Jim Henson He was a genius, there is no doubt. Also Roger Federer. In the puppets and on the tennis courts. On television and in the most brilliant open spaces. Each one in his discipline went beyond the common and wild.
We don’t know if Taylor Swift is, but she does have phenomenon status. And it is clear that Barbie, the most famous doll on the planet, is experiencing a moment of glory after the 2023 film.
In this field of great characters and inventions, the case of the four children rescued in the Colombian Amazon is the other side of the human condition. It is tragedy and then joy, but it has in common with the above the spirit of combat and defiance of adversity.
This is a guide to five documentaries about it:
1.- Jim Henson: The Man and the Ideas, Disney+: It is not the first time that director Ron Howard (Apollo 13) plays in the field of documentaries (he has made eight), but this is one of the good ones, one of those that are not made out of compromise. Explore the amazing, eventful and short life of Jim Henson (1936-1990), the man who created The Muppets and who died at the age of 53 from a bacterial lung infection. There are testimonies from his children (they all worked with him), his ex-wife, his faithful collaborator Frank Oz (he gave voice to Miss Piggy, while Henson was Kermit the Frog or Kermit the Frog) and even Jennifer Connelly, who at 16 starred in Labyrinth, one of Henson’s cult films.
Watching the film one can understand that his existence was short: Henson was so workaholic and creative that his light was not going to last long. Like Mozart. Among the successes of the documentary, the access to his notebooks and also to pre-Muppets, pre-Sesame Street television records stands out.
2.- Black Barbie, Netflix: Lagueria Davis, the director of this documentary, is 46 years old and always hated dolls. Probably by going against her own instincts, she wanted to exorcise that atavistic contempt, enter a more harmonious terrain and, specifically, end up making a film about the origin of the black Barbie, designed in 1980 by Kitty Black Perkins.
But Davis also has the excuse that her aunt was one of the first women of color to work at Mattel, knowing the internal status of the company founded by Ruth and Elliot Handler in 1945. The testimony of this woman, Beulah Mae Mitchell, is the axis that drives the documentary, more or less telling how the company opened itself to new times. Although Mattel is not among the producers of the film, one could say that the story is careful not to leave anyone badly injured or sheared.
3.- Bad Blood: Taylor Swift vs. Scott Braun, Max: This two-part documentary has the advantage of being able to tell the same story from two different points of view. In this case in two 50-minute episodes with versions by singer and songwriter Taylor Swift and music businessman Scooter Braun for ownership of the masters of her first six albums.
The episode was well known and it is known that after selling this catalog to Braun, Swift had to re-record her first six albums. The chapter dedicated to Swift emphasizes how the singer became a kind of victim of the industry from minute zero, starting when Kanye West burst onto the MTV Awards stage to tell her that she didn’t deserve any awards and that Beyoncé was a thousand times better. After her, her feuds with Justin Bieber, Kathy Perry and even Joe Jonas intensified.
In the part dedicated to Scott Braun we are told that in reality Taylor did not lose as much as is believed and that his father took a good percentage of Braun’s record sales. Of course, there’s plenty of rabid threats from Swift fans, or “swifties,” to Braun.
4.- Federer: The Last Twelve Days, Prime Video: It’s comforting to see Roger Federer, one of the great tennis players of all time, in your inner circle. Often called a machine, a robot or imperturbable (“he doesn’t mess up when he plays,” said Chino Ríos), the Swiss tennis player appears here particularly open, sensitive, willing to talk, close. It’s probably because it’s his final days as a tennis player and he’s about to retire.
But whatever, the film is able to penetrate the skin of the man who has won Wimbledon the most times and who always stood out for his chivalry in tournaments. “It’s just not my personality,” he says when asked why he didn’t show more aggression or anger when things weren’t going well on the court.
As its title says, the film by Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia talks about the last moments and the time of retirement. It is the most emotional and especially if the farewell words come from Rafael Nadal, a great friend outside the tennis court and with whom he faced off 40 times.
5.- Lost in the Amazon: The rescue that shocked the world, Max: On May 1, 2023 at 6 hours and 42 minutes in the morning, a small plane crashed in the Colombian jungle, leaving only four surviving children. The three remaining adults died.
This episode with global media resonance, a bit like the case of the Chilean miners rescued in 2010, is what is recorded in the documentary by Cristina Nieto and Jaime Escallón. What there is is testimonies from the relatives of the children Lesly, Soleiny, Mucuty and Christine, interviews with journalists, authorities and soldiers. They all give an account of the complex search experience, faced with the density of the Colombian Amazon and the difficult relationship of that country’s army with the native peoples of the area.
