Forget about summer blockbusters. This season is sizzling with new documentaries on fashion and film, with some feminism thrown in.
Thanks to directors Trish Dalton and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge (2024) zooms in on the titular designer who created the classic wrap dress when she was just 22.
At the very same age, her mother Liliane Nahmias was released from Auschwitz concentration camp. The emaciated survivor was told she wouldn’t be able to bear children. But after 18 months, she and her husband Leon Halfin welcomed miracle baby Diane Halfin into the world, or rather to Belgium where she was born.
Because Diane looked after her fragile mother, she confesses, “I was never a child. I was always a grown-up.” Yet after she wed Prince Egon von Fürstenburg, Liliane would take on the mother role while raising the jet-setting couple’s children Alexander and Tatiana. Alas, Princess Diane of Fürstenberg’s antisemitic in-laws weren’t as supportive.
Following a brief apprenticeship with Angelo Ferretti in Italy, Diane found success in the fashion industry. Her varied career landed her on the cover of Newsweek at 28; selling scarves on QVC in the 1990s; and designing T-shirts for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Nevertheless, Fürstenberg says, “I don’t think that I had a vocation for fashion, I had a vocation to be a woman in charge.”
As such, she and her husband (who openly indulged in affairs with men) divorced in 1983. Diane enjoyed dalliances with Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal within one weekend and turned down a threesome with David Bowie and Mick Jagger before marrying her soulmate, bisexual business tycoon Barry Diller, in 2001.
Since then, Fürstenberg was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and launched her #InCharge podcast to empower women. As this film shows, she now tries to make time for her family and philanthropic causes. Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge can currently be streamed on Hulu.
Fashionista and Hollywood veteran Faye Dunaway is the subject of Faye (2024). The first feature documentary on the celebrated actress covers her career highs (1967’s Bonnie & Clyde, 1974’s Chinatown, and 1976’s Network) and lows such as the unintentionally campy biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) about Joan Crawford. The 91-minute film also touches on Dunaway’s bipolar disorder and includes interviews with Sharon Stone, feminist Robin Morgan, and Liam Dunaway O’Neill, Dunaway’s son with photographer Terry O’Neill. Faye can be streamed on Max.
Famed filmmaker Martin Scorsese relays two of his cinematic influences in the documentary Made In England: The Films of Powell And Pressburger (2024). “You knew you were in for fantasy, wonder, magic – real film magic,” says Scorsese about the movies jointly written, directed and produced by Englishman Michael Powell and Hungarian Emeric Pressburger, whose professional partnership formed The Archers production company in 1943. By the 1950s, their films were showing on American TV, where a young asthmatic Scorsese soaked them in. The Oscar-winning director of The Departed (2006) points out how Powell and Pressburger’s romantic-war epic The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) impacted his handling of the boxing choreography in Raging Bull (1980) and how the aesthetics of the musical The Red Shoes (1948) informed the color palette of Mean Streets (1973).
Under the direction of David Hinton, the documentary shows clips from the aforementioned movies as well as scenes from Black Narcissus (1947), Gone to Earth (1950), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Peeping Tom (1960), and Age of Consent (1969) featuring a young Helen Mirren.
“Certain films you simply run all the time and you live with them,” says Scorsese. “As you grow older they grow deeper. I’m not sure how it happens, but it does. For me, that body of work is a wondrous presence, a constant source of energy, and a reminder of what life and art are all about.” Made In England: The Films of Powell And Pressburger (2024) opens on July 26 at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
The life and times of musical prodigy Russell Garcia, who began arranging music at 11 years old and was composing pieces into his 90s, is explored in the documentary Hollywood’s Humble Maestro: The Russell Garcia Story. Throughout his eight decade-long career, Garcia collaborated with entertainment icons including Charlie Chaplin, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Mancini, Judy Garland, and Louis Armstrong. After working on 1960s crime shows (Perry Mason, The Untouchables) and westerns (Laredo, Rawhide) as well as the sci-fi movies The Time Machine (1960) and Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), the bandleader, conductor, trumpeter, songwriter, ski enthusiast and Baháʼí Faith member chose to sail the Pacific Ocean with his wife, singer-lyricist-writer Gina Mauriello. Wayfarer Theaters will screen Hollywood’s Humble Maestro: The Russell Garcia Story on July 27.
Chicagoans seeking information on the silent and golden age of cinema can sign up for the evening class The Poles in Hollywood: From Pola Negri to Richard Boleslawski at the Newberry. On Aug. 1, archivist and film historian Professor Annette Bochenek will present photos and video clips as she recounts Polish talents on screen and behind the camera as well as depictions of Polish characters in film. Click here for details.