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Screen Time: Week of Oct. 1

By Tom White


From "Student Athlete," premiering Oct. 2 on HBO. Photo: Silas Nacita. Courtesy of HBOScreen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. 

With the midterm elections a month away, tune in to POV October 1 for the TV premiere of Kimberly Reed's Dark Money, which takes viewers to Montana to tell the story, through the perspective of one intrepid investigative journalist, of campaign finance and its impact on politics, democracy and governance.

Student Athlete, which premieres October 2 on HBO, examines the complex rules of amateur athletics in America and how they affect uncompensated athletes and their families. Executive-produced by LeBron James, Maverick Carter and Steve Stoute, this feature-length HBO Sports documentary was directed by two-time Academy Award-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Saving FaceA Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness) and Trish Dalton (Bordering on Treason). 

Post Docs is a new showcase for short-form documentaries, produced and presented by The Washington Post. "With this documentary showcase, viewers will be able to easily discover the breadth of The Post’s video journalism,” said Micah Gelman, director of video for The Post, in a statement. "From investigative storytelling to people-driven narratives, Post Docs allows us to take our audience deeper into the subjects that matter to them most." The short-form docs will be available on The Post siteAmazon Prime VideoYouTubeFacebook, Apple and Twitch.

Premiering this month on dafilms.com is a retrospective of the work of legendary archivist/experimental filmmaker/educator/programmer Jonas Mekas. The 95-year-old founder of New York-based Anthology Film Archives is renowned as the godfather of American avant-garde cinema and the pioneer of the diary genre in documentary film.

Coming on DVD October 5 through ABKCO Releasing, Jean-Luc Goddard's Sympathy for the Devil, initially released in 1968, alternates between reflections on contemporary politics and social issues of the late 1960s and an up-close-and-personal view of the Rolling Stones in the recording studio, creating what would become one of their singular masterpieces: "Sympathy for the Devil."