Perhaps the most inside-baseball of films at Sundance this year, Jj Garvine and Tai Parquet’s Film Hawk is an intimate look at film consultant extraordinaire Bob Hawk. Followers of Kevin Smith will know him as the man who discovered Clerks one Sunday morning in the bowels of the Angelika Film Center during the New York Film Market. (Here Kevin Smith provides his usually hilarious and often sincere commentary, often alongside Hawk.)
Checking in with luminaries and friends, Garvine and Parquet have constructed a loving tribute to 76-year-old Hawk, the openly gay son of a Methodist minister who joined the queer immigration to San Francisco in the 1960s, and later to New York. As it turns out, per Smith, Hawk is a Jersey boy at heart, as we discover in a heartbreaking passage later in the story. Hawk’s early interest included theatre prior to the discovery of independent – then...
Checking in with luminaries and friends, Garvine and Parquet have constructed a loving tribute to 76-year-old Hawk, the openly gay son of a Methodist minister who joined the queer immigration to San Francisco in the 1960s, and later to New York. As it turns out, per Smith, Hawk is a Jersey boy at heart, as we discover in a heartbreaking passage later in the story. Hawk’s early interest included theatre prior to the discovery of independent – then...
- 1/24/2016
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
Dancing Across Borders is a well-intended documentary about a 16-year-old boy named Sokvannara .Sy. Sar. He.s a talented folk dancer in Cambodia where he.s .discovered. by Anne Bass, a vacationing socialite who.s profoundly impressed with his amazing charm and grace as a dancer. Bass takes him under her wealthy wing and pulls some strings to get him enrolled at the New York School of American Ballet with some of this country.s best instructors. The film charts Sy.s progress through the demanding rituals of classical ballet as he devotes himself to learning this strange new dance (he.d never even seen ballet before he left home). Sy is indeed a charismatic subject, gifted performer, and natural showman but unfortunately Ms Bass, whose Dancing Across Borders is her debut as a film director, has failed to make a movie that will be appreciated by an audience wider...
- 6/4/2010
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Chicago – It’s rather serendipitous that the new film “Dancing Across Borders” will have it’s Chicago premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center, which is literally around the corner from the Oriental Theater’s production of “Billy Elliot.” The true-life story in “Borders” has some striking similarities to that of the wildly hyped musical, since they both center on a young man whose passion for dance allows him to overcome the limitations of his underprivileged upbringing.
On the surface, “Borders” seems like a straightforward vehicle for inspirational uplift. Sokvannara “Sy” Sar was a 16-year-old boy in Siem Reap, Cambodia, when he was discovered by Anne Bass, a visiting socialite and arts patron from the United States. Since age 9, Sar had always been driven to dance, despite the reservations of his parents, and found time to study at the local dance school in between chores. When Bass saw Sar...
Chicago – It’s rather serendipitous that the new film “Dancing Across Borders” will have it’s Chicago premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center, which is literally around the corner from the Oriental Theater’s production of “Billy Elliot.” The true-life story in “Borders” has some striking similarities to that of the wildly hyped musical, since they both center on a young man whose passion for dance allows him to overcome the limitations of his underprivileged upbringing.
On the surface, “Borders” seems like a straightforward vehicle for inspirational uplift. Sokvannara “Sy” Sar was a 16-year-old boy in Siem Reap, Cambodia, when he was discovered by Anne Bass, a visiting socialite and arts patron from the United States. Since age 9, Sar had always been driven to dance, despite the reservations of his parents, and found time to study at the local dance school in between chores. When Bass saw Sar...
- 4/17/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Anne Bass, the New York City socialite known for her philanthropic endeavors in the ballet world, visited Cambodia on a World Monuments Fund trip in 2000. In Angkor Wat she saw a group of teenagers present a native dance and couldn't shake the performance of one of the boys from her memory. Dancing Across Borders is the Cinderella-esque documentary film Bass made about her efforts to sponsor the teenager, Sokvannara Sar (also known as "Sy," pronounced "See"), to come to the United States to learn ballet. In the process, Sy realizes the American Dream he didn't even know he had until his and Anne's paths crossed. Bass was as unacquainted with filmmaking as Sy was with ballet (he had never seen so much as an image of a ballet dancer before), and the film is even more compelling when you realize it's about two debuts, both on and off camera. In it,...
- 3/26/2010
- Vanity Fair
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