“All These Sleepless Nights” director Michał Marczak finally returns with a visceral film that defies the true-crime genre.

My Sundance began this year with The Story of Documentary Film, and it ruined almost everything I’ve watched since. The latest series from Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) takes viewers on a thoughtful journey through 140 years of nonfiction cinema, and while I only received access to the first episode of the 16-hour film, that was enough to remind me of the significance and artistry that documentary is capable of. Nothing else I was seeing in my first batch of Sundance documentary screeners seemed to matter in comparison or excite me on the same level.

Talking to Cousins last week helped put today’s documentaries into perspective, but our conversation made me more excited to watch the rest of The Story of Documentary Film and all the documentaries of the past that it might introduce me to. I’m sure the series will point out all my blind spots regarding the history of the mode. During the interview alone, Cousins shared the names of some filmmakers I need to (and will) learn about. We also discussed the continued importance of documentaries, especially given the state of the world at the moment, and what it means for the future.

Below is our conversation in full, with minor editing for clarity.

First of all, thank you for making this series. I’m so excited about it, and not just because of how vitally informative it is. It’s really creatively done. It’s artistic. Opening with the elephant triptych: amazing.

I was so pleased with that, because you know, you need to grab people, don’t you? I saw that little thing on social media about the elephant, and I thought, “Fuck, the Lumieres could have done this.” Documentary is quite simple in a way. We don’t need to be an intellectual to understand what documentary is. We just need to look out into the world and see something happening and capture its intensity. I don’t know who shot that little thing, but isn’t it lovely? The elephant comes, and she puts her head against the digger.

Documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”

The first episode ruined me for all other documentaries at Sundance this year. It’s not just that documentaries 100 years ago and older had so much more purpose and significance, but you make them all seem more important than almost anything today. I can’t wait for filmmakers to watch it because I don’t think enough of them are familiar with the history and potential of documentary.

That’s what I do. That’s my job, isn’t it? My job is to say, “I’m a filmmaker. I love this art form. I love this language. Let’s dive into it. Let’s plunge into it, in a way.” I think The Story of Documentary Film was a kind of plunge. It’s very optimistic, I think. You’ve only just seen the first chapter, but already, there, we can see the origins of documentary, what makes it special. The fact that Georges Demenÿ says, “Je vous aime,” isn’t that beautiful? “I love you.” I think that if you really want to boil it down, documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”

How familiar and educated were you with the whole history of documentary going into this project?

Quite, to be honest. With Kevin Macdonald, you know, the great filmmaker, he and I did a book called Imagining Reality in 1995 [ed: first published in 1996], and we were boys. Already back then, that’s more than 30 years ago, we tried to say, “Look, we have to talk about the creativity of this form.” Obviously, documentary is sociological and journalistic in some ways, but back then, [with] that book that we did, we tried to say it matters, the creativity of that. So I was pretty informed. Everywhere I went in the world in the last 30 years, I always got my antennae looking for the great filmmakers. I’m certainly not starting from scratch, shall we say. But still, there’s always more to know. You have to challenge yourself and your own opinions. With this particular film, The Story of Documentary Film, I challenge my opinions a bit more.

Share Nonfics

It’s humbling to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion.

Was there anything that you were surprised to learn while making The Story of Documentary Film?

Too much. So much. If you go to the 1930s, and if we think of Germany in the 1930s and female filmmakers, one person comes to mind. I don’t even need to name her. You know who I’m talking about. Leni Riefenstahl. But at the same time, in the 1930s, there was another great female German director called Ella Bergmann-Michel. My job, I think, as a passionate cinephile and filmmaker, is to say, yeah, of course, we cannot dismiss Leni Riefenstahl, even though I think her art is monstrous. We ask who else was doing great stuff, and we’ve got Ella Bergmann-Michel.

There are loads of surprises throughout the whole thing. It’s a long piece, you know, it’s 16 hours. So it’s a long piece of work. But when you get to Africa in the ‘60s, my god. It becomes so interesting. There’s a great Egyptian filmmaker called Atteyat al-Abnoudy. She’s doing remarkable work. Brilliant. It’s humbling, to be honest, to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion in a way. A kind of way to say, “Look what’s happening.” Obviously, in the U.S., at the moment, where you are, you know bad things are happening, to be honest, but documentary has done good work. The filmmakers have done really good work to try to help us understand each other.

Similar to many filmmakers, most film students and film critics have a huge blind spot when it comes to documentaries. Do you hope to change that?

Yep. I’ve noticed in the U.S., in particular, people talk about “features,” and when they use the word “feature,” they mean fiction. But “feature” is a 90-minute form. So even at the most basic aspect of the language, there’s a lot to learn. But we’ve always got a lot to learn. Each one of us. I think the geopolitics makes it more urgent. There’s an urgency about this, I feel, in some way.

I’m not a wrecker. I’m not a destroyer. I’m not trying to say that everything we know about documentary is wrong. I personally think Shoah is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I think Michael Moore’s work is great. I’m not trying to take the canon down. I’m trying to add to it. I’m trying to say, look, if we love this form, which we do, then we have to also love the great Arabic filmmakers and the Iranian filmmakers. And when we get to the 1970s, I basically plunge into Indian documentary, and it’s absolutely fucking brilliant. Really. Indian documentary in the 1970s is so great. It’s sort of about sharing the love in a way.

Obviously, there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world, but this particular project, I think, is on a more optimistic plane than that. We’re trying to say, look what great things the community, by which I mean the documentary community, look what great things they’ve done in adversity, contra mundo, against the world. 

Subscribe now

We cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world.

In the press notes for The Story of Documentary Film, it says, “Most nonfiction films are formulaic or boring. You will not see those here.” But why not? If that constitutes most of documentary, isn’t that part of its story?

I’ve done this so many times. This is my third history of cinema. Of course, all that other stuff matters, but I’ve only got one life. I’m a 60-year-old man. I’m only going to focus on the people who did really innovative stuff, great stuff. I’ve always been interested in innovation. I’m not an academic or anything like that. Somebody else can tell us what the rubbish films did. I’m just interested in the great films, the innovators, and I would like to think that I’m slightly in that field myself. 

I’ve seen you say, and you even have a t-shirt with this line, “Documentary kills fascism.” Do you think documentaries still have the power to change the world?

Documentary just needs to say, “Here’s what it’s like to be alive.” If you jump into Japan in the ‘70s, the documentaries in Japan in the ‘70s are so brilliant. They are campaigning documentaries, and they are very sociological and political. But we cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world. But I think documentary is our best chance if we want to. In your country at the moment, there’s a kind of real reaction against knowledge and expertise and things like this, and people who know stuff, and so documentary has to fight against that, I think. If we go down the route of not being interested in knowledge, as we say in Ireland, “it’s a road to no town.” There’s no town where knowledge doesn’t matter. 

I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.”

I don’t know if you get into this in the end, but do you think documentary is under threat now from AI or from any other issues we’re facing regarding trust in images?

I go there. An interesting thing is that one of our images that we’re using to publicize this film is what’s called Butterfly Dance. It’s from 1895 or 1896, the woman dancing. Just to test what AI is like, I fed that into AI and said, “What is this?” The first thing it said was, “This is an image from Powell and Pressburger’s film The Red Shoes,” which was in the 1940s, like 50 years later. And I said, “No, it’s not.” The second thing it told me, it said, “This is an image from Daisies, by Vera Chytilová.” Both fucking stupidly wrong. We absolutely need, frankly, people like me who know this stuff and say no, I’m sorry.

I think that’s why this film matters in a way. In music, there’s this word “glissando” where a note goes [Cousins makes a sliding downward sound]. I feel that’s what’s happening in terms of the knowledge economy. So I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.” In terms of facts and points of view, etc. 

Did you hit any snags in your research or your gathering of clips where something wasn’t easily available?

Yes. I’ve dealt with this in the previous films that I’ve made. What you don’t want to do is say, “This is not available, therefore we won’t show it.” Something that’s not available, it’s extra important to show it. Because the reasons it’s not available are either nobody was interested, or it was censored, or something like that. In this one, my producer John Archer, I say to him, “I need this thing. I need this clip. And we need to find it somehow, some way.”

What I’m really lucky about is that because I’ve done a number of film history projects, and I think I’m respected for those projects, it means that when we approach an archive somewhere in the world, they’re likely to be helpful. They know they want to be part of something like this. The Story of Documentary Film will be a shop window for a kind of documentary that we want to know. So I think people collaborate with us and work with us because they think our work will be more widely seen.

Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it.

Were there any other major challenges on this one?

The challenge is always the same. It’s a creative question. How do you do something good and innovative? You’ve just seen the first hour, and even that first hour, how do I try to interest people? How do I say, look, you know some of this stuff, and that’s great, but let me take you to a place that you don’t know, and hopefully that’s an enjoyable place as well. So it’s always the same question, a creative question.

Do you find it difficult to narrativize it all?

I don’t find it difficult to narrativize it. I get so excited by what I see and the films that I’m seeing, and I think other people might be excited. My question is just, “How do I put it in a story structure so that people are not overwhelmed?” Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it. After Sundance, we’ve got four hours in Berlinale, and I think we’re going to roll this project out across the whole of this year. We’re trying to say “follow us,” because it’s a good story to tell. 

My Sundance began this year with The Story of Documentary Film, and it ruined almost everything I’ve watched since. The latest series from Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) takes viewers on a thoughtful journey through 140 years of nonfiction cinema, and while I only received access to the first episode of the 16-hour film, that was enough to remind me of the significance and artistry that documentary is capable of. Nothing else I was seeing in my first batch of Sundance documentary screeners seemed to matter in comparison or excite me on the same level.

Talking to Cousins last week helped put today’s documentaries into perspective, but our conversation made me more excited to watch the rest of The Story of Documentary Film and all the documentaries of the past that it might introduce me to. I’m sure the series will point out all my blind spots regarding the history of the mode. During the interview alone, Cousins shared the names of some filmmakers I need to (and will) learn about. We also discussed the continued importance of documentaries, especially given the state of the world at the moment, and what it means for the future.

Below is our conversation in full, with minor editing for clarity.

First of all, thank you for making this series. I’m so excited about it, and not just because of how vitally informative it is. It’s really creatively done. It’s artistic. Opening with the elephant triptych: amazing.

I was so pleased with that, because you know, you need to grab people, don’t you? I saw that little thing on social media about the elephant, and I thought, “Fuck, the Lumieres could have done this.” Documentary is quite simple in a way. We don’t need to be an intellectual to understand what documentary is. We just need to look out into the world and see something happening and capture its intensity. I don’t know who shot that little thing, but isn’t it lovely? The elephant comes, and she puts her head against the digger.

Documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”

The first episode ruined me for all other documentaries at Sundance this year. It’s not just that documentaries 100 years ago and older had so much more purpose and significance, but you make them all seem more important than almost anything today. I can’t wait for filmmakers to watch it because I don’t think enough of them are familiar with the history and potential of documentary.

That’s what I do. That’s my job, isn’t it? My job is to say, “I’m a filmmaker. I love this art form. I love this language. Let’s dive into it. Let’s plunge into it, in a way.” I think The Story of Documentary Film was a kind of plunge. It’s very optimistic, I think. You’ve only just seen the first chapter, but already, there, we can see the origins of documentary, what makes it special. The fact that Georges Demenÿ says, “Je vous aime,” isn’t that beautiful? “I love you.” I think that if you really want to boil it down, documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”

How familiar and educated were you with the whole history of documentary going into this project?

Quite, to be honest. With Kevin Macdonald, you know, the great filmmaker, he and I did a book called Imagining Reality in 1995 [ed: first published in 1996], and we were boys. Already back then, that’s more than 30 years ago, we tried to say, “Look, we have to talk about the creativity of this form.” Obviously, documentary is sociological and journalistic in some ways, but back then, [with] that book that we did, we tried to say it matters, the creativity of that. So I was pretty informed. Everywhere I went in the world in the last 30 years, I always got my antennae looking for the great filmmakers. I’m certainly not starting from scratch, shall we say. But still, there’s always more to know. You have to challenge yourself and your own opinions. With this particular film, The Story of Documentary Film, I challenge my opinions a bit more.

Share Nonfics

It’s humbling to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion.

Was there anything that you were surprised to learn while making The Story of Documentary Film?

Too much. So much. If you go to the 1930s, and if we think of Germany in the 1930s and female filmmakers, one person comes to mind. I don’t even need to name her. You know who I’m talking about. Leni Riefenstahl. But at the same time, in the 1930s, there was another great female German director called Ella Bergmann-Michel. My job, I think, as a passionate cinephile and filmmaker, is to say, yeah, of course, we cannot dismiss Leni Riefenstahl, even though I think her art is monstrous. We ask who else was doing great stuff, and we’ve got Ella Bergmann-Michel.

There are loads of surprises throughout the whole thing. It’s a long piece, you know, it’s 16 hours. So it’s a long piece of work. But when you get to Africa in the ‘60s, my god. It becomes so interesting. There’s a great Egyptian filmmaker called Atteyat al-Abnoudy. She’s doing remarkable work. Brilliant. It’s humbling, to be honest, to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion in a way. A kind of way to say, “Look what’s happening.” Obviously, in the U.S., at the moment, where you are, you know bad things are happening, to be honest, but documentary has done good work. The filmmakers have done really good work to try to help us understand each other.

Similar to many filmmakers, most film students and film critics have a huge blind spot when it comes to documentaries. Do you hope to change that?

Yep. I’ve noticed in the U.S., in particular, people talk about “features,” and when they use the word “feature,” they mean fiction. But “feature” is a 90-minute form. So even at the most basic aspect of the language, there’s a lot to learn. But we’ve always got a lot to learn. Each one of us. I think the geopolitics makes it more urgent. There’s an urgency about this, I feel, in some way.

I’m not a wrecker. I’m not a destroyer. I’m not trying to say that everything we know about documentary is wrong. I personally think Shoah is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I think Michael Moore’s work is great. I’m not trying to take the canon down. I’m trying to add to it. I’m trying to say, look, if we love this form, which we do, then we have to also love the great Arabic filmmakers and the Iranian filmmakers. And when we get to the 1970s, I basically plunge into Indian documentary, and it’s absolutely fucking brilliant. Really. Indian documentary in the 1970s is so great. It’s sort of about sharing the love in a way.

Obviously, there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world, but this particular project, I think, is on a more optimistic plane than that. We’re trying to say, look what great things the community, by which I mean the documentary community, look what great things they’ve done in adversity, contra mundo, against the world. 

Subscribe now

We cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world.

In the press notes for The Story of Documentary Film, it says, “Most nonfiction films are formulaic or boring. You will not see those here.” But why not? If that constitutes most of documentary, isn’t that part of its story?

I’ve done this so many times. This is my third history of cinema. Of course, all that other stuff matters, but I’ve only got one life. I’m a 60-year-old man. I’m only going to focus on the people who did really innovative stuff, great stuff. I’ve always been interested in innovation. I’m not an academic or anything like that. Somebody else can tell us what the rubbish films did. I’m just interested in the great films, the innovators, and I would like to think that I’m slightly in that field myself. 

I’ve seen you say, and you even have a t-shirt with this line, “Documentary kills fascism.” Do you think documentaries still have the power to change the world?

Documentary just needs to say, “Here’s what it’s like to be alive.” If you jump into Japan in the ‘70s, the documentaries in Japan in the ‘70s are so brilliant. They are campaigning documentaries, and they are very sociological and political. But we cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world. But I think documentary is our best chance if we want to. In your country at the moment, there’s a kind of real reaction against knowledge and expertise and things like this, and people who know stuff, and so documentary has to fight against that, I think. If we go down the route of not being interested in knowledge, as we say in Ireland, “it’s a road to no town.” There’s no town where knowledge doesn’t matter. 

I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.”

I don’t know if you get into this in the end, but do you think documentary is under threat now from AI or from any other issues we’re facing regarding trust in images?

I go there. An interesting thing is that one of our images that we’re using to publicize this film is what’s called Butterfly Dance. It’s from 1895 or 1896, the woman dancing. Just to test what AI is like, I fed that into AI and said, “What is this?” The first thing it said was, “This is an image from Powell and Pressburger’s film The Red Shoes,” which was in the 1940s, like 50 years later. And I said, “No, it’s not.” The second thing it told me, it said, “This is an image from Daisies, by Vera Chytilová.” Both fucking stupidly wrong. We absolutely need, frankly, people like me who know this stuff and say no, I’m sorry.

I think that’s why this film matters in a way. In music, there’s this word “glissando” where a note goes [Cousins makes a sliding downward sound]. I feel that’s what’s happening in terms of the knowledge economy. So I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.” In terms of facts and points of view, etc. 

Did you hit any snags in your research or your gathering of clips where something wasn’t easily available?

Yes. I’ve dealt with this in the previous films that I’ve made. What you don’t want to do is say, “This is not available, therefore we won’t show it.” Something that’s not available, it’s extra important to show it. Because the reasons it’s not available are either nobody was interested, or it was censored, or something like that. In this one, my producer John Archer, I say to him, “I need this thing. I need this clip. And we need to find it somehow, some way.”

What I’m really lucky about is that because I’ve done a number of film history projects, and I think I’m respected for those projects, it means that when we approach an archive somewhere in the world, they’re likely to be helpful. They know they want to be part of something like this. The Story of Documentary Film will be a shop window for a kind of documentary that we want to know. So I think people collaborate with us and work with us because they think our work will be more widely seen.

Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it.

Were there any other major challenges on this one?

The challenge is always the same. It’s a creative question. How do you do something good and innovative? You’ve just seen the first hour, and even that first hour, how do I try to interest people? How do I say, look, you know some of this stuff, and that’s great, but let me take you to a place that you don’t know, and hopefully that’s an enjoyable place as well. So it’s always the same question, a creative question.

Do you find it difficult to narrativize it all?

I don’t find it difficult to narrativize it. I get so excited by what I see and the films that I’m seeing, and I think other people might be excited. My question is just, “How do I put it in a story structure so that people are not overwhelmed?” Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it. After Sundance, we’ve got four hours in Berlinale, and I think we’re going to roll this project out across the whole of this year. We’re trying to say “follow us,” because it’s a good story to tell. 

My Sundance began this year with The Story of Documentary Film, and it ruined almost everything I’ve watched since. The latest series from Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) takes viewers on a thoughtful journey through 140 years of nonfiction cinema, and while I only received access to the first episode of the 16-hour film, that was enough to remind me of the significance and artistry that documentary is capable of. Nothing else I was seeing in my first batch of Sundance documentary screeners seemed to matter in comparison or excite me on the same level.

Talking to Cousins last week helped put today’s documentaries into perspective, but our conversation made me more excited to watch the rest of The Story of Documentary Film and all the documentaries of the past that it might introduce me to. I’m sure the series will point out all my blind spots regarding the history of the mode. During the interview alone, Cousins shared the names of some filmmakers I need to (and will) learn about. We also discussed the continued importance of documentaries, especially given the state of the world at the moment, and what it means for the future.

Below is our conversation in full, with minor editing for clarity.

First of all, thank you for making this series. I’m so excited about it, and not just because of how vitally informative it is. It’s really creatively done. It’s artistic. Opening with the elephant triptych: amazing.

I was so pleased with that, because you know, you need to grab people, don’t you? I saw that little thing on social media about the elephant, and I thought, “Fuck, the Lumieres could have done this.” Documentary is quite simple in a way. We don’t need to be an intellectual to understand what documentary is. We just need to look out into the world and see something happening and capture its intensity. I don’t know who shot that little thing, but isn’t it lovely? The elephant comes, and she puts her head against the digger.

Documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”

The first episode ruined me for all other documentaries at Sundance this year. It’s not just that documentaries 100 years ago and older had so much more purpose and significance, but you make them all seem more important than almost anything today. I can’t wait for filmmakers to watch it because I don’t think enough of them are familiar with the history and potential of documentary.

That’s what I do. That’s my job, isn’t it? My job is to say, “I’m a filmmaker. I love this art form. I love this language. Let’s dive into it. Let’s plunge into it, in a way.” I think The Story of Documentary Film was a kind of plunge. It’s very optimistic, I think. You’ve only just seen the first chapter, but already, there, we can see the origins of documentary, what makes it special. The fact that Georges Demenÿ says, “Je vous aime,” isn’t that beautiful? “I love you.” I think that if you really want to boil it down, documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”

How familiar and educated were you with the whole history of documentary going into this project?

Quite, to be honest. With Kevin Macdonald, you know, the great filmmaker, he and I did a book called Imagining Reality in 1995 [ed: first published in 1996], and we were boys. Already back then, that’s more than 30 years ago, we tried to say, “Look, we have to talk about the creativity of this form.” Obviously, documentary is sociological and journalistic in some ways, but back then, [with] that book that we did, we tried to say it matters, the creativity of that. So I was pretty informed. Everywhere I went in the world in the last 30 years, I always got my antennae looking for the great filmmakers. I’m certainly not starting from scratch, shall we say. But still, there’s always more to know. You have to challenge yourself and your own opinions. With this particular film, The Story of Documentary Film, I challenge my opinions a bit more.

Share Nonfics

It’s humbling to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion.

Was there anything that you were surprised to learn while making The Story of Documentary Film?

Too much. So much. If you go to the 1930s, and if we think of Germany in the 1930s and female filmmakers, one person comes to mind. I don’t even need to name her. You know who I’m talking about. Leni Riefenstahl. But at the same time, in the 1930s, there was another great female German director called Ella Bergmann-Michel. My job, I think, as a passionate cinephile and filmmaker, is to say, yeah, of course, we cannot dismiss Leni Riefenstahl, even though I think her art is monstrous. We ask who else was doing great stuff, and we’ve got Ella Bergmann-Michel.

There are loads of surprises throughout the whole thing. It’s a long piece, you know, it’s 16 hours. So it’s a long piece of work. But when you get to Africa in the ‘60s, my god. It becomes so interesting. There’s a great Egyptian filmmaker called Atteyat al-Abnoudy. She’s doing remarkable work. Brilliant. It’s humbling, to be honest, to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion in a way. A kind of way to say, “Look what’s happening.” Obviously, in the U.S., at the moment, where you are, you know bad things are happening, to be honest, but documentary has done good work. The filmmakers have done really good work to try to help us understand each other.

Similar to many filmmakers, most film students and film critics have a huge blind spot when it comes to documentaries. Do you hope to change that?

Yep. I’ve noticed in the U.S., in particular, people talk about “features,” and when they use the word “feature,” they mean fiction. But “feature” is a 90-minute form. So even at the most basic aspect of the language, there’s a lot to learn. But we’ve always got a lot to learn. Each one of us. I think the geopolitics makes it more urgent. There’s an urgency about this, I feel, in some way.

I’m not a wrecker. I’m not a destroyer. I’m not trying to say that everything we know about documentary is wrong. I personally think Shoah is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I think Michael Moore’s work is great. I’m not trying to take the canon down. I’m trying to add to it. I’m trying to say, look, if we love this form, which we do, then we have to also love the great Arabic filmmakers and the Iranian filmmakers. And when we get to the 1970s, I basically plunge into Indian documentary, and it’s absolutely fucking brilliant. Really. Indian documentary in the 1970s is so great. It’s sort of about sharing the love in a way.

Obviously, there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world, but this particular project, I think, is on a more optimistic plane than that. We’re trying to say, look what great things the community, by which I mean the documentary community, look what great things they’ve done in adversity, contra mundo, against the world. 

Subscribe now

We cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world.

In the press notes for The Story of Documentary Film, it says, “Most nonfiction films are formulaic or boring. You will not see those here.” But why not? If that constitutes most of documentary, isn’t that part of its story?

I’ve done this so many times. This is my third history of cinema. Of course, all that other stuff matters, but I’ve only got one life. I’m a 60-year-old man. I’m only going to focus on the people who did really innovative stuff, great stuff. I’ve always been interested in innovation. I’m not an academic or anything like that. Somebody else can tell us what the rubbish films did. I’m just interested in the great films, the innovators, and I would like to think that I’m slightly in that field myself. 

I’ve seen you say, and you even have a t-shirt with this line, “Documentary kills fascism.” Do you think documentaries still have the power to change the world?

Documentary just needs to say, “Here’s what it’s like to be alive.” If you jump into Japan in the ‘70s, the documentaries in Japan in the ‘70s are so brilliant. They are campaigning documentaries, and they are very sociological and political. But we cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world. But I think documentary is our best chance if we want to. In your country at the moment, there’s a kind of real reaction against knowledge and expertise and things like this, and people who know stuff, and so documentary has to fight against that, I think. If we go down the route of not being interested in knowledge, as we say in Ireland, “it’s a road to no town.” There’s no town where knowledge doesn’t matter. 

I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.”

I don’t know if you get into this in the end, but do you think documentary is under threat now from AI or from any other issues we’re facing regarding trust in images?

I go there. An interesting thing is that one of our images that we’re using to publicize this film is what’s called Butterfly Dance. It’s from 1895 or 1896, the woman dancing. Just to test what AI is like, I fed that into AI and said, “What is this?” The first thing it said was, “This is an image from Powell and Pressburger’s film The Red Shoes,” which was in the 1940s, like 50 years later. And I said, “No, it’s not.” The second thing it told me, it said, “This is an image from Daisies, by Vera Chytilová.” Both fucking stupidly wrong. We absolutely need, frankly, people like me who know this stuff and say no, I’m sorry.

I think that’s why this film matters in a way. In music, there’s this word “glissando” where a note goes [Cousins makes a sliding downward sound]. I feel that’s what’s happening in terms of the knowledge economy. So I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.” In terms of facts and points of view, etc. 

Did you hit any snags in your research or your gathering of clips where something wasn’t easily available?

Yes. I’ve dealt with this in the previous films that I’ve made. What you don’t want to do is say, “This is not available, therefore we won’t show it.” Something that’s not available, it’s extra important to show it. Because the reasons it’s not available are either nobody was interested, or it was censored, or something like that. In this one, my producer John Archer, I say to him, “I need this thing. I need this clip. And we need to find it somehow, some way.”

What I’m really lucky about is that because I’ve done a number of film history projects, and I think I’m respected for those projects, it means that when we approach an archive somewhere in the world, they’re likely to be helpful. They know they want to be part of something like this. The Story of Documentary Film will be a shop window for a kind of documentary that we want to know. So I think people collaborate with us and work with us because they think our work will be more widely seen.

Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it.

Were there any other major challenges on this one?

The challenge is always the same. It’s a creative question. How do you do something good and innovative? You’ve just seen the first hour, and even that first hour, how do I try to interest people? How do I say, look, you know some of this stuff, and that’s great, but let me take you to a place that you don’t know, and hopefully that’s an enjoyable place as well. So it’s always the same question, a creative question.

Do you find it difficult to narrativize it all?

I don’t find it difficult to narrativize it. I get so excited by what I see and the films that I’m seeing, and I think other people might be excited. My question is just, “How do I put it in a story structure so that people are not overwhelmed?” Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it. After Sundance, we’ve got four hours in Berlinale, and I think we’re going to roll this project out across the whole of this year. We’re trying to say “follow us,” because it’s a good story to tell. 

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

(USA, 100 min.)

Dir. William Greaves, David Greaves

Prod. Liani Greaves, Anne de Mare

Programme: Premieres (World premiere)

Among the many insidious actions undertaken against Black Americans from the earliest days of slavery right through to Jim Crow and beyond was the erasure of their history. Connections to the past would bubble up from the disparate backgrounds represented by the broader community. These included musical instruments, traditional rhythms, musical stylings and artistic practices, and literary and philosophical ideas born from a legacy of exploitation and subjugation.

Despite these systemic mechanisms of erasure and silencing, there were moments when the stars aligned and marginalized people—and their ideas—were given space not to merely survive, but to thrive. One of these periods was in the 1920s and ’30s in northern Manhattan where the “Harlem Renaissance” occurred. It was during this period that a mass relocation from north to south took place, the so-called “Great Migration.” Communities were allowed to flourish economically and artistically, not entirely freed from the bonds of oppression, but certainly finding new and profound ways of letting their voices, art, music, and philosophies be heard both within their burgeoning community and around the world.

A half century after those events, William Greaves gathered many of the intellectual icons of that era together at the home of legendary musician Duke Ellington, himself a figure of the Renaissance. At Ellington’s home in August 1972, the documentarian, already celebrated for his formative and experimental 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, organized an event that was part cocktail party, part memorial, and part symposium, with the proceedings captured on film and key questions prompted by the director.

During his lifetime, Greaves never completed the project. But in 2026, a half-century after the event and a decade after William’s own passing in 2014, his son David and team of archivists, editors, and restoration experts have managed something akin to a miracle. For a project that itself was a reflection back on what then felt to be a distant past, in this age, the discussions, debates, and differing perspectives in the remarkable Once Upon a Time in Harlem could not be more timely.

David Greaves’ connection to the project runs deeper than simply taking over for his father’s absence, as he was one of the camera operators on that fateful day and a witness to the goings-on. Along with another Greaves, David’s daughter Liani (who serves as producer), you have a multi-generational perspective on what was captured and how to present it to contemporary audiences, resulting in something truly extraordinary.

Like the recent Oscar-winning Summer of Soul, there’s a deep sense of both discovery and joy in having this hitherto hidden footage finally see the light of day, .An argument could be made that the long gestation of the project actually makes its impact that much more powerful.

In the film, we see this group of elders arrive in all their finery, the crisp suits and colourful hats contrasting with some of the graffiti marking the handsome brownstones they walk past. Entering Ellington’s residence, there’s a sense of celebration with a twinge of mourning via explicit reminders of luminaries like political leader Marcus Garvey, poet Countee Cullen, or plastic artist Augusta Savage who were no longer there to speak their truths.

Many of those stories captured on film that day are no less legendary. Take Eubie Blake, for one, the pianist and composer who along with Noble Sissle helped reshape Broadway musicals forever. Or Leigh Whipper, the first Black member of Actors’ Equity, who at 96 years young at the time of filming, displays an almost superhuman memory, reciting verbatim poems and performances with the glimmer in his eyes of a far younger man. Richard Bruce Nugent, himself a poet, writer and painter, dominates much of the conversation held that day with his keen observations and unwavering commitment to expressing his own perspective.

There are some small moments that are truly joyful. Take an early scene where photographer James Vander Zee sits at Ellington’s handsome Steinway, tickling ivories and demonstrating his skills at the keys. Stills that he shot are the strongest connection to contemporaneous views of the Renaissance period, with flapper girls, wide-eyed starlets and top-hatted characters captured along with more quotidian scenes of Black life. Poet Arna Bontemps exudes the good-time feeling of his Francophone last name; his reminiscences warmly delivered with an occasional bite of ennui.

Among the remarkable individuals there that day was Bajan American writer, publisher, and self-avowed communist Richard B. Moore. The no-nonsense rhetoric from the man pricks any sense of nostalgia or hagiography – here was one who knew all those that marked this period in history. He provides the intellectual receipts to call bullshit when required. Decades old disagreements with other figures are articulated in ways that neither obviate the differences while giving respect to those who were unable to be there to speak for themselves. Many of the questions and criticisms he raises are particularly profound, and his sharp intellect and ability to navigate these complex issues with such coherence is one of the film’s more thrilling ingredients.

We are left then with something truly remarkable with Once Upon a Time in Harlem. One the one hand, it’s a brilliant observation of the past from the past, showcasing those who contributed to an explosion of cultural production while doing so at a turning point during the early 1970s, where massive gains had been made on the social front, but economic headwinds were about to plunge New York City into a near-apocalyptic downturn. On the other, the inadvertent delay means that today’s audiences can see more clearly some of what the participants in this party could not, while at the same time their direct access to what feels distant history draws everything from slavery and reconstruction through to the evolution of jazz and contemporary art to the present day.

This tug of war between past and present glories and struggles, both celebration and commemoration, makes this film as vital as any in Greaves’ canon. The use of split screens and overlapping dialogue feels completely coherent in 2026, whereas back in the early 1970s, it may well have been as astonishingly experimental and challenging as the wild formalism that Symbiopsychotaxiplasm exemplified. Yet this very sense of the contemporary gives these stories such power generations on, providing a pure form of historical record wrapped in an artistically sophisticated work of non-fiction.

Other films that celebrate similar gatherings, like Jean Bach’s A Great Day in Harlem, prove to be joyfully nostalgic and sympathetic to those being recalled. With Greaves, however, there’s more at play—a genuine design not to simply laud those from an early era, but to capture the sense of argument, debate, and discussion that fostered the movement in the first place. We are witness to the recollections from the participants in this dramatic era of change, and equally was can see how these movements were birthed in the first place. Thus Greaves captured in almost magical fashion this multifaceted portrait as relevant and resonant today, if not more so, than when the footage was captured those many years ago.

Once Upon a Time in Harlem premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

The post Once Upon a Time in Harlem Review: Greaves’ Long-Awaited Documentary Renaissance appeared first on POV Magazine.

Ghost in the Machine 

(USA, 110 min.)

Dir./Prod. Valerie Veatch

Programme: Next (World premiere)

Back in 1949, celebrated Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle published his seminal work, The Concept of Mind. Broadly speaking, this epistemologically dense text challenges Cartesian dualism, the notion that the mind is separate from the body, with the soul or spirit of cognition existing apart from the biological  operations of the body. Ryle refuted this divide, somewhat sardonically referring to it as a “ghost in the machine,” and writing in dismissive ways about the myth propagated by post-Cartesians that solidified the divide between cognitive results and the mechanisms from which they are born.

Ryle’s term, which gives Valerie Veatch’s stimulating and deeply intellectual film its title, has developed a more insidious or macabre meaning. It now connotes the notion that within a given system, there’s a rot or a haunting, something endemic to the process whereby  the results are shaped by the inherent sickness like a cancer. This broad understanding of the term (while still explicitly evoking the works of Ryle, among others) makes Veatch’s polemical philosophizing about the development of so-called “Artificial Intelligence” so timely and provocative.

Through a series of interviews with data scientists, philosophers, cultural critics, and historians, and told through a series of chapters that tackle the topic in increasing depth, Veatch ties the development of large language models, machine learning, and other technologies at the forefront of science and economy in the present to some truly insidious beginnings that, according to many of the interviewees, demonstrate inherent concerns about the state of things.

Veatch begins her film by showcasing the case of Tay, the AI-powered chatbot that Microsoft launched on Twitter back in 2016. The idea of having a system with which one can use human language to converse is commonplace a decade later, but back then it was groundbreaking. Schooled on millions of actual online interactions, the chatbot was a reflection of real-world conversations and, unsurprisingly, that’s where things went almost comically wrong. Within minutes of launch, Tay’s responses to challenging queries were exposed as anti-Semitic drivel, and with her celebration of Hitler and other more fascist missives, the plug was soon pulled.

From here, Veatch looks back to some of the intellectual and social foundations that spurned the basis for the Silicon Valley revolution. She tyies it explicitly to early 20^th century eugenic proposals, as well as early phrenological concepts that claimed racial and gender superiority for a given class (white men, mostly) and advocating for sterilization of people perceived to be detrimental or damaging to this notion of purity. These American-born ideas would, of course, flourish to its most fanatic form in Nazi Germany, but as Veatch’s film posits, the foundational tools for these abhorrent policies, notably notions of statistical analysis and generative heuristics, are the exact foundations that drive what is commonly described as AI.

Veatch and her interviewees touch upon certain key leaders in the world known to millions, such Elon Musk to Sam Altman, but also some of the lesser-known figures who helped birth the current generation of venture capitalists, techno-futurists, and others. While the film does delve into some of the darker recesses, it’s not overtly political in a party sense, and major figures such as Peter Theil, or even the connection to South African Apartheid policies, are outside the scope of what’s a fairly damning indictment of the Standford-area tech-bro ethos.

A small disclaimer on the upper-right corner of the screen designates “not-AI” for much of the film, but as the chapters develop, and more B-roll replaces the straightforward Zoom-call like interviews, a slew of AI videos, much of it sloppy with oddly drawn fingers and mispositioned feet, are overtly designated as such. It’s a clever gambit if a slightly distracting one that forces viewers to accept the filmmaker’s indications about the veracity of one image over an other, while repeatedly reminding them how tenuous such interpretations are becoming thanks to contemporary tools.

In a step too far, Veatch also chooses to editorialize with strange sound editing.  Key phrases from a given clip repeat with a downward pitch, giving an ominous, almost diabolical sound, a voice for that ghost that she and others are trying to expose from within the seemingly innocuous statements. Done sparingly, it would have been more effective, but the decision soon becomes more tedious than anything, needlessly making overt that which any engaged audience member would already be picking up.

The film itself is incredibly ambitious in terms of its intellectual scope, but its effectiveness would be buttressed by a bit more concision. Some of the more tenuous claims are repeated multiple times without even the semblance of counterargument, making this feel at times more of a preaching to a choir than a true engagement with what are inherently challenging political, social, and philosophical concerns. On the other hand, dipping into other topics worthy of deeper explorations, especially the very human role in taming AI systems, namely those in English-speaking African nations, gives a sense that the film is paradoxically too wide in scope and only scratching the surface when it comes to the multifarious issues evoked by this current technological movement.

In the end, Veatch’s film carves out an important space, one that takes seriously the current state of things while asking important questions about what’s to be gleaned from these tools at our disposal. The film works at its best not when answers seem easy to come by, but when it further complicates the conversation itself, showing that simplistic admonishments (à la the inane and ineffective “fuck AI” mantra) do little to expose the deep challenges that such a technological revolution can generate. At the same time, the correlation between insidious techniques and procedures does not inherently doom the result—the question of whether the techniques of generating evil can be rewired to provide good is itself a query for the ages.

Ghost in the Machine is in many ways a perfect film of the age – messy, argumentative, grasping at answers in what feels to be a state of deep uncertainty. While it may not deliver a desired catharsis for anyone on the periphery of these radical changes to our technological capacities, it gives us something far more required. By collecting these thinkers in one place, providing an accessible yet deeply intellectual forum for raising questions of this sort, Veatch elicits her own mode of generative information, giving rapt audiences some tools to explore these deeper queries, and some starting points to make more profound sense of where we stand during these tumultuous times.

Ghost in the Machine premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

The post Ghost in the Machine Review: AI Doc Is the Film for Our Age appeared first on POV Magazine.

Executive produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Alysa Nahmias’ doc considers the not-so-sweet underbelly of America’s cutest sugar rush.

Andrea Botez is known by the Internet as a chess player, content creator, boxer, and DJ, but she’s always had one additional dream: to attend Stanford University.

In a journey with never-before-seen footage, Andrea Botez navigates the launch of Twitch and YouTube channels BotezLive with her sister Alexandra Botez; the expectations of her immigrant parents after fleeing communist Romania to pursue the American Dream; and the application process to Stanford University, resulting in the most difficult decision she’s ever had to make.

ANDREA’S GAMBIT is a short documentary about ambition, identity, and the pressure to choose the “right” path when every move carries consequences.

The film is an MPI Original Film in association with Bold Harbor Pictures

Edited By Andrew Jewell

Music By Alexander Arntzen

Executive Producers Andrea Botez, Nick Reid, Rob Pfaltzgraff

Produced By Lana Link, Rebecca Doyle

Directed by Rebecca Doyle

Learn more at AndreasGambitdoc.com

Andrea Botez is known by the Internet as a chess player, content creator, boxer, and DJ, but she’s always had one additional dream: to attend Stanford University.

In a journey with never-before-seen footage, Andrea Botez navigates the launch of Twitch and YouTube channels BotezLive with her sister Alexandra Botez; the expectations of her immigrant parents after fleeing communist Romania to pursue the American Dream; and the application process to Stanford University, resulting in the most difficult decision she’s ever had to make.

ANDREA’S GAMBIT is a short documentary about ambition, identity, and the pressure to choose the “right” path when every move carries consequences.

The film is an MPI Original Film in association with Bold Harbor Pictures

Edited By Andrew Jewell

Music By Alexander Arntzen

Executive Producers Andrea Botez, Nick Reid, Rob Pfaltzgraff

Produced By Lana Link, Rebecca Doyle

Directed by Rebecca Doyle

Learn more at AndreasGambitdoc.com

Canada’s captivating ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier are heading back to the Olympics with eyes on making the podium. But before they hit the ice in Milan for the 2026 Winter Games, they’re giving fans a behind the scenes look at the sweat and dedication behind their sport in the Netflix series Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing. The documentary directed by Katie Walsh (Simone Biles Rising) follows Piper and Paul as they vie for Olympic gold alongside American competitors Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Both teams are looking at an open run for the podium after the three top duos retired following the previous Games.

But their plans get thrown for a loop when defending champion Guillaume Cizeron reneges on his retirement plans and entices Canadian ice dancer Laurence Fournier Beaudry to join him when her partner Nikolaj Sørensen gets slapped with a ban from competing after a 2012 sexual assault allegation surfaced last year. (The decision that has since been overturned.)

The new team coming into play during the lead-up to Milan Cortina means that all the skaters must perfect every dance move, master each rhythm, and leave no room for error among the highly subjective judging. For Pipe and Paul, though, letting the cameras go alongside them during this pivotal Olympic year was a chance to hone in on their craft as they walked the filmmakers through their stories and their routines.

“In an Olympic season, there’s so much more that gets put on your plate, not only with this docuseries, but just there’s so much more press and sponsorship opportunities and all of the buzz around the Olympics,” Poirier tells POV via Zoom. “One of the biggest challenges in Olympic season is finding the right balance of making the most of all the opportunities before you, but making sure that you’re taking care of yourself and taking care of your energy. But I think with this series, we were excited at the prospect of being able to share more about ourselves, share more about the process, and share more about our sport to teach people about ice dance and what makes it so special.”

Poirier says that juggling on-ice and on-camera duties made him mindful of energy reserves, but that the filmmakers were obviously respectful of their needs as athletes to give them space to train. (After all, a documentary wouldn’t be as interesting with stars running on empty.)

“I think especially with their experience working with Simone Biles before the last games, they were so understanding of the process and what it takes,” says Poirier. “It ended up not being a distraction at all, and we got really emotional when we had our last day of filming in Japan in December because it really felt like the end of something in a way. We’re really grateful for the entire team for taking such good care of us and taking such good care of our story.”

“Once we met them, we kind of knew what they were trying to capture,” adds Gilles. “They weren’t out for making a villain, whereas reality TV could go that direction, but they were just purists in the sense they really wanted to know who we were and share our stories.”

Piper Gilles in Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing | Netflix

While Glitter & Gold finds narrative threads for their competitors in that Chock and Bates are married, while Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry are a strategic marriage, so to speak, Piper and Paul’s idiosyncratic nature shows how two distinct friends create harmony on the ice. “We very much know our differences. I am a go with the flow [person]. I don’t need a schedule. I don’t need someone to tell me how to be a character,” says Gilles, who says Paul’s a planner by comparison. “He can conceptually see something differently than I can. What he brings is now reflecting on me. The two of us just have blended together in one way, but we know our uniqueness and we know our differences. We value being different and how that can coexist and create something so natural and beautiful. That’s been the story of our entire career.”

Piper and Paul’s story especially fuels the third episode of the three-part series. Gilles opens up about watching her mother’s battle with brain cancer while she prepared for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang (her mom passed shortly afterwards in May 2018) and then experiencing a scare of her own when she was treated for ovarian cancer in 2023. In episode two, Poirier reflects upon providing positive representation for queer athletes in the sport as he and Piper rehearse their routine for the rhythm dance. For their routine, they choose RuPaul’s “Supermodel” as a nod to LGBTQ+ community and as a chance to let loose and have fun in their signature blend of classical technique and contemporary pizazz that sets them apart from their more traditionally-oriented competitors.

“We’ve really put a lot of work into small moments. With the rhythm dance, because it goes by so quickly and we have a lot of elements to accomplish, it’s pretty difficult to encapsulate the character that we’re trying to portray,” says Gilles. “We did a lot of work on one of the choreo steps in there that really embodies the sassiness of walking that runway and the movements between element and element, but it’s been a process.”

She adds that they’ve tweaked the opening to the routine, too, since that’s such a big hook for audiences. “We’re finally figuring out exactly how to skate this programme,” says Gilles. “And we needed to have criticism to take a step back and figure out what else we can do.”

Paul Poirier in Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing | Netflix

“We finally had some time to really revise and upgrade the programmes after the Grand Prix,” adds Poirier. Episode three, which mostly focuses on Piper and Paul’s “Vincent (Starry Starry Night)” in the free dance, shows the disappointment that the teams face when bogus judging doesn’t give the skaters credit for the calibre of their work. (Netflix asked us to refrain from questions about judging.)

“The Grand Prix events are so close together and you don’t have a lot of time to make those refinements, so we were really glad after the Grand Prix final to have the opportunity to review the programmes and make some changes—some that we had been planning for a few months since the start of the Grand Prix series, and it was really nice to go to nationals and have two very successful skates with both programmes,” says Poirier. “It gave us a lot of confidence and it really showed us that we’re moving the programmes in the right direction.”

Glitter & Gold doesn’t show the “Supermodel” routine in full, whereas Madison and Evan and Guillaume and Laurence find a heated rivalry in episode two as their dance-offs fuel the dramatic arc. However, recent performances of the routine since filming wrapped show that Piper and Paul’s work with the RuPaul number won’t see them sashay away in Milan. They really nailed it with a recent triumph at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships.

Watching the recent performance on the heels of the Netflix series, one can see how they’ve continued to refine the routine. For example, Glitter & Gold observes as the teams find the right costuming to accentuate the routine. They escape the skirt drama that thwarts Madison and Evan, but also throws a twist in one of the Grand Prix standings. In the series, Piper and Paul hew closely to a family resemblance challenge with matching(ish) white outfits, but their nationals’ performance showcased Paul in a sequined black costume to contrast with Piper’s white outfit. The yin and yang effect helps “Supermodel” click.

Poirier notes that costume designer Bobby Ackbarali suggested a black outfit, but that he put the idea on the back burner until they were doing fine-tuning after the Grand Prix. “When we got back from the Grand Prix final, Piper really wanted to create a freer energy for the programme in a lot of ways and suggested we go to something that’s a little bit more contrasting and complementary instead of matching with the two costumes,” says Poirier. “It was a really positive change that gave us a freer and more open energy for the programme. It really brings a positive energy.”

Netflix

As Piper and Paul get ready to channel that positive energy into some Canadian pride on the ice, they’re savouring the moment and celebrating their sport regardless of whether that glitter translates to gold. “We’ve had the privilege of doing two Olympic Games before this, so we understand what an incredible and unique experience and opportunity it is,” says Poirier. “There’s just so much positive energy around these games and we want to take that with us when we go into what will be a high pressure environment, but an environment that will be full of joy.”

“Everybody has a chance to cheer for someone new and be inspired,” agrees Gilles. “We’re just thrilled to kind of be a part of that energy and atmosphere and be inspired by the athletes in the village because I love listening to people’s stories.”

Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing premieres on Netflix on Feb. 1.

The post Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier Go for Gold in Netflix Doc Series appeared first on POV Magazine.