DOC NYC 2025: Life, Love, & Obsessions

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 11 November 2025 19:23

Written by Brad Balfour

New York’s prestigious documentary film festival, DOC NYC, is here again to tell stories too strange to be made up. Running November 12 to the 30th at venues across NYC as well as streaming online, DOC NYC features documentaries from around the world with unique voices and visions.

The festival includes the North American premiere of Museum of the Night, in which Argentine photographer Leandro Katz chronicles the 1970s New York art collective Theater of the Ridiculous. An examination of stigma, resilience, and the search for self-worth, the documentary Paul chronicles a “simp” navigating mental health struggles through domestic service for dominant mistresses, finding purpose in cleaning as ritual and discipline (screening will be followed by a Q&A with producer Karine Bélanger and film protagonist Paul). Siren: The Voices of Shelley Beattie is a portrait of Deaf bodybuilder Shelley “Siren” Beattie whose stunning physique was protective armor against trauma and alienation. 

Other documentaries address the fallout of China’s One-Child policy (The Dating Game), photographers telling the stories of Black lives (Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story), when TV entertainment masquerades as law enforcement (Predators), and much more.

To learn more, go to: https://www.docnyc.net/

DOC NYC
November 12 - 30, 2025

Various Venues in NYC and Streaming

Big Apple Film Festival 2025 Brings Stories From Around the World to NYC

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 07 November 2025 19:28

Written by Brad Balfour

Wooden Hearts

Showcasing work from New York filmmakers and talent from around the world, the Big Apple Film Festival runs this November 10th to the 13th, 2025. Held at the LOOK Dine-In Cinemas W57, BAFF includes NYC feature film premieres, short film programs, series/episodic screenings, music videos, animation and student film programs. The opening film, Happy As Larry is about a woman struggling as she battles her self-destructive habits when her deepest vices take on human form, forcing her to confront the chaos they've brought into her life. In Wooden Hearts a puppeteer travels from town to town, sharing Czech folk stories and bringing his hand-carved marionettes to life, and the existence of his forlorn son. Evil InSight follows a detective who receives a letter with clues pointing to the body of a missing woman, but he finds a man who claims to have the ability to see supernatural events.

This is just a sampling of the films being shown at BAFF

To learn more, go to: https://www.bigapplefilmfestival.com/

Big Apple Film Festival
November 10 - 13, 2025

LOOK Dine-In Cinemas W57
657 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019

"American Woman: Reframing ’70s Cinema" at Museum of the Moving Image

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 22 October 2025 14:47

Written by Brad Balfour

Jane Fonda in Klute.

The 1970s was an era of bold filmmakers and bolder actresses. The Museum of the Moving Image (36-01 35th Ave, Queens, NY) presents American Woman: Reframing ’70s Cinema, which runs from November 14, 2025 to January, 2026 featuring performances and films from women in America’s pivotal moment in cinema.

The series showcases women stars and filmmakers of the 1970s, including Diahann Carroll, Shelley Duvall, Pam Grier, Jane Fonda, Jo Heims, Diane Keaton, Barbara Kopple, Elaine May, Barbara Loden, Julia Reichert, Diana Ross, Gena Rowlands, Joan Micklin Silver, Sissy Spacek, Barbra Streisand, Claudia Weill, and more.

Films being screened include:

• A Woman Under the Influence 
• Klute
• The Way We Were
• 3 Women
• Claudine
• Paper Moon
• Harlan County U.S.A. (with Barbara Kopple in person at screening)
• An Unmarried Woman
• Wanda

And more.

The series will also include in-person guests and discussions including filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Claudia Weill, as well as critics and scholars, including a career conversation with Molly Haskell. 

“When one talks of the venerated American cinema of the 1970s, the same titles invariably come up: The Godfather, The French Connection, The Conversation, Chinatown... and that's just the tip of the uber-male iceberg. The American Woman series flips the script to explore American cinema during the cultural ascendance of second-wave feminism and the megastars and filmmakers who shaped the period,” notes Senior Curator of Film Michael Koresky, who organized the series with assistance from Emily Greenberg, Film and Public Programs Manager, and Sarah Luciano, Associate Director of Special Programs.

To learn more, go to: https://movingimage.org/series/american-woman/

American Woman: Reframing ’70s Cinema
Nov 14, 2025 — Jan 4, 2026

Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35th Avenue
Queens, NY 11106