.

That’s pretty much the defense presented by the NFL and its football teams that still employ cheerleaders. In their minds they’re granting these...

When in 2014 Asian-American Arthur Chu appeared as a contestant in the popular game show Jeopardy!, he quickly gained quite a reputation among the American audience. Jumping from category to category he not only won eleven shows in a row, but also sparked angry voices which to this day follow him on Twitter and other social media attacking him using racial slurs and also threatening him.

However, after he lost his twelfth game, Arthur Chu decided to use his popularity on social media to publish his thoughts on various topics, ranging from sexism in nerd culture to mass shootings and the Black Lives Matter-movement. He quickly became a regular writer, for example, for the Daily Beast, and gave lectures on these topics which made him even more popular far beyond his success in Jeopardy!.

Watch This Title

In their documentary “Who is Arthur Chu?” filmmakers Yu Gu and Scott Drucker follow...

“Yellow Rose,” written, directed, and produced by Diane Paragas, was awarded the Grand Jury Award for outstanding North American narrative feature at the 35th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, which ran May 2-10.

Special Jury Awards for cinematography, actress and breakthrough performance went, respectively, to Ante Cheng for “Ms. Purple”; Maya Erskine for “Plus One”; and Eva Noblezada for “Yellow Rose.”

“Seadrift,” directed by Tim Tsai, took home the Grand Jury Award for North American documentary feature, while the jury-panelists gave Special Jury Awards to “Jaddoland,” directed by Nadia Shihab, and “Origin Story,” directed by Kulap Vilaysack.

The Grand Jury Award for international narrative feature went to “House of Hummingbird,” directed by Bora Kim. Jury Awards went to Leon Le for “Song Lang,” and to the directors ensemble of “Vai”: ‘Ofa-Ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Amberley Jo Aumua, Becs Arahanga, Dianna Fuemana, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Matasila Freshwater, Mīria George, Nicole Whippy.

If you do a job, you should be fairly compensated for it. That’s a straightforward and uncontroversial statement, and yet as proven by “A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem,” the National Football League believes it doesn’t hold true for team dancers, who have toiled for decades as de facto volunteers. Director Yu Gu’s documentary concerns two of the women who, beginning in 2014, filed class-action suits to challenge this situation which, especially in the age of #MeToo, stands out as egregiously nasty and discriminatory. Premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, it’s a tale of injustice that should speak to many.

Yu’s prime subjects are former Oakland Raiderette Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields and Buffalo Jills member Maria Pinzone, both of whom achieved their sports-dancing dreams, only to discover that they were expected to work countless hours, up to 9 months at a time, without earning a dime.

Last year, for the first time in its 25-year history, the Hot Docs film festival achieved gender parity in its slate, at a time when many other large cinema organizations were just signing – or still working towards – their versions of 50/50 by 2020, the influential gender equality model for film funding launched by the Swedish Film Institute in 2012.

This year, a whopping 54% of the 234 Hot Doc titles are female-led, from high-profile films like Rachel Lears’ “Knock Down the House,” Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s “One Child Nation,” and Petra Costa’s “The Edge of Democracy,” to provocative buzz docs such as Rama Rau’s “The Daughter Tree,” Maya Newell’s “In My Blood It Runs,” and Barbara Miller’s “#Female Pleasure.”

“Hot Docs’ audience is 67% female—we are representative of our community,” said director of programming Shane Smith. “Getting to gender parity wasn’t that difficult. When you are actually looking...

Up until recently, what it meant to be a professional female athlete in a world dominated by men wasn’t an issue that garnered high volumes of public interest, let alone national headlines. But that all changed in October 2017 when stories from the New York Times and the New Yorker detailing sexual allegations and improper workplace behavior against Harvey Weinstein ignited the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, which quickly spread beyond the entertainment world. Less than two years later, four documentary films that explore the role of gender and sexuality in male dominated sports are heading to the Tribeca Film Festival. Those docus are: Erin Lee Carr’s “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal,” Yu Gu’s “A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem,” Alex Holmes’ “Maiden” and Michael Barnett’s “Changing the Game.”

“At the Heart of Gold” explores the 2017 USA Gymnastics...

‘Mystify: Michael Hutchence’

Richard Lowenstein’s feature documentary on Michael Hutchence will have its world premiere at the 18th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from April 24 to May 5.

Produced by Lowenstein, Maya Gnyp and John Battsek for Ghost Pictures and Passion Pictures, Mystify: Michael Hutchence will screen in the documentary competition for best documentary feature, cinematography and editing.

Co-funded by Screen Australia, the film is described as an intimate look at the life of the Inxs lead singer through his many loves and demons, featuring Kylie Minogue and Helena Christensen.

Madman Entertainment is the Australian distributor and Dogwoof is handling international sales. The ABC and BBC pre-bought the film.

Lowenstein tells If the doc features live music from Inxs and Max Q, Hutchence’s only completed solo album which was a collaboration with Ollie Olsen, remixed for Atmos, plus archival footage which had been in his attic,...

Media and Hollywood have continuously underrepresented Asian Americans in our digital culture. Evidence of such bubbles over in media backlash on Twitter, whitewashing of characters in blockbuster films (“Ghost in the Shell” and “Death Note,” and those are just the most recent examples), and limited opportunity.

Arthur Chu, a champion contestant on the game show “Jeopardy!,” uses his newfound online celebrity to battle dark forces on the internet as a blogger and cultural pundit in the documentary “Who is Arthur Chu?”

Read More: Slamdance 2017: 13 Must-See Films At This Year’s Festival

The film made its world premiere at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in the Documentary Competition. The film gives a raw, unfiltered and poignant background on Chu as he comes to grips with reconciling with his estranged family as well as aiming to achieve positive change in the world.

Read More: ‘Shiners’ Trailer: Hot Docs Selection Explores...

In Jeopardy! format, the clue might go something like: “This controversial contestant won 11 games and earned almost $300,000 on this show.” The response, of course, would be: “Who is Arthur Chu?”

If the name of this 2014 winner still isn’t familiar, you may not be spending enough time watching TV or hanging out online, where Chu can sometimes be found writing about social and cultural issues for a variety of outlets. Yu Gu and Scott Drucker’s eponymous documentary relies primarily on Chu’s lower profile, post-Jeopardy! period for material, which comes off as rather uneventful and as a result could...

Now well into its second decade, the Slamdance Film Festival is gearing up for its 2017 edition. Mostly taking place at the Treasure Mountain Inn at top of Park City, Utah’s busting Main Street, Slamdance is dedicated to presenting a festival and a community designed “for filmmakers by filmmakers.”

In previous years, projects from directors like Christopher Nolan, Marc Forster, Jared Hess, Oren Peli, Benh Zeitlin, Seth Gordon, Lynn Shelton and Lena Dunham have bowed at the festival, and it’s become a fertile — if offbeat — proving ground for fresh talents. This year looks to be yet another banner one for the fest, and as such, we’ve gone on a little trip through the Slamdance slate to dig up some prime possibilities for must-see films (shorts and features!).

Ahead, check out 13 titles we’re...

Slamdance has announced the 11 narratives and eight documentaries that will comprise its 2017 lineup. The festival was established in 1995 and takes place in Park City, Utah in January — the same time and place, of course, as Sundance. 12 of the films will be world premieres, and all competition entries are directorial debuts with budgets of less than $1 million that have yet to receive stateside distribution. Next year’s edition of the festival will run from January 20–26. Full lineup below:

Read More: Watch Slamdance Selections ‘Coming To’ and ‘Courtesan,’ Thanks to Digital Bolex and Seed&Spark (Exclusive)

Narrative Features

“Aerotropolis” (Jheng-Neng Li)

“Beat Beat Heart” (Luise Brinkmann)

“Cortez” (Cheryl Nichols)

“Dave Made a Maze” (Bill Watterson)

“Dim the Fluorescents” (Daniel Warth)

“The Family” (Shumin Liu)

“Kate Can’t Swim” (Josh Helman)

“Kuro” (Joji Koyama, Tujiko Noriko)

“Weather House” (Frauke Havermann)

“Wexford Plaza” (Joyce Wong)

“Withdrawn” (Adrian Murray)

Read More: Watch the Trailer for...

Programmers at the Park City jamboree’s upcoming 23rd edition announced on Monday the 11 narrative and eight documentary selections that will play in January.

The 2017 showcase will also feature Dig (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), a platform of eight works by emerging artists working in cutting-edge digital media, while Polytechnic is a series of free workshops exploring disruptive perspectives on filmmaking from industry insiders.

“As filmmakers themselves, the Slamdance programmers and staff share the same creative spirit as the festival artists,” said Slamdance co-founder and president, Peter Baxter. “Our stories are different but our divergent attitude is the same.

“Together, we give a voice to Diy filmmaking. Empowering emerging artists is what we do, and you are about to see a great group at Slamdance 2017.”

The feature competition roster includes 16 premieres – 12 world, 3 North American and one Us. All competition films are feature directorial debuts with budgets of under $1m and without Us distribution.

Jury awards...

Plus: FilmBuff acquiresI Am Gangster; and more…

The Film Sales Company president Andrew Herwitz has acquired worldwide sales rights to Halfway ahead of its premiere at the American Black Film Festival in Miami.

Quinton Aaron from The Blind Side stars in the thriller with supporting performances by Marcus Henderson and Amy Pietz. Ben Caird wrote and directed.

“So many gems have been discovered in past years at the Abff that this seemed the perfect festival to introduce Halfway to the industry,” said Herwitz.

Tribeca Film Institute top brass have announced the second annual filmmaker retreat in partnership with the Camden...

Jacques Bonnavent's "The Gold Mine," the story of a spinster who meets her dream man online, scored jury three awards, including the best of the festival prize, at the Palm Springs International ShortFest & Short Film Festival.

The fest, which announced winners Sunday at the Camelot Theatre in Palm Springs, handed its future filmmaker award to Pierre Ferriere for "The Story of My Life."

The Panavision Grand Jury Award went to Jonathan van Tulleken's "Off Season." The festival, which concludes today, screened 314 short films.

Award winners that received a first-place prize in four categories are eligible for Oscar consideration.

A complete list of winners follows.

Jury Awards

Best Of Festival Award

The Gold Mine (La Mina de Oro) (Mexico), Jacques Bonnavent

Future Filmmaker Award

Pierre Ferriere, The Story of My Life (Toute ma Vie) (France)

Panavision Grand Jury Award

Off Season (Canada/USA), Jonathan van Tulleken

Jury Special Citation...