A faulty documentary on transsexual tennis star (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – "Renee," Eric Drath's documentary about transsexual tennis star Renee Richards and her battle to play as a woman in the 1977 U.S. Open, is as fascinating as it is frustrating.

Made for ESPN Films and shown in the current Los Angeles Film Fest prior to broadcast later this year, the film brings you up-to-date on a personality who once dominated headlines but has now largely faded from public view.

Drath tries to get to the bottom of two people, Richard Raskin, who was born in 1934 into a comfortable upper middle-class existence, and Renee -- "French for 're-born,'" she reminds -- following Raskin's gender reassignment surgery in 1975.

Richards has written two autobiographies and seen two movies made about her life, the TV movie "Second Serve" starring Vanessa Redgrave and now this one. Yet she remains elusive. This enigmatic quality isn't just about the schizophrenia of Dick and Renee but about the contractions and self-doubts each possessed.

Drath, who comes from a tennis-loving family, remembers as a boy Dr. Raskin, an eminent eye doctor who treated his sister, yet later appeared in a skirt at the U.S. Open, and wants to find out what happened. Good luck.

Observing Richards in an interview today and then in old footage and old interviews, one clearly observes a war going on within this person, not so much between male and female, as between what one friends calls the "private person," who is extremely wary of all this attention, and a headstrong and arrogant individual who craves the limelight.

How else to explain a person who, having undergone gender reassignment, a name change and a switch of coasts from New York to California in order to live anonymously, suddenly wants to resume a tennis career. (Dick reached the final of the men's national 35-and-over tennis championships in 1972.) No one familiar with tennis, a friend tries to tell her, will fail to recognize Dick Raskind's serve no matter how she dresses. RenOe won't listen. Then a local southern California reporter does a little digging and her cover is blown.

One detects more than a little regret over the impact the sex transition had on others in Renee's life although apparently none over the surgery itself. She can be a little evasive on-camera but is willing to express doubts now about the 1977 New York Supreme Court decision that allowed her to play in the U.S. Open without having to submit to sex test.

The film's main focus is on the son Richards had during a brief marriage to a fashion model. A curt Nicholas Raskin does appear on camera briefly to answer questions. He still calls Renee his father and labels her decision to abandon her family for the sex reassignment "selfish." Yet they seem to be close.

On the other hand, Renee talks about her son's drug and alcohol problems although none is evident during his interviews. He is clearly a restless and disturbed man, who still resents the teasing he took as a schoolboy over his father's sudden notoriety.

Nick's mother evidently refused to cooperate as she is scarcely mentioned and never appears. There are other gaps. No mention is made of Richards' Jewishness, which apparently made him feel like an outsider in the WASPY Ivy League schools he attended. He excelled as an athlete as well as a medical student, yet broke off his one serious romantic relationship.

He traveled to Europe as a woman and even arrived in Casablanca, where the only surgeon in the world to specialize in gender reassignment operated a clinic. Then Dick chickened out. He returned to New York, married, fathered a son and only when he feared his own suicide did he have the operation.

One final gap has to do with Dick and Renee's sex life. This comes up only once and with it comes the surprising admission to "sex escapades" with men and women but that Renee never found the love with men that Dick found with women. Say what? No follow-up questions to that?

In person today, the rangy and angular six-foot-two woman still struggles to suppress the alpha male that Dick once was. The practice of medicine -- Richards by all accounts is an even better doctor than tennis player -- sustains her life and, she says, keep her sane. But when speaking of her son or the problems she caused for those close to her, a melancholy settles over her and the film.

One cannot know if more time devoted to interviewing Richards or the casting a wider net to bring in more voices belonging to friends, colleagues or experts in transsexualism might have brought more clarity or understanding to the story of Renee Richards. For in the end, this movie adds to the mystery rather than solves it.

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Southern documentary an exalted endeavor (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – First-time writer-director Robert Persons establishes himself as a maverick personality with his lyrical collage documentary, "General Orders No. 9," which opens Friday in limited release.

An elegiac contemplation of the price of progress in the Deep South and its heavy toll on nature, history and community, the film plays more like a moody art installation than a conventional exploration of the clash between environment and urban development.

Screened at a number of second-tier festivals over the past several months, including Slamdance, this is unquestionably an exalted endeavor. It no doubt will find passionate admirers who respond to its haunting poetry, its hushed solemnity and mournful view of the irreversible damage wrought by the contemporary world. Others are likely to reject the film as a ponderous sermon with a too-cramped field of vision. Either way, however, the meticulous, artisanal craftsmanship and conviction Persons brings to his thesis are difficult to dismiss.

Persons' fascination with maps, patterns, shapes and symmetry informs the work in both structure and content. The principal refrain of the narration, read with somber gravity by William Davidson, is "Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road." Also central is the star-and-satellite relationship of courthouse to town to county, with the weather vane at the top of the courthouse clock tower piercing the center of an intersection within many intersections.

Any harmony in that configuration was shattered when the interstates were built, transforming a neat grid into a chaotic web of interconnected veins. "The interstate does not serve, it possesses," intones Davidson.

Chris Marker appears to be a significant influence, but the spiritual bent in evidence also gives the film a vague tonal kinship to Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life." There's a deep personal investment in the material, which Persons reportedly spent 11 years developing. But where Malick considers the soul of man, Persons' concern is the soul of the land. The film's specific geographic focus is the triangle of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, bordered on the east by the Mississippi River and on the west by the Savannah River.

As Davidson's voice ruminates on the metamorphosis of these tribal lands into sprawling, concrete hubs, Persons' exquisite camerawork caresses remnants of the past -- coins, bones, artifacts, fossils, faded family portraits -- or trains its still, serene gaze on gorgeous images of rural tranquility.

Over Chris Hoke's ambient music, the narration suggests that echoes of the war fought 100 years before this generation was born can still be heard, and Persons' shots of weathered graveyards reinforce that claim. The title -- a reference to Robert E. Lee's post-surrender address to his troops, issued at Appomattox courthouse -- appears to allude to land ceding to industry. But there's more emotionality than reasoning behind the film's formula of nature = good/urban development = bad.

The desecration of "a world covered over" and the rumblings of the past as "something pushing up against the surface of things" are emphasized in brooding Atlanta cityscapes, often digitally animated to heighten the sense of invasion by alien elements. Derelict structures and sterile, empty corridors portend a future with no place for humanity. These sequences are fluidly integrated by editor (and producer) Phil Walker to mirror the stately feel of symphonic movements.

Persons expresses his bereavement for communion and belonging -- concepts that have grown more abstract as progress marches on. His melancholy film urges us to look at the land rendered invisible by relentless construction; to treasure the remaining patches of wilderness and the totems of those who came before; to reassess the deceptions of modern life and appreciate again the constancy and truth of nature.

Those are all noble sentiments, eloquently expressed. But despite the film's beauty, such an earnestly romantic view of a world gone wrong needs to take a moment to weigh the gains against the losses. Without that balance, its wounded sanctification seems simplistic.

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Civil war documentary told with power and grace (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – At once impressionistic and precise, "The Tiniest Place" (El Lugar mas pequeno) is a beautifully rendered memory piece that insists on the necessity of memory. The focus is a remote village in the mountains of El Salvador, decimated in the country's civil war of the 1980s and rebuilt by its surviving residents. When they first returned, one woman notes, the frogs sang. She also recalls the bones and body parts they had to gather and cart away -- the remains of guerrillas and national guard soldiers, enemies intermingled.

Such is the balance between hope and despair, a potent poetics, in Tatiana Huezo Sanchez's first feature-length documentary. Screening this week at the Los Angeles Film Festival, "Place" has the historical insight and visual eloquence to ensure not only further fest berths but also an ardent critical response that could bolster an art-house release in the hands of the right distributor.

The Salvador-born and Mexico-raised director spent two months in Cinquera, her grandmother's native village, and the intimacy and trust she established with the townspeople is evident in every frame. Her decision to record only the audio of their testimony was an essential ingredient of that trust, and it shapes the piece in a brilliant way. Working with two editors, Huezo Sanchez layers the villagers' thoughtful, sometimes harrowing voiceover recollections with cinematographer Ernesto Pardo's fluent footage of them as they go about their daily lives -- lives most Westerners would call simple, devoid as they are of electronic gadgets. The lucent imagery and rich sound design make the verdant setting immediate.

The villagers find meaning and joy in their connection to the land, which they've worked for generations without owning. Gradually, their stories pinpoint the moments of awakening that separated "the aware" from "the sleepers" as war spread across the country. Residents recall the terrors and atrocities they endured, the choices they made: toddlers who saw their mothers beaten and raped, teens who joined the guerrillas, families who hid for two years in a startlingly narrow cave, revisited with the filmmakers.

"Closure" is not a part of these Salvadorans' vocabulary; rather than expecting to recover from their losses, they carry them with a sense of clarity: insomnia for one man, nightmares for another, but also the hard-won knowledge that "a people with memory is more difficult to oppress." In Nuevo Cinquera, a piece of a military helicopter is prominently displayed, as is a mural that pays tribute to the village's dead.

Just as the residents of this town honor the most difficult moments of their lives, Huezo Sanchez and her astute film honor their will to live, and the way unquenchable grief informs their joy. Framing her observations subtly yet with full impact, she's there when that insomniac, who once served as lookout for government soldiers, tends his pregnant cow, and when a woman who had to bury the mutilated body of her daughter lovingly coaxes a hen to incubate eggs not her own.

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Documentary: Still Standing - How to Never Say 'I Give Up'!

Imagine being bedridden for a quarter of a century and yet being unstoppable. Rajinder Johar is one such man who has spent the best years of his life on a bed and never let his disability come in the way of living a full life.

Still Standing A Documentary on Rajinder Johar

A documentary exploring the life of Rajinder Johar, 'Still Standing' is one of the most awe- inspiring tales you'd ever experience. Shot as a result of a professionally rivalry in 1986, Rajinder Johar was pronounced hundred percent disabled by doctors in the months following the unfortunate incident. Mulling over the cold blooded heinous action on the part of a former colleague, questioning destiny, blaming God and falling in the deep recesses of the darkness of one's own heart life could have been over for Johar but he chose not to fall prey to anything like that.

Instead Rajinder Johar decided to change the way the world looked at disability.

Written, directed and produced by Pankaj Johar, Still Standing explores how the filmmaker's father has been working relentless to help other disabled people stand on their feet. Uplifting not only their spirits but transforming their lives by guiding them to become self-reliant, the documentary shows how one man has single-handedly helped changed mindsets.

Worth Noticing in Still Standing

A highly emotional film Still Standing is one of the most poignant documentaries you'd see and yet it never becomes preachy. Working on two parallels Still Standing, besides being the story of a father and a shining beacon of hope for thousands of people, also follows a group of disabled individuals and highlights the changes in their lives once they come in contact with Rajinder Johar and the effect it has on their lives.

What separates Still Standing from most of the documentaries made by family members is that somewhere they tend to become overtly familiar. Even though a son would know his father best and a son, undoubtedly, would be the best person to chronicle the life of a father, a son could also be the wrong person to make such a film due to his proximity with the subject.

Pankaj Johar's biggest achievement has been his strength to view his own father's life and work from a very objective point of view. Never once do you get a feeling about the sheer difficulties the family would have gone through and yet you know the pain that close and immediate family would have suffered. Rather the entire journey of Rajinder Johar's life and his work in the disability sector has been told more like a personal reportage more than anything else.

A nation where the majority of its 60 million disabled population survives below the poverty line; Rajinder Johar is not only a phenomenon but also an inspiration. He started with the thought of doing something for someone who was in a similar situation and today with the help of his family and friends runs Family of Disabled, a foundation that not only counsels the physically challenged but also helps them in starting up their own trade, providing their children access to education and guiding them to find their rightful place in this world.

Someone once famously mentioned, "It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." In Pankaj Johar's case it's equally important to everyone to know the man his father really is. A self-financed documentary that is a labor of love, Still Standing is a celebration of a life that didn't let anything stop it from living.

Note: For more information about how to contact Pankaj Johar or to know more about Family of Disabled please visit our site.

I am a Delhi-based author who writes for Buzzintown.com. To know more about Family of Disabled or latest movies in Pune please visit movies.Buzzintown.com.

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Crohn's Disease Documentary & Eating Guide - TrueGuts

True Guts is an award winning documentary and is recommended by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (ccfa). It is a personal recollection of how crohns disease has affected young people beyond the medical facts.

Check it out!