by Daniel Pecoraro, Staff Writer

There’s just so much to cover from DOCNYC, here are four films I saw the first week of the festival.

The Trials of Alan Dershowitz
dir. John Curtin, 119 min.

Alan Dershowitz describes himself as “an attorney for the damned.” And looking at his most infamous clients — Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Mike Tyson, accused uxoricidists O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow, as well as the damned Illinois Nazis marching through Skokie — I’m inclined to agree. But The Trial of Alan Dershowitz shows he has a method to his perceived madness. We jump from case to case and from point to point in Dershowitz’s life. We visit the Williamsburg and Borough Park neighborhoods of his upbringing; his childhood synagogue, where he reads the Mourner’s Kaddish for his father on his yahrzeit and remembers the prayers he said for the 1955 Dodgers; Martha’s Vineyard, where he defended Ted Kennedy after the Chappaquiddick incident; and the Tombs, where Epstein may or may not have killed himself. Ultimately, Dershowitz shows himself to be an absolutist, both for the right to due process and representation, and against the death penalty. Whether it’s a member of his most remembered (and reviled) clientele, or someone like Brandon Bernard (who Dershowitz unsuccessfully tried to save from execution), he remains of the belief that everyone needs a vigorous defense.

But we also get an idea of how Dershowitz is, as fellow celebrity lawyer Ron Kuby deems him, a master of compartmentalization — between Dershowitz the man, the lawyer, and the commentator (and in turn, the political vs. legal commentator). We see at times where they overlap (accusations of soliciting one of Epstein’s sex trafficking victims, since dropped; his involvement in the first Trump impeachment case). But director-producer John Curtin, in his staccato jumps through Dershowitz’s 85 years and counting makes what doesn’t really work as a film so much as a look into Dershowitz’s mind: constantly moving, flitting about, a mile a minute. And while The Trials make his mind an interesting place to visit, I wouldn’t want to live there.

Who’s Behind Black Art
dir. John Campbell, 92 min. in four parts

Adrian Armstrong, Laurena Finéus, Tae Ham, Jewel Ham, and Mario Joyce are not household names. Yet. But maybe after Who’s Behind Black Art, they will be. This four-part series centers on a group exhibition highlighting these emerging artists — from different backgrounds, upbringings, media, and training — at a show curated by Phillip Collins (the creator of the company Good Black Art) in the rabbit warren that is the World Trade Center Oculus. From this vantage point, director John Campbell shows us how the industry has changed in recent years. Cutting across the industry to feature artists, gallerists, collectors, a Kickstarter CEO, and others with too much of a penchant for using “creative” as a noun, we learn how social media, the Covid pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter movement helped build demand from both white and Black audiences for Black artists’ work.  

But while the docuseries is enlightening, giving a peek into the art world and introducing the viewer to its subjects, its structure (breaking down the four parts into countless other segments) causes the whole production to be muddled. The titular question ends up without a clear answer, and we don’t have a clear picture of the artists at its center until the fourth and final part of the film. And while I appreciate the effort to not be didactic, perhaps more focus could have been given on some of the artists’ inspirations and antecedents than a credits sequence compilation of soundbites. What could have been a launchpad for these artists’ careers may still be such, but it could have been made more sturdily.

Shari and Lamb Chop
dir. Lisa D’Apolito, 92 min.

I don’t know if I could count the number of times watching this movie where I just shook my head smiling, thinking about Shari Lewis’s talent. Lisa D’Apolito’s biographical portrait of Lewis, the child of a music teacher and city-ordained Official Magician “Peter Pan the Magic Man,” spans from her Depression-era Parkchester upbringing and training under Black ventriloquist John W. Cooper to her untimely death from cancer in 1998. I caught the tail end of her career, as the creator and co-star of Lamb Chop’s Play-Along and Charlie Horse Music Pizza on PBS. But Shari and Lamb Chop skillfully shows that Shari Lewis was so much more than a 1990s children’s entertainer.

For one thing, she was a 1950s children’s entertainer, becoming a sensation in the early days of television with five hours of live TV a week on NBC. On Shariland and Hi Mom, Lewis brought music, magic, and puppeteering with Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy, Wingdings, and of course, Lamb Chop. But NBC canceled her shows in 1963, one era of New York-based television being pushed out for the next out in Hollywood. But (as Shari herself put it in some archival audio, “If you’re going to have an enduring career, you have to be ready to go out of fashion, a lot.” The number of acts in Lewis’ life was eye-opening: from guest-starring roles on Car 54, Where Are You? and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., to jazz dance routines and magic tricks on Ed Sullivan and other variety programs, to a PG-13 Las Vegas act and Shari and Lamb Chop becoming Playboy Bunnies. Throughout these shape-shifts, the demand for Lamb Chop in the public eye never quite goes away. We see the heights of her career, as well as her depths — traveling to and from state fairs and rundown amusement parks to empty grandstands — but her incredible ventriloquist skill was present throughout her career, and throughout this film. Shari and Lamb Chop is a loving tribute to one of the all-time greats.

Between Life and Death
dir. Nick Capote, 89 min.

I grew up listening to a lot of liberal talk radio (RIP, Air America) and a lot of MSNBC. So it’s natural that, when I think of the case of Terri Schiavo, I see it as a media spectacle and political lightning-rod, looking squarely at its tale end in the mid-aughts. Nick Capote’s new documentary digs through the 15-year saga of the Schiavo case to show that it was so much more. And in the process, he uncovers the personal stories at the case’s core: who Terri Schiavo, her parents and siblings, and her husband Michael were as people, not just as figures in the headlines and in cable-news soundbites.

It’s pretty remarkable that Capote is able to humanize practically everyone in the film, except perhaps for the Christian nationalists who turn the case from a battle to determine an individual woman’s wishes into a pro-life firestorm. Even Bobby Schindler, Schiavo’s younger brother, is shown with care and empathy, even as we see his anti-choice activism later in the film. The key here is not just the work that went into the doc. Yes, there had to have been thousands of hours of local and national archival footage, combined with interviews with practically everyone involved in the case who’s still alive (Michael Schiavo, who has lived a private life since the case, excepted). But Between Life and Death’s true gift is the meditation on what makes a life. When do we die? Where does the self, the soul reside? Who can make those decisions on another’s behalf? And, when we do pass on, how are we remembered? These are the questions at the core of our existence, and this film does well in pulling those strings through the Schiavo lens. 

More documentaries to come in the closing week of DOCNYC. Until then, consider putting together an advance directive, and happy viewing.