Addie Morfoot: Last News

Addie Morfoot Contributor In “Sly,” director Thom Zimny (“Springsteen on Broadway,” “Elvis Presley: The Searcher”) captures a side of Sylvester Stallone seldom seen. The 95-minute docu exposes a relatable, vulnerable man who is often thought to be the movie characters he made iconic — Rocky Balboa or John Rambo.Born in 1946, Stallone grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen with little money and a father who might have hated him. Zimny’s docu reveals that the fraught upbringing turned out to work in Stallone’s favor when it came to Hollywood.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Writer, actor, filmmaker, studio head and media mogul Tyler Perry is the latest celebrity to be the subject of a documentary, “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story.” The title nods to Perry’s late mother, Willie Maxine Perry, who died in 2009. Directed by Armani Ortiz, the documentary is a revealing look at the entertainment behemoth’s abusive childhood, his time as a homeless playwright and his rise to media superstar. Ortiz began filming Perry in 2016, just a year after moving to Atlanta from New York to work at Tyler Perry Studios.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Documentary veterans Natalie Bullock Brown, Kirsten Johnson, Mary Lampson and Jacqueline Olive are the inaugural documentary film fellows for the documentary film in the public interest research initiative by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.As the first cohort of doc film fellows, the foursome will join the center for the fall 2023 semester. There, each fellow will conduct research and do public education activities about questions facing the documentary film field and civic information.Led by Shorenstein Center’s director Nancy Gibbs and doc filmmaker Sara Archambault, the initiative, which was established in March, will work to examine the challenges facing the documentary field and their impacts on civic life and information.“In this challenging moment for media and our information ecosystem, we are excited that the Shorenstein Center can provide the support and infrastructure to drive renewed and creative thinking about complex issues in the documentary film space,” says Gibbs.Archambault adds: “As the initiative considers the vital role of documentary film in our civic life, this group of fellows will advance research in documentary ethics, practices, pathways to audiences, and new directions for the field.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Writers and actors aren’t the only people in Hollywood grappling with the impact generative artificial intelligence will have on the entertainment industry. Documentarians are also concerned about AI and what it means for the ethical standards and practices of nonfiction filmmaking.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is the latest high-net-worth individual to get involved in the documentary business. As a producer on Waad Al-Kateab’s “We Dare to Dream,” about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Gebbia not only helped fund the project, he also played an active role in the film’s pre-production, production, and edit. “We Dare to Dream” is Al-Kateab’s second feature docu. In her first film, “For Sama,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, the Syrian director used her camera to capture her daily life during the siege of Aleppo.Gebbia produced “We Dare to Dream” alongside Violet Films’ Joanna Natasegara (“Virunga”) and Abigail Anketell-Jones (“The Edge of Democracy”) and XTR’s Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett. Angelina Jolie recently signed on as an executive producer on the project. Gebbia joins fellow philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs (Concordia Studio), Jeff Skoll (Participant Media) and Jim Swartz (Impact Partners) in the docu investment business.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Documentaries about celebrities are a dime a dozen these days. But docus about celebrities that don’t feel like infomercials and instead are raw, informative, and honest about their star subjects are few and far between. HBO Sport’s two-part docuseries “Golden Boy,” about Oscar De La Hoya, fits into the jaw-droppingly candid, no-holds-bar category.In the first three minutes of the doc, directed by Fernando Villena, the Olympic boxing gold medalist and multi-world title-winning professional boxer, who is now 50 years old, says, “Everyone thought they knew me.

Addie Morfoot Contributor With 109 narrative and documentary features, as well as a bevy of shorts, TV series, podcasts, games and live music events, the Tribeca Festival offers a wide range of media in its 22nd year.“It’s all about creating an entire festival program that harmonizes together,” says Tribeca Festival Director and VP of programming, Cara Cusuamno. “The idea of discovery is a touchpoint that we come back to quite a lot.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Corporate consolidation, along with shrinking publicity budgets and streaming services’ willingness to bury their own content, have made film festivals and series increasingly desirable to documentary filmmakers who are not only seeking distribution, but also to those nonfiction helmers who have found a platform for their work. The rocky landscape has made the competition fierce for a slot at not only top-tier festivals, but also regional film events like New York’s Rooftop Films’ Summer Series. Over the course of the last year, Rooftop Films president Dan Nuxoll received 3,500 film submissions for the nonprofit organization’s 27th annual Summer Series, which kicks off on May 25. Only 23 feature films and seven shorts were accepted. (Not all films have been announced.)

Addie Morfoot Contributor Nearly 10 years after his death, Peter O’Toole is making a return to the screen in a BritBox documentary from Jim Sheridan.The revered Irish director, known for narrative films including “My Left Foot” and “In the Name of the Father,” interviewed colleagues and family about the “Lawrence of Arabia” star for “Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba.” They range from Kenneth Branagh, Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi and Stephen Fry to ex-wife Siân Phillips and daughter Kate O’Toole. Each interview helps shed light on the actor’s complicated yet brilliant life and career. O’Toole, who grew up in England with Irish heritage, was nominated for eight Oscars, winning an honorary Academy Award in 2003. The actor was also known for his stage work and fondness for alcohol.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Busy documentarian Dawn Porter will debut her latest project, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” March 10 at SXSW. The all-archival doc, which will bow on Hulu later this year, relies on 123 hours of personal and revealing audio diaries that Lady Bird recorded during her the presidency of her husband, Lyndon Baines Johnson. The tapes, which were not publicly released until 2017, reveal the critical role the former First Lady played in LBJ’s White House as a close advisor and trusted political partner.Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson began her recording diary shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 and kept recording through her family’s departure from the White House in January 1969. Julia Sweig spent five years researching the diaries for her 2021 biography “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” which she turned into an eight-part podcast that formed the basis for Porter’s 90-minute docu.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In 2018, Network Entertainment founder Derik Murray met with Sidney Poitier to discuss making a documentary about the star’s life and career. Over the next two years, Murray established a foundation of trust with Poitier and his family, who all eventually agreed to the film. The result is “Sidney,” an Apple TV+ doc that examines the legacy of Poitier, who died earlier this year at 94. Directed by Reginald Hudlin (“The Black Godfather”), the doc was produced by Oprah Winfrey. One of the most acclaimed and recognizable movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the first Black man to receive the best actor award, Poitier was also a director and an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. The film includes interviews with Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand and Spike Lee as well as an audio-recorded interview with Poitier’s longtime friend and colleague Harry Belafonte.

Addie Morfoot ContributorIn July, “We Feed People,” Ron Howard’s National Geographic documentary about celebrity chef José Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen, received two Emmy nominations.That same month, World Central Kitchen, which cooks and delivers food to people in need following social and environmental disasters, continued its humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine. The org has set up more than 5,000 distribution points and has served more than 100 million meals since entering the country in February.The Emmy nominations offer Howard and Andrés another opportunity to discuss the docu — but also the global efforts of World Health Kitchen that they hope will serve as a call to action, big or small.

Addie Morfoot ContributorDawn Porter and Nicole Newnham’s four-part docuseries “37 Words,” debuting June 21 on ESPN, celebrates the 50th anniversary of Title IX while also exploring the current struggle to maintain and evolve the 1972 law that forbids discrimination based on gender.Prior to 1972, gender discrimination was commonplace in education and athletics. Physical activity for girls and women was cast as unfeminine, and while schools poured money and other resources into programs for male students, budding female athletes were left to fend for themselves.

Addie Morfoot ContributorBack in the mid-1980’s, Oliver Stone met with famed financier Carl Icahn about a movie he was writing called “Wall Street.” The meeting provided the director with much of the inspiration for the film’s villain Gordon Gekko. Stone speaks about the meeting in HBO’s documentary “Icahn: The Restless Billionaire,” debuting on Feb.

Addie Morfoot ContributorIn the past decade, the inclusion of streaming services in the documentary market has made it increasingly harder for smaller docus struggling with funding to break into the nonfiction feature Oscar race. But in spite of the deep pockets they are up against, a number of cash-strapped docs inevitably make it onto the shortlist every year. This year was no exception.Jessica Beshir’s “Faya Dayi” (Janus Films, pictured above), Camilla Nielsson’s “President” (Greenwich Entertainment) and Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas’ “Writing with Fire” (Music Box Films) are three films on this year’s feature doc shortlist that are up against competitors with multi-million-dollar campaign budgets being paid by media and tech conglomerates including Apple, Netflix, ViacomCBS, the Walt Disney Co.