New DVD List: Life Animated, Citizenfour & More

Here is a new DVD list highlighting various titles recently added to the library’s collection.

“Life, Animated”
Website / Reviews / Trailer
This film played at the True/False Film Fest in 2016, and it tells the remarkable story of how a boy found a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world through Disney animated films. By evocatively interweaving classic Disney sequences with vérité scenes from Owen’s life, the film explores how identification and empathy with Disney characters create a context for him to understand his feelings and interpret reality.

“Citizenfour”
Website / Reviews / Trailer
This film was presented at a special True/False Film Fest screening in 2014, and it is a real life thriller, unfolding by the minute, giving audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras’ and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

“Chicken People”
Website / Reviews / Trailer
Chicken may be just food for most people, but raising the perfect chicken is an all-consuming passion for some. “Chicken People” is a documentary that takes a charming and fascinating look at the colorful and hugely competitive world of champion show chicken breeders. A real-life “Best in Show,” but about chickens, the film follows both humans and their chickens on the road to compete at the Ohio National Poultry Show.

“Lo and Behold”
Website / Reviews / Trailer
Documentarian Werner Herzog chronicles the virtual world from its origins to its outermost reaches, exploring the digital landscape with the same curiosity and imagination he previously trained on earthly destinations. Herzog leads viewers on a journey through a series of provocative conversations that reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works.