Valerie Ettenhofer

“People want their myths,” Roseanne Cash says late in The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, and it’s true. The late Man in Black has been immortalized several times before, most notably in the 2005 Oscar-winning biopic Walk the Line, most recently in…

There’s a point toward the end of Sasha Neulinger’s debut documentary, Rewind, during which the man who is both director and subject takes the stand in an empty courtroom and rereads a statement he gave years ago. Afterward, as he speaks about his…

A typical adult could read the first volume of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in under a half hour. For the kids who discovered the uncanny, disturbing folk tales at a young age, the nightmares –along with the devilish glee that comes with…

“You can’t be what you can’t see.” This quote by Marian Wright Edelman is one of several that serve as title cards between sections of Beyoncé’s landmark concert documentary Homecoming. Even the newest fans will quickly realize that there’s so much…

The so-called “Instagram generation” strikes fear into the hearts of most anyone over a certain age, a fact director Jonathan Ignatius Green milks for all it’s worth in his debut documentary feature, Social Animals. While he chooses three interesting…

Brian Ivie's film is a humanizing look at the pain and love of a community that survived the unimaginable. In the past few years, a campaign has sprung up across social media, one that hopes to elevate victims and survivors of mass violence without…

“Some people are quick to see injustice and cruelty,” Ursula K. Le Guin said before her passing earlier this year, “but I was slow to see it.” This frank insight is one of the many spoken by the clear-headed octogenarian author in the course of…