The History of Concrete
Don’t let the title fool you, John Wilson’s The History of Concrete is no academic excursion into the origin of the world’s most widely used man-made material. Well, it is that, to an extent. But for anyone who enjoyed the essayistic forays into curiosity that made up HBO’s two-season series, How To With John Wilson, this feature-length extension of Wilson’s visual pun-laden nonfiction work (once more driven by the filmmaker’s playfully anxious voiceover) will feel warmly familiar. Concrete here is but the preamble to various ramblings about everything from infrastructure to Hallmark movies. Backed by the same team that brought How To to life from 2020 to 2023—including producers Clark Filio, Shirel Kozak, and Allie Viti, as well as camera operator Nellie Kluz—and newcomers to the Wilson team, including the Marty Supreme team of Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein (whose exec producer titles will make sense to those who catch the film at the fest), The History of Concrete delights precisely because it stretches Wilson’s man-armed-with-a-camera form to its very limits. The result is the closest Wilson might come to making a witty and ironic crowdpleaser.
—Manuel Betancourt
Jaripeo
The rural rodeos in Penjamillo, Mexico, that give Jaripeo its title are rife for the heady, intellectual exploration around queerness, desire, and masculinity that Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig are intent on dissecting in their debut feature, which is backed, it must be noted, by executive producers Juan Pablo González and Gerardo Guerra (who collaborated on Dos Estaciones and Caballerango). Billed as a hybrid documentary that artfully blends flirty Super 8 footage with grounded vérité scenes (not to mention stylized interludes dreamed up by Mojica, a conceptual artist), Jaripeo is ultimately a rather straightforward personal doc, cut together quite capably by editor Analía Goethals. In a year where the LGBTQ offerings at the fest feel decidedly muted (especially given Park City’s long history of supporting bold, queer filmmakers), Jaripeo, tucked away in the NEXT section, stands out precisely because it offers a welcome riff on the coming-out tale. Only this time, that well-worn trope is wrapped around cowboy hats, silver spurs, and a lustful vision of rodeos that complicate simple ideas of Mexican machismo.
—Manuel Betancourt
Kikuyu Land
Produced, among others, by Moses Bwayo (a 2023 IDA Award winner for Bobi Wine: The People’s President), Kikuyu Land is a history lesson on Kenya’s colonial past and an examination of its effects in the country’s present. Co-directed by Andrew H. Brown and Nairobi-based journalist Bea Wangondu, who serves as the film’s guide, the documentary is structured as Bea’s investigation into the land repatriation of the indigenous Kikuyu people who were swindled out of their ancestral land. Yet the film also doubles as a personal archaeology of Wangondu’s own family’s involvement in such matters, upping the stakes in what would otherwise feel like a dry, didactic piece. Similarly, Brown’s cinematography (which earned him an IDA award nomination in 2023 for Between the Rains) gives this labyrinthine legal battle a sleek aesthetic, capturing the beauty of the land with polished authenticity. Telling a hyper-local story yet brimming with global topicality, Kikuyu Land could easily follow in the steps of Bwayo’s own well-received and well-traveled doc.
—Manuel Betancourt
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Billed as a co-directed effort between William Greaves, who passed away in 2014, and his son David Greaves, this doc resurrects nearly 30 hours of 16mm footage filmed over one magical evening at Duke Ellington’s house over 50 years ago. This gathering assembled the then-living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance to explicate and debate the artistic and sociopolitical significance of this specific creative flourishing. On the 100-year anniversary of William Greaves’s birth, this finally-finished film is a family affair: alongside David, his daughter Liani Greaves produces with editor Anne de Mare. Lynn True, best known as a Maysles collaborator, also cuts. The finished film ably weaves together archival photos of the figures, their works, the magazines, and the politicians that were mentioned during the filming. But it’s really the second half of Once Upon a Time in Harlem that comes alive. The historical significance, financiers, mostly female salon organizers, Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement, and more come under scrutiny from the spirited crowd. And in true winking Greaves fashion, the project itself is also a focal point.
—Abby Sun
