In the last two years the documentary landscape has shifted from the golden age of docus to the corporate age of docus, making it increasingly difficult for nonfiction filmmakers with projects that aren’t about celebrities or true crimes to find distribution. But HBO documentary Films is proving that despite being part of a corporate conglomerate, it still wants content that doesn’t necessarily pertain to bold faced names, salacious murders or cults.
Proof is Irene Taylor‘s “Trees and Other Entanglements,” a feature doc that uses trees as the main throughline to tell various subject’s personal stories. Ahead of the film’s Dec. 12 world premiere on Max, HBO has released a trailer.
Taylor uses imagery, photography, and animation to introduce a diverse group of individuals entangled with the trees they love. Subjects include Bonsai master Ryan Neil, photographer Beth Moon, forest restorer Dirk Brinkman, recollector Carolyn Finney, and lumber heir George Weyerhaeuser Sr.
“about three years ago, HBO’s Lisa Heller and Nancy Abraham and I discussed making a film about trees,” says Taylor. “I was at a challenging point in my relatively short-lived and frenetic human life so I jumped at the chance to explore something so ancient, so still and mighty. What I found were deeply-human stories I could not resist, lives forever-entangled by trees. This is a film about people, and the power of trees to connect us or drive us apart.”
Taylor also appears in the film. Her struggle to eradicate ivy from choking age-old trees in her backyard is a metaphorical bid to free her from the invasive grip of her father’s Alzheimer’s.
“We love it when HBO documentary subjects and styles stretch in unexpected and dynamic ways,” HBO documentary co-heads Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller said in a joint statement. “Irene’s filmmaking always does that and we knew she’d bring extraordinary craft and compassion to the challenge of making a film starring trees and the humans who love them.”
Taylor has made several documentaries for HBO including “Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements” (2019), which follows her deaf son’s attempt to learn Beethoven’s famous piano composition. The film won an Emmy in 2020 for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking. Taylor’s first film, “Hear and Now” (2007), about the decision of her parents, both deaf, to have cochlear implants, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. In 2009, Taylor’s short HBO docu, “The Final Inch” was nominated for an Academy Award.
Watch the trailer below.
