documentary film

Silent Star: Marshawn Lynch a No-Show in New Film About His Life

David Shields was having a good night. His new film, a biographical documentary about retired running back and former Cal phenomenon Marshawn Lynch, had just screened to a packed and enthusiastic house at The New Parkway Theater in downtown Oakland. Now he was joined at the front of the theatre for a Q&A by former UC Berkeley sociologist Harry Edwards and moderator Michael Smith, formerly of ESPN. Edwards was heaping praise on the film, entitled Lynch: A History.

Posted on October 23, 2019 - 2:37pm

A Disruption in The Force: Peter Nicks’s New Documentary Has a Hella Big Plot Twist

Pete Nicks thought he knew what he was getting into when he started filming the Oakland Police Department in the fall of 2014. The department had long been under the thumb of a federal judge due to a series of lawsuits exposing poor management and pervasive abuses, but the OPD had a new chief who seemed poised to reform the troubled department.  

Posted on September 6, 2017 - 1:23pm

Love, Life and Baseball: A Filmmaker Follows Little Leaguers from Oakland to Havana

There are men of vision, and there are men of vision about men of vision. This is a story about both kinds of men, and about a movie, and about kids, and baseball.

If Hollywood were to make a movie about the movie, the opening scene would be in a blue-collar bar in Berkeley, two men having a beer. One of the men is Eugene Corr. He is wearing a hipster beret and workingman’s clothes. Gene looks what he is, a documentary filmmaker who graduated from Cal back in the days of ideals and dreams.

From the Winter 2014 Gender Assumptions issue of California.
Subscribe to documentary film