Docs: Even Better Than the Real Thing
Previously screened at the Newport International Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival, Grateful Dawg chronicles the buddyhood between bluegrass (or, more properly, “dawg music”) prodigy David Grisman and the late Jerry Garcia. The film features stage performances, candid footage, and (what else?) jam sessions, as well as an unreleased music video from 1991. Sony Pictures Classics has announced rolling release dates, with Austin slated for a mid-fall unspooling. (Nov. 2)… In Go Tigers! DV cameras capture the drama on and off the gridiron as the fighting footballers of Ohio’s Massillon High struggle through their 1999 season. There’s community pressure, a budget crisis threatening the school district, and unsavory moments from which helmer Kenneth A. Carlson doesn’t flinch. A crowd-pleaser at this year’s Sundance. (Sept. 21)… French documentarian Claude Lanzmann follows up 1985’s Shoah, an exhaustive, nine-hour Holocaust documentary, with Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m., the story of the prisoners’ escape at a Polish concentration camp as told by one of its survivors, Yehuda Lerner. Screened out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. (Oct. 12)… Hubertus Siegbert’s Berlin Babylon follows for a five-year period the battle for the space previously occupied by the Berlin Wall. Now it’s a prized piece of real estate, hotly contested by architects and the companies they represent. Screened (where else?) at the Berlin Film Festival. (Oct. 17)… Finally, Sandi Simcha Dubowski’s acclaimed Trembling Before G-d is a festival veteran, with stints at Berlin, Sundance, and, most recently, the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival. The film tells the story of gay and lesbian Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who are ostracized by the leaders of their faith but remain devout nonetheless (Oct. 24).
This article appears in September 21 • 2001.