According to writer Andrew Solomon, the key to finding acceptance lies in addressing “the tyranny of everything being expected to be the same”.
Solomon was speaking at a special screening of a documentary inspired by his 2012 non-fiction book, Far from the Tree, at London’s Barbican Centre on Thursday (25 January).
Motivated by his own difficulties coming out as gay to his parents, Solomon decided to examine the experiences of other families in which there are profound differences between parents and their children. “Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority,” he writes, “I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us.”
In the film, which is directed by Rachel Dretzin, we see a range of children who are, in their own ways, different from their parents. One, named Jason, was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome as a baby, with his parents told that he’d...
Solomon was speaking at a special screening of a documentary inspired by his 2012 non-fiction book, Far from the Tree, at London’s Barbican Centre on Thursday (25 January).
Motivated by his own difficulties coming out as gay to his parents, Solomon decided to examine the experiences of other families in which there are profound differences between parents and their children. “Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority,” he writes, “I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us.”
In the film, which is directed by Rachel Dretzin, we see a range of children who are, in their own ways, different from their parents. One, named Jason, was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome as a baby, with his parents told that he’d...
- 1/27/2023
- by Dan Byam Shaw
- The Independent - Film
The new Netflix documentary Audible invites viewers to enter a world rarely explored in film: the community of the Deaf and hearing impaired.
The film directed by Matt Ogens focuses on 17-year-old Amaree McKenstry, Homecoming King at the Maryland School for the Deaf, and a star of the high school’s outstanding football team. The Orioles went through a 16 season stretch without losing to another deaf school, and generally prevailed in games against hearing teams.
“There’s a lot of history for me there,” Ogens explains of his connection to Msd and his route to making the film. “I grew up in Maryland, my best friend is Deaf, my aunt even taught sign language at the school, one of our executive producers Nyle Dimarco went to the school, his brother Neal is one of the coaches in the film… Being so closely adjacent to the Deaf community through my best friend,...
The film directed by Matt Ogens focuses on 17-year-old Amaree McKenstry, Homecoming King at the Maryland School for the Deaf, and a star of the high school’s outstanding football team. The Orioles went through a 16 season stretch without losing to another deaf school, and generally prevailed in games against hearing teams.
“There’s a lot of history for me there,” Ogens explains of his connection to Msd and his route to making the film. “I grew up in Maryland, my best friend is Deaf, my aunt even taught sign language at the school, one of our executive producers Nyle Dimarco went to the school, his brother Neal is one of the coaches in the film… Being so closely adjacent to the Deaf community through my best friend,...
- 7/9/2021
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Participant Media has sealed deals for Endeavor and Lionsgate to handle U.S. and international sales, respectively, on high-profile ecological documentary “Aquarela,” which is world-premiering at the Venice Film Festival. The company also announced that documentary “The Price of Free “ (formerly titled “Kailash”), which won a prize at Sundance, has been acquired by YouTube.
The deals reflect the meticulous “collaboration and curation” aspect of Participant Media’s selective distribution strategy, which this year has encompassed working with IFC, Focus Features, Lionsgate, Netflix, HBO, Starz, YouTube and CNN, among other outlets, in an effort to “always find the right distributor for the movie in order to reach as wide an audience as possible and contribute to the greatest acceleration of positive social change,” said CEO David Linde.
“Distribution today is very much like curating the films for the audience,” Linde said. “It’s sort of the obligation of the producer to...
The deals reflect the meticulous “collaboration and curation” aspect of Participant Media’s selective distribution strategy, which this year has encompassed working with IFC, Focus Features, Lionsgate, Netflix, HBO, Starz, YouTube and CNN, among other outlets, in an effort to “always find the right distributor for the movie in order to reach as wide an audience as possible and contribute to the greatest acceleration of positive social change,” said CEO David Linde.
“Distribution today is very much like curating the films for the audience,” Linde said. “It’s sort of the obligation of the producer to...
- 9/1/2018
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
As the Summer movie season winds down, one type of film not usually known for hitting theatres this time of year seems to be finding an appreciative and big audience. Of course the major box office news has been dominated by action films, particularly the superhero flicks from Avengers: Infinity War to Incredibles 2. That’s really no big shock. But another surprise story of these warm months is the respectable (for these low budgets) grosses of several documentary feature films. Sure some of the bigger hits focus on entertainment figures like Fred Rogers and Whitney Huston, but a few have caused a stir over their compelling family stories, like the heart-wrenching Three Identical Strangers. Now comes another feature doc about family, no make that families. That’s because it’s part of a sub-genre of documentaries that are also anthologies. Multi-story movies have been a staple for many years,...
- 8/10/2018
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Greenwich Entertainment tell-all documentary Scotty And The Secret History of Hollywood lured crowds to the Arclight in Los Angeles in its opening weekend, grossing $30,941, which gives it bragging rights as the year’s second-highest opening per theater average for a documentary this year after the launch of Neon’s Three Identical Strangers ($34,301 opening weekend PTA). The title easily scored the weekend’s best PTA among all releases.
Other limited releases were more tepid. Sony Classics opened Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle in five locations, grossing $63,364 for a decent $12,673 PTA, while Well Go USA bowed Detective Dee And The Four Heavenly Kings in 31 theaters, taking in $132,000. The Captain by writer-director Robert Schwentke from Music Box Films had an exclusive weekend run, grossing $8,279 and Abramorama opened 93Queen also in a single theater for $7,257 in the three day.
Blindspotting from Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate expanded to 532 runs in its second frame, grossing $1.325M. Bleecker...
Other limited releases were more tepid. Sony Classics opened Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle in five locations, grossing $63,364 for a decent $12,673 PTA, while Well Go USA bowed Detective Dee And The Four Heavenly Kings in 31 theaters, taking in $132,000. The Captain by writer-director Robert Schwentke from Music Box Films had an exclusive weekend run, grossing $8,279 and Abramorama opened 93Queen also in a single theater for $7,257 in the three day.
Blindspotting from Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate expanded to 532 runs in its second frame, grossing $1.325M. Bleecker...
- 7/29/2018
- by Brian Brooks
- Deadline Film + TV
As someone who is not a parent, never wanted to be a parent, and still says a silent prayer of “thank heaven that’s not me” every time I walk by a mom or dad struggling with a stroller, Rachel Dretzin’s Far From the Tree — based on Andrew Solomon’s NY Times bestseller Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity — at first glance seemed far from making my must-watch-docs list. Which is precisely how I know it’s as good as it is. When I finally got around to catching it on screener recently, Dretzin’s film — […]...
- 7/20/2018
- by Lauren Wissot
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
As someone who is not a parent, never wanted to be a parent, and still says a silent prayer of “thank heaven that’s not me” every time I walk by a mom or dad struggling with a stroller, Rachel Dretzin’s Far From the Tree — based on Andrew Solomon’s NY Times bestseller Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity — at first glance seemed far from making my must-watch-docs list. Which is precisely how I know it’s as good as it is. When I finally got around to catching it on screener recently, Dretzin’s film — […]...
- 7/20/2018
- by Lauren Wissot
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Let’s say you’re pregnant. It’s quite possibly the happiest and most anxiety-inducing time of your life. And then the doctor delivers the news: Your baby will be born with Down syndrome, deafness, or dwarfism. How do you react? Or maybe you’ve been a proud parent for years, and somewhere along the way, when your child reaches age 2 or 12 or 20, you learn that he has autism, identifies as transgender, or has been arrested for murder.
For centuries of human existence, such surprises have been greeted with horror by some parents, who have been known to surrender, institutionalize, or even disown their children on account of these culturally shameful differences — often the very things that make them special. Wrestling with what he perceived as a lack of love from his mother and father in reaction to his own homosexuality, Columbia University psychology professor Andrew Solomon wrote “Far From the Tree,...
For centuries of human existence, such surprises have been greeted with horror by some parents, who have been known to surrender, institutionalize, or even disown their children on account of these culturally shameful differences — often the very things that make them special. Wrestling with what he perceived as a lack of love from his mother and father in reaction to his own homosexuality, Columbia University psychology professor Andrew Solomon wrote “Far From the Tree,...
- 7/20/2018
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate is opening Blindspotting with Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal in limited locations this weekend ahead of a wider roll out. Starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, who co-wrote the comedy/drama, the feature came together after a decade of planning. Blindspotting is the highest-profile narrative opening in select locations this weekend. Friday will also see the arrival of several documentaries. Bleecker Street is opening McQueen by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui; the Alexander McQueen bio is the company’s first doc release. And Sundance Selects will roll out Far From the Tree, based on the book by Andrew Solomon, while Amazon Studios is launching Generation Wealth by Lauren Greenfield.
Blindspotting
Director: Carlos López Estrada
Writers: Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs
Cast: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Chephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Wayne Knight
Distributor: Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate
Dramedy Blindspotting has been in the works for over a decade.
Blindspotting
Director: Carlos López Estrada
Writers: Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs
Cast: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Chephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Wayne Knight
Distributor: Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate
Dramedy Blindspotting has been in the works for over a decade.
- 7/19/2018
- by Brian Brooks
- Deadline Film + TV
NewportFILM will screen documentaries by Morgan Neville, Matt Tyrnauer, Nathanel Kahn, and Andrew Solomon as part of its annual summer series.
The festival has become something of an institution in the posh seaside community — Newport, Rhode Island is an old world resort, with Gilded Age mansions that are straight out of an Edith Wharton novel. Part of the attraction is that the sunset screenings are hosted in several different historic venues, including Rosecliff, a mansion featured in the 1974 version of “The Great Gatsby” with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, the Eisenhower House, which was the “Summer White House” for President Dwight D. Eisenhower or his Mar a Lago, and the Newport International Polo Grounds.
The screenings kicked off Thursday with Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” a look at the enduring legacy of Fred Rogers, and runs through September 6th. Past films that have played at newportFILM include Brett Morgan’s “Jane,...
The festival has become something of an institution in the posh seaside community — Newport, Rhode Island is an old world resort, with Gilded Age mansions that are straight out of an Edith Wharton novel. Part of the attraction is that the sunset screenings are hosted in several different historic venues, including Rosecliff, a mansion featured in the 1974 version of “The Great Gatsby” with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, the Eisenhower House, which was the “Summer White House” for President Dwight D. Eisenhower or his Mar a Lago, and the Newport International Polo Grounds.
The screenings kicked off Thursday with Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” a look at the enduring legacy of Fred Rogers, and runs through September 6th. Past films that have played at newportFILM include Brett Morgan’s “Jane,...
- 6/22/2018
- by Variety Staff
- Variety Film + TV
Inspired by Andrew Solomon’s best-selling novel and perhaps a quote the begins Roger Ebert’s autobiography Life Itself (“…movies are like a machine that generates empathy”), Rachel Dretzin’s Far from the Tree tells seven distinct stories of families and individuals grappling with disability, emotional trauma, and, ultimately, how to be happy. The film explores new stories inspired by those documented by Solomon, who grew up obsessed with Emily Dickens and opera. He went through attempts to cure himself of gay attractions via sexual surrogacy, eventually coming out, leading to marriage and an unconventional family situation. (His extended Lgbt family includes six parents of four children.)
Some of these passages could inspire their own engaging feature film, including the stories of Loini, Leah, and Joe, three little people who come together at an annual conference. Loini searches for love, meaning, and her place in the world while Joe and Leah find each other,...
Some of these passages could inspire their own engaging feature film, including the stories of Loini, Leah, and Joe, three little people who come together at an annual conference. Loini searches for love, meaning, and her place in the world while Joe and Leah find each other,...
- 5/3/2018
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
After taking readers inside the lives of hundreds of families of children battling differences and disabilities with his 2012 bestselling book Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, author Andrew Solomon is narrowing the scope of his work for a feature film adaptation.
In the upcoming documentary Far from the Tree, Solomon focuses on six families accommodating children with a wide variety of physical, mental and social differences and disabilities. Watch the first trailer for the film — exclusive to People — above.
“Seeing one’s most cherished work translated into another medium can be exhilarating like almost nothing else,...
In the upcoming documentary Far from the Tree, Solomon focuses on six families accommodating children with a wide variety of physical, mental and social differences and disabilities. Watch the first trailer for the film — exclusive to People — above.
“Seeing one’s most cherished work translated into another medium can be exhilarating like almost nothing else,...
- 4/25/2018
- by Mike Miller
- PEOPLE.com
Prolific documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus is currently preparing to debut her new series “The Fourth Estate” at this month’s Tribeca Film Festival, but she’s already got another brand-new feature ready to go. Her latest film, “A Dangerous Son,” will premiere on HBO early next month, chronicling the stories of three young children with mental illness, and the struggles their families endure to get them help, even when resources are limited and support is in short supply.
The film follows its three subjects — ranging in age from ten to 15, all with different mental health issues — as they cycle through counselor visits, medications, hospitalizations, and even encounters with law enforcement as they attempt to find some peace and normalcy. The film is making its debut during Mental Health Month, and it looks like the kind of personal endeavor that could shed some serious light on a subject in need of more understanding.
The film follows its three subjects — ranging in age from ten to 15, all with different mental health issues — as they cycle through counselor visits, medications, hospitalizations, and even encounters with law enforcement as they attempt to find some peace and normalcy. The film is making its debut during Mental Health Month, and it looks like the kind of personal endeavor that could shed some serious light on a subject in need of more understanding.
- 4/16/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Family isn’t always what you thought it might be. Sometimes, parents welcome children into the world who bring with them challenges that bring a new context to the relationship between fathers and mothers, and their sons or daughters. That idea is explored in the upcoming documentary “Far From The Tree,” which will be making its world premiere at Doc NYC.
Directed by Rachel Dretzin, and based on Andrew Solomon‘s book “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity,” the documentary explores the unique family ties that are formed when children bring a entirely new experience into the world of their parents.
Continue reading ‘Far From The Tree’ Clip: Discover The True Nature Of Family [Doc NYC Exclusive] at The Playlist.
Directed by Rachel Dretzin, and based on Andrew Solomon‘s book “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity,” the documentary explores the unique family ties that are formed when children bring a entirely new experience into the world of their parents.
Continue reading ‘Far From The Tree’ Clip: Discover The True Nature Of Family [Doc NYC Exclusive] at The Playlist.
- 11/1/2017
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
The Final Year Photo: Courtesy of Doc NYC
The line-up for the eighth Doc NYC film festival has been announced. The festival, which runs from November 9 to 16 in Manhattan, will feature 23 world premieres, with more than 350 filmmakers and special guests expected in person to present their films or participate on panels.
The festival will open with The Final Year - Greg Barker's documentary about the final year of president Barack Obama's foreign policy administration - and close with musical profile Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars, with the guitarist and songwriter in attendance.
The Centerpiece Film, will be the world premiere of Far From the Tree, director Rachel Dretzin’s adaptation of Andrew Solomon’s bestselling book about parental love in many forms.
World premieres at the festival include A Murder in Mansfield, by Barbara Kopple (Miss Sharon Jones!), which explores the impact of a 1989 murder on a family; Maynard,...
The line-up for the eighth Doc NYC film festival has been announced. The festival, which runs from November 9 to 16 in Manhattan, will feature 23 world premieres, with more than 350 filmmakers and special guests expected in person to present their films or participate on panels.
The festival will open with The Final Year - Greg Barker's documentary about the final year of president Barack Obama's foreign policy administration - and close with musical profile Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars, with the guitarist and songwriter in attendance.
The Centerpiece Film, will be the world premiere of Far From the Tree, director Rachel Dretzin’s adaptation of Andrew Solomon’s bestselling book about parental love in many forms.
World premieres at the festival include A Murder in Mansfield, by Barbara Kopple (Miss Sharon Jones!), which explores the impact of a 1989 murder on a family; Maynard,...
- 10/12/2017
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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