Hooligan Sparrow

Director: Nanfu Wang
Run time: 84 min.

 "Budding filmmakers can take away a valuable lesson from the documentary 'Hooligan Sparrow': You don’t need fancy camera equipment (or in some instances, even a camera) if you’re passionate enough about the story you want to tell. . . . Nanfu Wang’s urgent, compelling portrait of a group of Chinese women’s rights activists led by Ye Haiyan (nicknamed Hooligan Sparrow) is relayed by any means necessary, which happens to include cellphones, micro-cameras hidden in eyeglasses and digital voice recorders."

—Michael Rechtshaffen, L.A. Times (full review)

The Return (2016)

Directors: Kelly Duane De La Vega & Katie Galloway
Run time: 83 min.

"In 2012, California amended its 'Three Strikes' law--one of the harshest criminal sentencing policies in the country. The passage of Prop. 36 marked the first time in U.S. history that citizens voted to shorten sentences of those currently incarcerated. Within days, the reintegration of thousands of 'lifers' was underway. The Return examines this unprecedented reform through the eyes of those on the front lines—prisoners suddenly freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping navigate complex transitions, and attorneys and judges wrestling with an untested law. At a moment of reckoning on mass incarceration, what can California's experiment teach the nation?"

—Distributor's description

I Voted? (2016)

Director: Jason Grant Smith
Run time:  77 min.

"Jason Grant Smith, a young independent filmmaker, asks, 'Are we the country we think we are?' in this timely, provocative, and important exploration of America’s voting procedures. His initial interest in the unlikely primary victory of an unknown candidate for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina morphs into a general investigation of current voting systems, which are likely to be vulnerable to error and manipulation. . . . The personable narration and the use of archival images, amusing animation, and stimulating talking-head interviews make this film highly viewable and a valuable study of the most fundamental of our democratic rights." 

—Eva Elisabeth VonAncken, School Library Journal (full review)

Weiner (2017)

Directors: Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg
Run time:  96 min.
Call number:  E901.1.W45 W45 2016

"Weiner is arguably the best documentary about American politics in many years. (It was assembled from more than 400 hours of footage shot by the filmmakers over the course of the four-month campaign.) But it is more than that as well: a detailed study of narcissism and absent impulse-control; an object lesson in the dangers of offering one’s faith and time to a flawed candidate; and an intimate, occasionally excruciatingly, portrait of a marriage."
—Christopher Orr, The Atlantic (full review here)