Stranger Than Fiction kicked off its six-week Jonathan Demme retrospective on Tuesday night, welcoming a full house of Talking Heads fans ready to experience Stop Making Sense on the big screen.  The last time the Heads ever performed for an audience, Stop Making Sense Was filmed over the course of four Hollywood nights.  Demme’s 1984 classic is a living, breathing testament to the power of music, the brilliance of David Byrne and the Talking Heads, and how the next best thing to a live concert is a beautifully shot film of a live concert.

“Have I told you about my train film?”
–Albert Maysles

“Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery – it’s the sincerest form of learning.” – George Bernard Shaw

Using fragments of animation to manifest the frenetic energy of what director Gabriel London calls a “comic book style size of life,” THE MIND OF MARK DEFRIEST surpasses every possible threshold of pain that has a conceivable expression within the human condition. The film is the culmination of a 14-year process that began when director Gabriel London started researching the nationwide issue of prison rape. After connecting with the organization “Stop Prison Rape,” London poured through 15 years of letters from escape artist Mark DeFriest. Known as Houdini for his escape attempts and jailbreaks, DeFriest was thrown into solitary confinement for 26 out of his 30 years (and counting) in prison. DeFriest has been tortured, brutally gang-raped, and denied sunlight for years at a time. To survive in prison, heterosexual DeFriest created an alterego, “Wendy,” and dressed the part for protection. He witnessed the brutal murder by correctional officers of Frank Valdez and was transferred to a new prison for protection. Time and time again, the Florida Commissioners reviewing his parole of near perfect behavior after decades of escapes hemmed and hawed because his punishment wasn’t enough. Former Florida State Prison Warden Ron McAndrew says in the film, “We turned a low level non-violent offender into what Mark has become. We failed Mark DeFriest.”

“If we as a society are interested in protection, than we should be trying to get it right in justice.”

–Laura Ricciardi 

“It was necessary for us to go to these places where history was being made and say let’s have that alternative record.”

–Skip Blumberg, Videofreex member

OXD captures the terrific battle of fear that lives within each performer. Even when there is fear, they jump. Over, and over, and over again they have practiced, learned, and executed actions that interrupt their fears. They demonstrate in OXD that despite their fears, they have developed a muscle memory dictating that their movements be incisive and without hesitation. Thus while it’s out of the ordinary to, for instance, jump flat on one’s face countless times, a Streb dancer’s movement is the antithesis of recklessness; it’s the highest art of freedom and spontaneity.

Directed by Jeff Malmberg and produced by Chris Shellen, MARWENCOL, the 2010 winner of the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW, is a doorway into the imagination of Mark Hogancamp, a man whose memory was kicked out of him in a vicious attack that left him in a coma. In true Stranger Than Fictionfashion, MARWENCOL is a departure from standard societal expectations of what therapy looks like. Hogancamp’s construction of a miniature and elaborate World War II town and the stories held within were about reconstructing the thing most important to his sense of self: his imagination.

At once electric and heartbreaking, Director Amy Berg’s Janis: Little Girl Blue reveals a behind the scenes portrait of rock n’ roll trailblazer Janis Joplin. The story is told through interviews with former bandmates, music and showbiz personalities, and family, friends, and lovers from different paths in her life. These interviews, and the intimacy conveyed in the recreation of Joplin’s voice by singer Cat Power bring her profound legacy to life.

The cinematography throughout SHERPA is arresting and formidable; interspersed time lapse sequences of the space that Mount Everest inhabits illuminates the ultimate realization of life and death. The same crystal blue skies decorated by the ebb and flow of a cloud’s life cycle are pierced with the recovery of lifeless bodies that helicopters lift from the ice rubble after the disaster strikes, capturing the fragility of life, and the intimacy and sorrow of loss. SHERPA reveals the way in which the Sherpas both surrender to and possess a dignified command of Chomolungma, believing that the mountain is not something to be conquered, but revered and respected.

In 2007, NFL quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced to prison for his horrific operation of a dog fighting ring. Twenty-two pit bulls were rescued as living evidence following a debate surrounding their euthanization, a stance PETA was cemented to. The NYC premiere of The Champions tells the story of the rehabilitation and recovery of these dogs, overturning widely held misconceptions that have stigmatized the pit bull.

Fantastically stylized, fun, and clever, Women He’s Undressed is a celebration of one of the greatest costume designers of all time. Told through reenactments, quintessential Hollywood footage, and interviews with the likes of Angela Lansbury, Jane Fonda, and Ann Roth, everything about Women He’s Undressed creates and comes from the essence of Orry: “young and wild and free,” said his assistant Ann Roth.

An admirer of composer Richard Wagner, Gold appreciates “a tune that keeps showing itself in all these endless ways.” The engagement between Gold and the chefs of his reviews is this tune, and it reverberates in endless ways throughout LA. The chefs interviewed in the film have full hearts for Gold, sharing that his reviews not only ushered in new business that augmented a strong local base of customers, but that he articulated the essence of each chef in ways that they had not yet understood or articulated for themselves.

“If I could give anyone advice, do not make impetuous decisions—don’t rush into the future.”
–Tomas Young

If you’ve heard about SUNSHINE SUPERMAN, it’s likely you’ve seen the word “exhilaration” attached to its many reviews. This is because exhilaration is intractable from a film that dives into the life of aerial cinematographer and BASE jumper Carl Boenish. Set to perfectly placed music, SUNSHINE SUPERMAN steeps the viewer into the fullness of the present moment as it bears witness to Carl and friends running off cliffs and leaping off buildings. They jump charged with excitement, carving through gravity, gliding through the air with grace and ease, then bobbing and sailing down to the ground from the drag and flow of their parachutes. Upon landing, their entire beings are ballooned with such joy that they could pop. This exhilaration extends itself throughout the film, because SUNSHINE SUPERMAN doesn’t just harness that joy, it unfurls it.

Aileen leaves its audience in a murky wake that questions how society treats the incarcerated, views the death penalty, and addresses mental health. Aileen exposes the surreptitious ties between the media, the election process, and the United States justice system. It begs a deeper, honest exploration of the driving forces behind what justice is, and what it looks like in American society.

“I forget many things in my lifetime but my darling I won't forget you. –Johnny Browne

Named by his absent father for composer Bela Bartok, Fleck dismissed Bartok’s work for years, but began listening to the Hungarian pianist during the year he spent prepping for his concerto. In the film he considers that “the thing about Bartok that’s so cool is that he writes like an improviser, it’s wild and complicated it’s embracing the reality that life throws at you.”

From faces he’s seen that are “deeply marked by life,” to horrific oil spills and the ensuing fires that expelled “smoke so dense the sun couldn’t cut through it,” directors Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (Salgado’s oldest son) and Wenders honor Salgado’s work with the same reverence that permeates the Brazilian photographer’s images, reflecting his connection to the natural world and his relationships with the people he photographed.

Considered the greatest trumpet player there is, “You hear Clark, you hear his life; now only a master can do that and Clark is a master,” Herbie Hancock recalled in the film. An audience member asked Hicks about the lessons he learned during the making of the film. “When I first met Clark and I was studying with him I would always be like, why does this guy care about me? And then when I started doing these interviews with Herbie Hancock and all these guys (Quincy Jones, Diana Reeves, Wynton Marsalis), they’d say the same thing, they were always baffled, and I’ve since found out that that’s part of Clark’s trick, is that if a person of that level takes interest in you, you have to rise up, you have to, there’s nothing you can do about it, if you fail for that guy, you’re in big trouble!”