Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Streaming on Kanopy is Deborah S. Esquenazi's Southwest of Salem, which excavates the nightmarish persecution of four Latina lesbians wrongfully convicted of raping two little girls in San Antonio, Texas. The film earned a Peabody Award, a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Documentary and a Critics' Choice Award for Best First Feature. Synopsis courtesy of Kanopy
In Lars von Trier's 2005 documentary, The Five Obstructions, currently streaming on FilmStruck, he challenges his mentor and former Danish Film Institute professor Jørgen Leth to remake his 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each time within a different set of guidelines and limitations imposed upon him by the irascible Mr. von Trier. Synopsis courtesy of FilmStruck
Through the stories of a Hispanic girls soccer team at Kelly High School in Chicago, Maria Finitzo's In the Game, available on Mubi, illustrates the enormous challenges facing inner-city girls in their quest for higher education and, most importantly, success in life. Synopsis courtesy of Mubi
Streaming on Netflix through June 15 is Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling's Academy Award nominated feature about the chaotic and unconventional 40-year love affair and creative partnership between action painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, also an artist. Ushio, who punches canvases with paint-laden gloves, is famous in Japan and in Manhattan’s art circles, yet wider recognition has eluded him. Noriko, 21 years his junior, put her artistic ambitions on hold to be a wife and mother — and an assistant to her demanding husband. Now, Noriko's acclaimed "Cutie" series of drawings, depicting the relationship between the title character and a volatile figure named Bullie, is turning their world upside down. Synopsis courtesy of POV