Tribeca Film Festival 2019 Review: ‘Picture Character’ #therealemojimovie

PICTURE CHARACTER

Spotlight Documentary, World Premiere – Directed by Martha Shane and Ian Cheney

As silly as you may think the topic, you can’t deny that emojis are everywhere. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? The story of the creation/inception of emojis is interspersed with three stories of the quest to get new emojis added – hijab emoji, mate and menstruation (blood).

While following these stories, something is revealed that is is far more interesting. Remember when emojis weren’t the same on iOS vs Android? Then, miraculously, they became universal? Welcome to the Unicode Consortium. A non-profit organization that unifies character sets.

Suddenly, there are a lot of questions. The film gives enough information about Unicode without overwhelming the audience and changing the course of the story, but for me, it was such a large elephant in the room that I couldn’t stop wondering about it.

Whether you just send the occasional smiley face or you carry on conversations via emoji, you’ll enjoy seeing the behind the curtain.

List of universal emojis: https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-list.html

Tribeca Film Festival 2019 Review: ‘For They Know Not What They Do’ and this is the problem

FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO

Documentary Competition, World Premiere – Directed by Daniel Karslake

More maddening than enlighting, For They Know Not What They Do follows four families that facing challenges and did their best. It’s heartbreaking, frustrating and exactly what happens when people are not empathetic with each other.

I liked the structure with switching back and forth between each story, as it made the progression much more interesting. However, it felt at some points that the audience was somehow meant to forgive these people of their ignorance and lack of compassion.

There’s always value in hearing the stories of others, but I left the theater shaking my head rather than feeling like I learned something.

When the Supreme Court legalized marriage equality across the nation in 2015, many assumed that the fight for LGBTQ rights was won. But politicians and religious conservatives launched a state-by-state campaign to retract the human rights of America’s LGBTQ citizens under the guise of religious freedom. Introducing four American families caught in the crosshairs of scripture, sexuality, and identity, this documentary weaves together clips from the national news and the church pulpit, alongside family photos and intimate testimonies to show the undeniable connection between the personal and the political.

These individual experiences of rejection and validation, tragedy and triumph include Ryan Robertson, who was encouraged by his Christian family to attend conversion therapy; Sarah McBride, the transgender student body president who went on to work at the White House; Vico Báez Febo, whose Catholic grandmother locked him out of the house when a neighbor outed him; and Elliot Porcher, a young trans man who endured self-harm before his parents’ acceptance enabled him to come to terms with his gender. An emotionally impactful follow-up to the award-winning For The Bible Tells Me So, this powerful examination of the intersection of religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity offers much-needed healing, clarity, and understanding.

—Lucy Mukerjee

Tribeca Film Festival 2019 Review: ‘RECORDER: The Marion Stokes Project’ – how one woman gave us 33 years of recorded television history

RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES PROJECT

Documentary Competition – World Premiere, Directed by Matt Wolf

In 1979 during the Iranian hostage crisis, Marion Stokes started recording the news on VHS tapes on different channels on different televisions. 24 hours a day. The recording didn’t stop for 33 years when she passed away on December 12, 2012, the day of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

The film is structured chronologically and I would have liked to have seen Marion Stokes’ story told in the juxtaposition of the process to digitize the over 70,000 VHS tapes. They used the closed captioning to index! How cool is that? I want to know more. Instead, the story unfolds in a traditional method of speaking with those closest to her and focusing on the woman behind this astounding asset to humanity. It’s good, but not nearly as compelling.

Even with its flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and it’s sparked many interesting conversations.

There’s 1 more screening left and it’s also coming to other film festivals.

Tribeca Film Festival
World Premiere
April 25, 26, 27, May 4

HotDocs, Toronto
International Premiere
May 1, 2, 5

Montclair Film Festival
May 8, 12

Maryland Film Festival
May 9, 10

More Screenings Soon

Long before our current era of “fake news,” Marion Stokes was amassing an incredible archive in an effort to protect and tell the truth. Beginning with the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979 and ending in 2012 with the massacre at Sandy Hook, Stokes archived and preserved the television that others were not. She recorded an incredible 70,000 VHS tapes capturing wars, triumphs, catastrophes, and more. The archive reveals the past and how it shaped television and the present moment.

Matt Wolf goes deep inside this captured history of television, providing insight into Stokes as keeper of the archive, while also showing the world that she wanted humanity to see. Taking on the aura of a mystery, Recorder delves into the curious world of a Communist radical and genius recluse who dedicated her life to a seemingly crazy mission, which in the end, is a glorious gift to the world.

—Deborah Rudolph