Ocean Monk will open the New York Surf Festival today!

“Ocean Monk” follows a group a monks – all students of Sri Chinmoy, all a variety of ages – who find deep meditation and spirituality while surfing.

This group of monks, who make their home in Queens, New York, use the beauty and power of nature… and the nearby beaches on Long Island … in the search for enlightenment.

This is a surprising and delightful short that isn’t so out of the ordinary as it first may seem.  These monks are athletic – some of them top surfing athletes, who brave the waves, no matter what ocean, but here primarily the Atlantic, and who brave the temperatures.   And it’s no surprise that at specific times of year, the Atlantic is very cold.  Directed by Sanjay Rawal, a former humanitarian aid consultant and produced by Mridanga Spencer, his will thrill surf enthusiasts and those interested in meditation and any kind of spirituality. 

But in the end, you won’t be so surprised at how the two work so well together… maybe just that Sri Chinmoy was such a super surfer-dude himself.   Beautifully shot – the waves are magnificent…the sound design and underscoring are by Parichayaka Hammerl .

This exquisite 20-minute documentary has been chosen to open the New York Surf Festival September 24^th (who knew?!) and can be seen on OnDemand.

“The Lottery” is a story of education in America – it’s a tough, unapologetic look at the case for charter schools.

“The Lottery” is a story of education in America – it’s a tough, unapologetic look at the case for charter schools.

“The Lottery”, which can be seen now on OnDemand , offers a look at what should be the biggest issue in this country, but continues to fall between the cracks and egos of far too many adults: public education.   Here we jump intimately into the debate in Harlem, New York City between charter schools verses regular unionized public schools – and that debate is as ugly as it is shocking.  Threading this together is the stories of four children whose parents have entered into the lottery, hoping against hope that their name is pulled as one in the class roster for kindergarten at the Harlem Success Academy.   Over three thousand names are entered with less than 500 admitted in the fall.

For many who don’t understand, or haven’t been in this debate between charter schools verses public schools – or may not exactly understand how a charter school differs, this documentary serves as an eye opener.  But what I must add is that while there is a clear point of view, it’s one side’s; I would now love to see the debate turned round and hear from the side of the public school.  The case here is so strong that I’d like to see the other side attempt to stand up to it, although the teachers’ union is reported to be one super-tough organization.  The arguments are known to be fierce, and here we have excellent round from one of those sides in the debate on public education reform in the United States.

What really drives it, however are the stories of these four kids – beautiful, innocent, their lives ahead of them, all but one from single-parent households – and their parents’ honest love and concern that they receive an excellent education.   But space in the charter schools is limited, so each child and family must throw their name in…and wait.  Think of it as a 4 or 5 year-old child: if at the Washington Heights Armory, when the names are pulled, your name is called, you’re on your way to a potentially great education.  If not, you just sit there with your family, gob-smacked, wondering what will happen.  For in truth, when your chances of learning to read and write and do arithmetic are diminished, so are your chances of getting into a decent middle school or high school, or getting to college at all.

The tension builds enormously to the scene at the Armory, and it’s beyond painful to watch. 

Produced and directed by Madeleine Sackler, and gorgeously shot by Wolfgang Held – that alone propelled me to watch this – we also have a kind of Greek chorus in terms of experts, including Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City’s public schools, Geoffrey Canada, President for Harlem’s Children’s Zone and a central character in Davis Guggenheim’s documentary, Waiting for Superman, just hitting cinemas now and Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ and member of Democrats for Education Reform.

What might you take away from this?  Many things; mostly how unfair, how undemocratic that any child should be entangled in the fight for a decent education.  That maybe we’ll never have true equality until there’s equal education for all.

“The Lottery” runs 89 minutes and is not rated.

All you need is KLAUS!

“All You Need Is Klaus” airs on Smithsonian Channel as part of the August series Inside the Music, profiling music and musicians who’ve made great impact on our society and the world.

If you don’t know Klaus Voormann , you are wrong.  You just think you don’t know Klaus.  Well, you may not know the name, but you do know the music.  Klaus Voormann was on of the most in-demand bass players from the mid-60’s till the ‘80’s.  Everyone wanted him.  The Beatles, Manfred Mann, Harry Nilsson, the Plastic Ono Band, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, the BeeGees, the list goes on endlessly.  A funky, inventive musician. 

To make a hit record, all you needed was Klaus.

Discovering the Beatles in a Hamburg bar, a mere youth, these Liverpudlian lads likewise discovered Klaus. These ‘kids’ became lifelong friends; to this day Klaus considers George Harrison his closest friend.  He misses him dearly.

An artist, a budding musician, who played the classical guitar, Klaus followed the Fab Four back to the UK, where he embarked on an art career in graphic design, but soon found himself as the most-wanted bass player in the business.  Klaus never gave up his art though; in fact, another reason, you do know Klaus is for the Beatles’ Revolver album cover.  Shamanistic artist? Maybe more of a rock ‘n’ roll Renaissance Man.  This subdued, reflective guy could do it all.

After an extraordinary career and a hell of a lot of fun, he went back to Germany and now resides near Munich, an artist, keeping in touch with old friends, but never looking back.

Until now.  To celebrate his 70^th birthday, Klaus decided to make that journey back, to Nashville, to Los Angeles, to New York, to London, to make an album with old friends and some new, to revisit the best of times with great musicians, featuring Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Joe Walsh, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks and many more – the music’s great and everyone’s having a fantastically good time.

Two things here worth noting: at 70, Klaus Voormann is a charismatic, contagious man – sensitive, intelligent and wise – while he’s not the gorgeous, young man we view in the extraordinary archival footage, he’s now the stunning and ageless septuagenarian.  Klaus is just down-right likeable.

The other thing is the Smithsonian Channel, still relatively new and not available in every market across the US.  Demand it – it’s worth it.  They’re making some very palatable original programming.  Entertaining and top quality.

Klaus Voormann’s first ever solo-album is entitled A Sideman’s Journey: Voormann and Friends.

 “All You Need Is Klaus” premieres Sunday, August 22^nd  on the Smithsonian Channel and can be seen following on OnDemand. 

52 minutes, produced with WDR-Germany. The Smithsonian Channel is a joint venture of the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks Inc., with content from the world’s leading cultural institution.

Other titles in this series, “The Accordion Kings”,  “Electrified: The Guitar Revolution”,  “The Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice”, “Play on John: A Life in Music”,  “Making the Monkees” (yes, I still have a thing for the Monkees), “Sound Revolution and Worlds of Sound: The Ballads of Folkways.”  For more information and schedule, go to www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/sn/inside-the-music

Spike Lee's If God is willing and da creek don't rise...

“If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise” is Spike Lee’s long awaited follow-up to  the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning “When the Levees Broke: a Requiem in Four Acts”… he was shooting this new documentary on the aftermath and recovery of New Orleans…then something happened along the way…

Five years after Katrina devastated one of the last of the steadfast original and cultural centers of this nation, that is New Orleans, Spike Lee returns to the Big Easy, first to document and to observe first-hand her attempted ‘rise from the ashes’.  Then in the midst of shooting, the region experiences another violent blow with the BP Oil Catastrophe or as some folks call it the ‘Oil Spill’.  While devastating and shattering as this documentary is, it is also a tribute to the citizens of New Orleans, to their resilience, their faith, to their love of this place they still call home.  Yet as a viewer- and a lover of NOLA, I just shake my head, wipe my tears and wonder, just how much do these people have to endure, just how much more can anyone take down there?

An opus, like a larger-than-life jazz opera, this work rifts and segues continually in its four hours, divided over two nights, as we touch down upon some truly good things like the Saints victory at the 2010 Super Bowl, the series of legal victories that demanded accountability for many of the displaced, Brad Pitt and his housing development in the Lower Ninth Ward.   The city was coming back despite successes and failures in healthcare, education, housing, economic growth and a surge in crime that started with the hurricane and never ceased.  Then in February of this year, the earthquake hit Haiti in its bowels and Port-au-Prince, the sister city of NOLA was devastated; perhaps this should have given us an inkling, an intuition that more was to come. 

Because it did on April 20^th -  and New Orleans and its environs have now been delivered another mammoth obstacle to recovery, at that moment when the British Petroleum off-shore oil rig exploded and erupted, spilling, no -  gushing endless amounts of oil into the Gulf producing the largest man-made disaster this country has ever known.  This on top of the fact that they truly had never recovered from Katrina, not really.  Not even close. Not with so many of its citizens who’ve never been able to come home, because their neighborhoods and homes are simply gone, or they simply can’t afford to live there anymore. 

Lee faces us with the truth, the truth of our times.  The truth that in the wealthiest, most advanced country in the world, we don’t take care of our own. Nor do we make those accountable for their acts, be it the Bush Administration’s careless disregard for a city with one of the largest diverse populations or a multinational corporation like BP who doesn’t take proper precautions to care for a fragile and complex environment such New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, let alone the eco-system of the entire Gulf region.

What is most honorable about this work is that Spike Lee does give voice to all sides – more than 300 hundred voices here, including as C. Ray Nagin, Mitch Landrieu – former and current mayors of the city, celebs like Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Anderson Cooper and Wendell Pearce, former governor Kathleen Blanco, former FEMA director Michael Brown, and many ordinary, decent citizens hanging onto a thread of hope, or of what?  A fantasy they’ll someday get their life back?  Or something better.  I mean don’t we,  as human beings, all hope for that?

Like these voices or not, agree with them or not, the one thing uniting all them all is a love of this city and a desire to see her come back.  Will she? 

Only if God is willing… and da creek don’t rise…

“If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise”  premieres Monday and Tuesday, August 23^rd and 24^th  on HBO and can be seen following on OnDemand. 

HBO Documentary Films and 40 Acres and a Mule present a Spike Lee Joint;  produced by Sam Pollard and Spike Lee; directed by Spike Lee; supervising producer for HBO is Jacqueline Glover; executive producer for HBO is Sheila Nevins.

Rated TV14 for Adult Content and Adult Language. 

2 x 2 hours.

Lewis Black: Basic Black

When I sat down to watch “BASIC BLACK”, my first reaction was, “Oh, him?”

I kind of knew him as a comic and as a Daily Show contributor. So what…

An hour later, I am a diehard fan of Lewis Black.

Directed by Adam Dubin, produced by Jack Gulick and Benjamin Brewer and following its success with “Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story”, which has garnered a first-time Emmy nomination for EPIX, the multiplatform service launched by Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate, “BASIC BLACK” is the second in a line-up of non-fiction programming on big-name comics.

In this up-close and intimate documentary that takes us on his recent sold-out tour and behind the scenes of his first EPIX comedy special, “STARK RAVING BLACK”. Interwoven with concert and on-the-road footage, this takes us back to his roots in Detroit, we meet his sweet-natured father and hear about his larger-than-life mother (no wonder, Lewis Black is Lewis Black), we meet friends and colleagues from his days at UNC-Chapel Hill and Yale School of Drama, where he garnered an MFA in Playwriting (he’s written 20+ plays) and from his days as producer, director and resident playwright at the West Bank Café in New York.

He’s outrageous as a comedian; his language is filled with expletives- the f-word is used loudly and often. He’s a loyal friend – as seen with his longtime friendship and professional relationship with comedian, Joe Bowman, who opens for him on the road. He’s a loveable, growling teddy bear; he is curmudgeonly, yet you know there’s vulnerability aplenty; he’s a loud-mouth intellectual; he’s a Midwestern everyman. He’s the heir to the great comics George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield. More importantly, he’s the voice of our conscious in contemporary America. Here is where he shines – whether you are male, female, no matter what race, color, creed, no matter what age (at age 60, his fans span from 18-80), he dares to say, he shouts, he explodes with what few of us dare to utter, but with what so many of us are thinking, what our own brains are exploding with – that of the insanity of the contemporary life and all the s**t we find ourselves up against – and he, Lewis Black keeps us sane by making us laugh.

Whether seen as a companion piece to “STARK RAVING BLACK” or as a stand-alone, this is a must-see. My next big dream after viewing “BASIC BLACK” is to see Lewis Black in person – but until then…

“BASIC BLACK” premieres Sunday, August 1^st on EPIX and can be seen on OnDemand. Rated TV-MA. 69 minutes.

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Cynthia Kane is a writer, who in January 2007, moved cross-continent from New York City to San Francisco to work in Programming for [ ITVS ] primarily overseeing the International Intiative for funding. Prior she’s had many incarnations from actor to writer to producer. She co-created DOCday on Sundance Channel during her 10-year tenure there.