The Apollo (2019 film)

Last updated
The Apollo
Directed by
Written by
  • Roger Ross Williams
  • Cassidy Hartmann
  • Jean Tsien
Produced by
  • Roger Ross Williams
  • Lisa Cortés
  • Jeanne Elfant Festa
  • Cassidy Hartmann
Cinematography
  • Michael Dwyer
Edited by
  • Jean Tsien
  • John S. Fisher
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • April 24, 2019 (2019-04-24)
Running time
102 minutes
Country
  • United States
LanguageEnglish

The Apollo is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Roger Ross Williams. The Apollo had its world premiere on April 24, 2019, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It received positive reviews and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special in 2020 while also being shortlisted for nomination of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. [1] [2]

Contents

Summary

The film looks at the unique history and contemporary legacy of the iconic Apollo Theater while following the Apollo's inaugural staging of Ta-Nehisi Coates' acclaimed "Between the World and Me." [3]

Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 22 critics and assessed 21 as positive and 1 as negative for a 95% rating. Metacritic determined an average rating of 7.7/10.

Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly scored The Apollo an A−, writing "Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams stacks his story accordingly, drawing warm testimonials from some of the biggest names to ever grace its stage, including Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Jamie Foxx, and Pharrell Williams. But the [film] also works beautifully as a mosaic, unfurling its rich history without failing to acknowledge that it takes more than nostalgia to keep a cultural institution alive. In that sense, The Apollo feels like both a necessary lesson and a gift." [4]

Accolades

The Apollo won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards. [1]

The Apollo was additionally one of fifteen documentaries shortlisted for nomination of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. [2]

YearAwardCategoryNominee(s)ResultRef.
2019 72nd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special Roger Ross Williams, Lisa Cortés, Jeanne Elfant Festa and Cassidy Hartmann, producers; Dan Cogan, Nicholas Ferrall and Julie Goldman, executive producersWon [1]
24th Satellite Awards Best Motion Picture – Documentary Roger Ross Williams Nominated [5]
IDA Awards Best Music Documentary Roger Ross Williams, Lisa Cortés, Jeanne Elfant Festa and Cassidy HartmannNominated [6]
2020 20th Annual Black Reel Awards Outstanding Documentary Roger Ross Williams Nominated [7]
Outstanding Original Song - "Don't Turn Back" Robert Glasper and Ledisi Nominated
51st NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Documentary (Film) HBO Nominated [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andre Braugher</span> American actor (1962–2023)

Andre Keith Braugher was an American actor known for his roles as Detective Frank Pembleton in the NBC police drama series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999) and Captain Raymond Holt in the Fox/NBC police comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013–2021). He won two Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Zimbalist</span> American filmmaker

Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, and 3 Emmy Awards, with 14 Emmy nominations. He is the owner of film and television production company All Rise Films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Ross Williams</span> American film director

Roger Ross Williams is an American director, producer and writer and the first African American director to win an Academy Award (Oscar), with his short film Music by Prudence; this film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Britell</span> American film composer (born 1980)

Nicholas Britell is an American film and television composer. He has received numerous accolades including a Emmy Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award. He has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), and Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021). He also scored McKay's The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2018). He is also known for scoring Battle of the Sexes (2017), Cruella (2021), and She Said (2022).

The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program is handed out annually at the Creative Arts Emmy Award ceremony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi</span> American film director

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017.

Motto Pictures is a documentary production company based in Brooklyn, New York specializing in producing and executive producing documentary features. Motto secures financing, builds distribution strategies, and creatively develops films, and has produced over 25 feature documentaries and won numerous awards.

The Triple Crown of Acting is a term used in the American entertainment industry to describe actors who have won a competitive Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award in the acting categories, the highest awards recognized in American film, television, and theater, respectively. The term is related to other competitive areas, such as the Triple Crown of horse racing.

The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special is handed out annually at the Creative Arts Emmy Award ceremony. The category was called Outstanding Nonfiction Special prior to 2013 and Outstanding Informational Special before 1998.

Feras Fayyad is a Syrian film director, producer, and writer. Fayyad best known for his 2017 documentary Last Men in Aleppo and his 2019 documentary The Cave, both films earned him critical acclaim and numerous awards and nominations including two Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making him the first Syrian director to be nominated for an Oscar. Fayyad also won an Emmy award for Best Current Affairs Documentary, was nominated for a creative Emmy for best writing and directing, and has received two George Foster Peabody awards and a nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement from the Directors Guild of America for his movie The Cave.

Marina Zenovich is an American filmmaker known for her biographical documentaries. Her films include LANCE, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which won two Emmy awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Higher Ground Productions</span> Media production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama

Higher Ground Productions, also known simply as Higher Ground, is an American production company founded in 2018 by former United States President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

<i>Apollo 11</i> (2019 film) 2019 documentary film

Apollo 11 is a 2019 American documentary film edited, produced and directed by Todd Douglas Miller. It focuses on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, the first spaceflight from which men walked on the Moon. The film consists solely of archival footage, including 70 mm film previously unreleased to the public, and does not feature narration, interviews or modern recreations. The Saturn V rocket, Apollo crew consisting of Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins, and Apollo program Earth-based mission operations engineers are prominently featured in the film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Reichert</span> American filmmaker and activist (1946–2022)

Julia Bell Reichert was an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist. She was a co-founder of New Day Films. Reichert's filmmaking career spanned over 50 years as a director and producer of documentaries.

<i>American Factory</i> 2019 documentary film

American Factory is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, about Chinese company Fuyao's factory in Moraine, a city near Dayton, Ohio, that occupies Moraine Assembly, a shuttered General Motors plant. The film had its festival premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It is distributed by Netflix and is the first film acquired by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground Productions. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Marilyn Ness is a documentary film producer and director based in New York City who made the social justice documentaries Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale (2010), Cameraperson (2016), and Charm City (2018). More recent projects include the Netflix Original documentary Becoming with Michelle Obama, which was nominated for four Primetime Emmy awards and Netflix Original documentary Dick Johnson is Dead, which was on the Academy Award Shortlist for Best Documentary in 2021. She is as of 2021 an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University.

Ljubomir Stefanov is a Macedonian filmmaker best known for co-directing the 2019 documentary Honeyland with Tamara Kotevska. The documentary received two nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards: Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film.

Todd Douglas Miller is an American filmmaker known for directing the award-winning films Dinosaur 13 and Apollo 11.

Impact Partners is an American film production and television production company founded in 2007, by Dan Cogan and Geralyn Dreyfous. The company primarily produces documentary films focusing on social issues.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hersko, Tyler (2020-09-15). "'The Apollo' Wins Emmy for Outstanding Documentary". IndieWire. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  2. 1 2 "92nd OSCARS SHORTLISTS | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". www.oscars.org. 2019-12-10. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  3. Carey, Matthew (2020-08-24). "Filmmaker Roger Ross Williams On His Emmy-Nominated 'The Apollo' And Upcoming Special With Oprah, Ta-Nehisi Coates". Deadline. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  4. Greenblatt, Leah; May 07, Chris Nashawaty; EDT, 2019 at 12:28 PM. "Muhammad Ali, Parkland, and 'The Apollo' docs shine at the Tribeca Film Festival: EW review". EW.com. Retrieved 2023-03-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. "Nominees for the 24th Annual Satellite Awards, celebrating achievements in Film, Television". www.filmfestivals.com. 2019-12-03. Retrieved 2023-07-25.
  6. Lewis, Hilary (2019-10-23). "IDA Documentary Awards: 'Honeyland,' 'American Factory,' 'Apollo 11' Lead Nominees". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2023-07-25.
  7. Neglia, Matt (2019-12-11). "The 2019 Black Reel Awards (BRAs) Nominations". Next Best Picture. Retrieved 2023-07-25.
  8. "Nominees Announced for 51st NAACP Image Awards | NAACP". naacp.org. 2020-01-09. Retrieved 2023-07-25.