Film
Jazz Baroness, a 2009 documentary film, will be featured Sunday, August 1, in the summer Best of the Boston Jewish Film Festival series at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven.
Most jazz fans have heard of Baroness Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswater, whether they realize it or not. Known familiarly as Nica, she was immortalized in compositions by such jazz masters as Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Drew and Jon Hendricks.
For Doug Liman, directing is like navigating a class five river rapid. As you see the rapid in the distance, you have 15 seconds to figure out the best course of action. There’s no time to stop and think about it; you must act on impulse. He has the same experience showing up on the set of one of his film or television shows.
It’s been nearly 400 years since Jaques in As You Like It made the observation that all the world’s a stage, but over the next few weeks, high school drama teacher Kate Murray and 16 theatre students will take the Shakespearian saying to heart as they rehearse their original musical, The Secret of the Seven Sisters, in parking lots, hallways and on beaches in order to prepare for their upcoming two-week trip to Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland, where they will stage four performances of the show.
Shooting Beauty director George Kachadorian wouldn’t mind settling for an Oscar, but his real objective is to get every student in the country to watch his 60-minute documentary. Mr. Kachadorian, along with the co-director and main subject of Shooting Beauty, Courtney Bent, also his wife, wants to engage America in frank, open conversation about disability.
Gone are the grownup gatekeepers of movie merit — kids are the audience for the weekly Cinema Circus films. So the Gazette and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival bring you the big view from the smaller viewers with weekly kid critics.
A documentary of a ballet odyssey, Dancing Across Borders, screens on Sunday, July 25, at 4 p.m. at the Capawock Theatre on Main street in Vineyard Haven, with filmmaker Anne Bass attending to join discussion after the screening.