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If you were to find entire dinette sets, automobiles and living rooms — with people sitting in them — tumbling Earthward from the clouds, you might think “Okay, so End Times really are a thing.” But it could also be the handiwork of “Space Cowboy” subject Joe Jennings, a “freefall cinematographer” who’s made a specialty of devising and filming such surreal stunts. Coming a decade after Marah Strauch’s first feature “Sunshine Superman,” about Base jumping pioneer Carl Boenish (also an aerial cameraman), this new doc provides a thematically and stylistically overlapping companion piece.

Co-directed with Bryce Leavitt, it’s not quite so exhilarating or moving as its predecessor, perhaps because the central personality isn’t larger-than-life this time around. Still, one can hardly complain, as the pleasantly low-key Jennings earns his living doing activities that make the jaw drop — and they’re all onscreen here. Currently traveling the festival circuit,...

Even in the most carefully constructed documentaries, you can often tell when an important person is going to die. That sense of inevitable tragedy is telegraphed early in “Space Cowboy,” a stunning look at the life of skydiving legend and “freefall cinematographer” Joe Jennings, but here it builds to lasting and even life-affirming effect.

Jumping from an airplane is an open invitation for catastrophe, and the absence of Jennings’ longtime skysurfing partner Rob Harris from the film’s interviews turns out to mean exactly what you’d fear. And yet, co-directors Marah Strauch and Bryce Leavitt continuously defy expectations with a complex and thoughtful examination of one man’s soul-shattering grief. That loss — a capstone in a string of setbacks for Jennings — is told through the former X Games champion’s unique point of view and his singular commitment to a death-defying passion.

The filmmakers reveal plenty about Jennings, Harris,...

All anime fans will claim in unison that Cowboy Bebop is a cult classic from the 90’s. The series aired from 1998 to 1999 and has 26 episodes. It was created by Sunrise Studio and was a gateway to anime in the early 2000s for the Western world.

On account of the series completing 20 years in 2018, the entire staff of Cowboy Bebop gathered at New York Comic Con. They spoke about the impact of the series, globally.

The staff comprised scriptwriters Keiko Nobumoto and Dai Satō, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, and mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane. While talking to Ann before the Comic-Con, the staff talked about how they came up with the name of the series.

Cowboy Bebop‘s Original Title Was a Straight-up Horror Story Spike Speigel | Credits: Sunrise Studio

Before the series was named Cowboy Bebop, it was called Shooting-Star Bebop. When asked about the thought process behind changing the name,...

In the Toronto Film Festival documentary “Space Cowboy,” the triumphs and tragedies of skydiving cinematographer Joe Jennings are examined. Jennings’ desire to film an open-top automobile falling from the sky with four passengers sitting in the car is the narrative device used to structure the story.

Jennings’ successful marriage and the decades he spent capturing seminal aerial moments with his camera for extreme sports competitions, Super Bowl commercials, and Hollywood films, including “Charlie’s Angels” and “XXX” are all part of the 98-minute docu directed by Marah Strauch (“Sunshine Superman”) and Bryce Leavitt.

But the doc doesn’t shy away from the darker periods of Jennings’ life, which includes a difficult childhood, battles with depression and tragically losing his friend and fellow skydiver aficionado Rob Harris in the mid-nineties.

Variety spoke to Jennings, Strauch and Leavitt about “Space Cowboy,” which premieres at TIFF on Friday.

How did this doc come about?...

In Jordan Peele’s magnificent 2022 film “Nope,” there is a character, a cinematographer, who will do anything and everything to get that perfect shot, including risking his own life. He does so because this is the thing that drives him and fills him with purpose, providing clarity in the chaos of the world. It’s a motivating force that Joe Jennings, a skydiving cinematographer and the subject of the playfully titled documentary “Space Cowboy,” would likely understand well.

As a man who has made a life and career built around jumping out of planes to capture the beauty of the subsequent fall, the point of his profession is about finding meaning in life, no matter the risk. It’s something we all navigate, but few do so cheating death thousands upon thousands of feet above the ground. However, even they must eventually come drifting back down to Earth.

This rich...