By Henry Stewart
Brooklyn Magazine
Excerpt: …Unseen inspires the opposite emotion. (Not even German has the word.) If The Promise exposes problems in Virginia’s justice system, Unseen (Nov. 11, 9:45pm, Cinepolis Chelsea) tears Cleveland’s apart...
By Marina Zogbi
Art for Progress
Documentary lovers, take note! The seventh edition of DOC NYC, America’s largest nonfiction film festival, begins this week, with screenings at Manhattan’s IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Cinepolis Chelsea. The 2016 festival, which runs from Thursday, Nov. 10, to Thursday, Nov. 17, boasts over 250 films and events overall, including 110 feature-length documentaries. Included are 18 world premieres and 19 U.S. premieres, with more than 300 filmmakers and special guests on hand to present and discuss their films…
By Steve Kopian
UNSEEN FILMS
Anthony Sowell was convicted of the rape of Melvette Sockwell in 1989 and went to jail for 15 years. In 2009 the bodies of 11 people were discovered in and around his home in the Cleveland neighborhood of Mt Pleasant. The women had disappeared over a three year period, however the police never investigated the cases of the missing women until the bodies turned up...
By Carlo Wolff | Staff Reporter
Cleveland Jewish News
Cleveland Heights filmmaker Laura Paglin goes deep and disturbing in “Unseen,” her powerful documentary about Anthony Sowell. Interweaving interviews with survivors of the Mount Pleasant killer and archival and contemporary footage, she paints a harrowing picture of a Cleveland neighborhood that poverty has rotted to the core...
By David C. Barnett
Senior Arts Reporter for WCPN
Convicted Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell was back in court today to appeal his 2011 death sentence for the murders of 11 women over a three-year period. A new documentary about those crimes, called “Unseen”, had its debut at the Cleveland International Film Festival, this past weekend. It tells the stories of Sowell’s victims. From the Here & Now Contributors Network, David C. Barnett of WCPN takes a closer look at the lives of a vulnerable population...
PBS | Sound of Ideas
On PBS’s Sound of Ideas, hosts discuss the strong reaction to UNSEEN at the Cleveland International Film Festival...
By Andrea Simakis
The Plain Dealer
Ironically, the most memorable moments in "Unseen," a documentary about the Anthony Sowell killings, aren't the lurid details of his unspeakable crimes. In 2009, police uncovered 11 bodies in and around Sowell's property at 12205 Imperial Ave. in Cleveland's Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
It's the stuff of horror movies to be sure. But that doesn't compare to the riveting, direct testimony of women who made it out alive - among them Vanessa Gay, who staggered, limping and bloody, out onto Imperial Avenue one Sunday morning...
By Andrea Simakis
The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio - In the documentary "Unseen," directed by Laura Paglin, the title emerges from wisps of smoke - no doubt, we are to imagine, from a crack pipe.
Crack cocaine, after all, was the drug that swept through the Mount Pleasant neighborhood where serial killer and rapist Anthony Sowell hunted for his victims, laying waste to whole families.
"It was like Hurricane Katrina," says Vanessa Gay to Paglin's camera. She's one of the few women who met the ex-Marine and lived.
"It came though and ravaged my whole life."
As Gay tells it, it was her addiction to that drug that brought her to Sowell's door at 12205 Imperial Ave., a bland white duplex that no one realized was the source of the sickening stench that dominated the area for years, baffling health inspectors and residents alike...
By Andrea Simakis
The Plain Dealer
If you didn't catch Laura Paglin's standout documentary "Facing Forward" when it premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2011, it's no wonder you're depressed. But thanks to a co-production of WVIZ/PBS and Creative Filmmakers Association, you've got another shot.
A new and updated version of the film is airing in Cleveland and on other PBS stations throughout the country in May...
PBS | Sound of Ideas
A new milestone in education was touted last week: 80 percent of students nationwide graduate high school. But that still means 1 in every 5 students does not get a high school diploma. WVIZ PBS brings you the story of Tyree Stewart, a drop out who is now working on a college degree. And we'll learn what safety nets are in place for students who may be at risk of dropping out or getting expelled...