Politics

Talking to Director Anne de Mare

Posted on by in Film festival, History, Information, Interview, Politics | Comments Off on Talking to Director Anne de Mare

A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE BRINGS NEW DOCUMENTARY

2016 Election Inspires Director Anne de Mare to Deepen Film on Voting Protection

Election Protection LLC/Providence Productions

A project begun small and intimate for director Anne de Mare and reshaped by a troubling political climate into a full-fledged feature documentary, has become as timely as the latest headlines about red and blue states, election fraud and voter disenfranchisement.

Capturing the Flag, a Providence Productions featuring tireless voter protection volunteers, was originally intended as a short film, according to de Mare.

CHECK OUT MY REVIEW OF CAPTURING THE FLAG

“The story came to us through the lead character, Laverne Berry,” she says. Indeed Berry, a Brooklyn-based entertainment lawyer and volunteer protection worker, makes for an interesting subject.

Years ago at a polling site, Berry had an epiphany watching a janitor fashion a pushcart and chair into a transportation system for woman who struggled to walk to the polling booth. The experience drove Berry get more involved in volunteering. She also is a producer of the documentary.

“We set out to do a short film, but the tenor of the [2016] election brought things down to the fundamental issues of voting and democracy,” de Mare says. “It feels like something fundamental changed in our nation.”

And so the project was fundamentally changed, expanding to a full-length film, which follows three additional volunteers and encompasses a broader scope in detailing and investigating voter suppression.

“I think when we talk about voter suppression people think of the civil rights era and Jim Crow,” de Mare says. Shameful past efforts to deny a democratic voice to minorities was blatant. “Modern voter suppression is insidious. There are barriers combined with legislation that targets a specific group. People don’t really realize what’s happening.” They are sent to wrong polling places, intimidated because of past legal issues, deluded of their power through gerrymandering.

De Mare adds, “Making this film I learned that the battle that happens at the polls is vital.”

Despite its scope, the film maintains a level of intimacy through its on-the-ground, person-to-person perspective. If we’re given insight into voter suppression methods and historical context of disenfranchisement, the film is mostly concerned with how workaday folks, the power of regular people, make a difference.

Volunteer voter protection worker, Brooklyn-based entertainment lawyer and producer of Capturing the Flag, Laverne Berry. Photo credit: Nelson Walker III

“They care!” de Mare says. “Volunteers lobby for people to vote—to protect everyone’s rights. People have to be involved to decide elections.”

The controversial subject matter of voter suppression might seem an odd choice for a New York-based artist whose previous career involved theatrical works. “People don’t go to the theater anymore,” de Mare says. “They go to see films.” Her debut film, The Homestretch(2014), documented three homeless Chicago teenagers fighting to stay in school. The film, co-directed with Kirsten Kelly, garnered acclaim, including an Emmy.

After watching minority voters not being able to cast ballots and reliving the 2016 election, de Mare was asked how we inspire those who may be ground down by apathy?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” de Mare replies. She cites organizations like Democracy North Carolina that works to register voters as well as get them to the polls. The organization also pushes for legislation.

“I think it’s a model for what we need to look at.”

Looking ahead, de Mare has plans to rework her documentary for educational purposes.

“We’re hoping to create an hour-long ‘cut-down’ for educational use so that the film can be used by people involved in this kind of work.”

Also down the road is a historical film documenting women who worked in munitions factories during World War II, and a co-directing effort (with Kirsten Kelly) that looks at an interesting intersection of domestic violence and law enforcement.

Capturing the Flag has its world premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2018.

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Quik Flix Hit

Posted on by in Film festival, Movies, Politics | Comments Off on Quik Flix Hit

Capturing the Flag (2018)

Unrated

Volunteer voter protection worker, Brooklyn-based entertainment lawyer and producer of Capturing the Flag, Laverne Berry. Photo credit: Nelson Walker III

New York attorney Laverne Berry, saw something at an election polling site years ago that jolted her from her comfortable contribution of driving people to the polls. When one of her charges had trouble walking, a janitor on site took it upon himself to use a pushcart and chair to get the woman to the polling booth.

“If he could do that on a day when that’s not his job,” Berry determined, “I can take some time off every election to do something.”

In Capturing the Flag, Berry and three other “voter protection volunteers” are documented during the lead-up to and through the 2016 election from their on-the-ground perspective in Fayetteville, North Carolina, polling districts. Director Anne de Mare’s fascinating and sober documentary fights an undercurrent of foregone conclusion, but provides pointed insights into our election system and the soldiers who take up the challenges of making votes count.

CHECK OUT MY INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR ANNE DE MARE

De Mare and her cast navigate subject matter that should be important to not simply those still distraught about the results of the 2016 election; setting aside partisanship to fairly critique our voting process should matter to every citizen.

Joining Berry on her quest is volunteer Steven Miller, an attorney and longtime friend. Miller, a white man, and Berry, a black woman, communicate with an ease certainly found in lifelong friends. En route to North Carolina we meet volunteer Claire Wright, an attorney and recent naturalized citizen. This is her first U.S. election and her first visit to North Carolina. Writer Trista Delamere Mitchell eagerly joins the group on the ground.

De Mare, along with animator Sean Donnelly, use visual aids to provide an “election day” sense of urgency to the documentary. A graphic counter along the bottom of the frame tick off months, then days, then hours before election results.

Almost immediately the team runs into an ongoing controversy at an early voting site in Fayetteville. The local NAACP has accused the state board and three county election boards of illegally removing thousands of people from voter rolls. The purge, they say, is primarily affecting voters of color.

Berry laments the inconsistent voting rules and methods from state to state. It makes protecting voter rights “daunting.”

A 2013 Supreme Court decision invalidated Shelby County v. Holder, a provision of the Voter Rights Act of 1965. That 2013 decision limited supervision by the Justice Department over states that had demonstrated relentless efforts to curtail black people from voting. Within weeks of the ruling, several states began establishing new voting restrictions—more stringent photo ID laws, limits on third-party voter registration, limited rights for those with past criminal convictions, shuttering polling locations across states. The very day of the decision, Texas began efforts to redraw boundaries for congressional and state house districts.

We watch as Berry bravely heads alone into the breach—a polling site in an all-white community littered with yard signs for Republican candidates. Yet, she reminds herself that her mission is to insure fair voting, regardless of party affiliation. She is regarded with caution at first, but her eagerness to help, earnestness and time pushes her through resistance. Miller, at different polling site, faces similar challenges from black people.

For a time, then, the film becomes a microcosm of the passions, absurdities and contradictions of the U.S. election system. A young polling judge at a precinct is initially curt and forceful with Miller, who’s assisting folks outside the polling site. The young man regards the older one as an outsider, a troublemaker. But as the day goes on, and both men doggedly undertake their responsibilities, they seem to accept each other’s roles. The strident young judge in fact, is revealed to may have overreacted due to the stresses of heading up a polling site for the first time. In the end, Miller joins him inside the now-closed precinct as polling officials search for an errant ballot.

The team’s journey is intercut with efforts from the local branch of the NAACP, including a press conference by chapter President Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. Barber and others are pushing back against subtle and blatant attempts to suppress the minority vote.

Amid these early voting machinations, President Obama visits Fayetteville for a rally that for me stood as a contrast to the divisive rallies that have sadly become the norm. When an elderly man wearing a military uniform riles up the crowd with his Trump sign, Obama playfully admonishes the agitated crowd and reminds it that, 1) free speech should be respected in the U.S., 2) veterans deserve our respect, 3) elderly people should be respected as well. He famously concludes: “Don’t boo, vote!”

Meanwhile, foreign-born Wright registers disappointment, having recalled practicing law in post- Apartheid South Africa when that country’s courts looked to U.S. law precedents as a guide to building South Africa’s new constitution. “I thought that the U.S now, after the civil rights movement, was an egalitarian society,” she says. “Living here has made me realize it is not at all.” It is crushing to watch Wright trying to help an African-American woman, having been referred to a third precinct and still not able to cast a ballot, who throws up her hands and says she has to get back to work instead.

I like that de Mare allows her subjects to display their professional and ethical commitment to their tasks, while reminding us that they are also citizens, party affiliates, who care not just about voters but the outcome of the election. Since we already know the fateful outcome of the 2016 race, it’s with some dread (or joy, if Trump was your guy) that we relive the day while Berry and the team face it for the first time: the certainty that the math is in Hillary Clinton’s favor, the surprise that Donald Trump is doing better than predicted, the rising suspicion that the calculus was wrong, that working-class sentiment was misjudged; the shock and disbelief of the results.

We’ve walked with Miller as he remained level-headed and professional throughout the day. Not until the night of election results, when he explodes into anger, confusion and disappointment, do we see the partisan side he’d left off the field while attending to his duties.

De Mare, an award-winning director (The Homestretch, 2014), has taken us back to a fateful moment in U.S. history to allow us to relive it at the ground level and in personal terms. With cases before the courts (including our top court) on issues of gerrymandering, alleged attempts to manipulate the upcoming census, as well as looming critical midterm elections, de Mare’s film couldn’t be timelier.

Capturing the Flag has its world premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2018.

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Interview with Director Sam Pollard

Posted on by in Interview, Movies, Politics | Comments Off on Interview with Director Sam Pollard

BUILDING ON LEGACIES: INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR SAM POLLARD

Editor-turned-director’s latest work features late Mayor Maynard Jackson

Sam Pollard on set

There’s something synchronistic about a trailblazing African-American mayor, who paved the way for a trailblazing African-American president, having his story told by a talented editor-director, who himself came up through the influence of a legendary African-America director.

Pollard, left, and Spike Lee with their Emmys

Sam Pollard’s timely documentary Maynard, then, is an exemplar of black legacy all around—in front of and behind the camera. We read frequent reports of the current presidential administration on a quest to erase the legacy of the country’s first black president. Pollard’s film asserts that Barack Obama’s legacy, in part, is a continuation of strides began from folks like Maynard Jackson.

“Listen,” Pollard says, “looking at Maynard in hindsight is a breath of fresh air.”

CHECK OUT MY REVIEW OF MAYNARD

Maynard Jackson Jr.’s story is long overdue for the screen. In 1973, the charismatic, unflappable politician was elected mayor of the city of Atlanta, becoming first African-American to lead a major southern city. Jackson held the post for three terms and by the time of his death had changed the course of politics.

Maynard Jackson

Pollard’s film illuminates a political terrain fraught with racial discord, political in-fighting, complex alliances, both black and white. Sound familiar to today’s politics? And yet, Maynard inspires hope. Our nation’s been through this before, it says, and we have come through the other side.

Even before becoming a longtime editor of the films of director Spike Lee, Pollard had a winding career in editing. Before Lee, Pollard spent 20 years doing low-budget work with vanguards like the late Bill Gunn. But working with Lee for more than 20 years has provided Pollard with “a sense of how to tell a story,” he says. “Being an editor has had a very positive impact on my directorial career.”

The Emmy winner (his “Slavery By Another Name”), four-time Peabody Award winner and Academy Award nominee has produced films on playwright August Wilson, singer Marvin Gaye and author Zora Neale Hurston.

In Maynard, Pollard’s command of his material—with assistance from his editor Jeff Cooper and cameraman Henry Adebonojo—is on display. The documentary vibrates with a sense of the era—its roiling racial politics, its music, the clothes. Maynard Jackson, tall and broad, uses carefully chosen words, commands audiences with his articulate speeches and forthright assertions. Sound familiar? We see Jackson, successful in high school and college, grandson of famed civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs, primed for greatness.

There would be stumbles along the way. Facing defeat after a run for the Georgia senate, a young Jackson dusted himself off, and turned the experience into a successful campaign for mayor.

Pollard uses archival footage to great effect. I was gobsmacked by footage of a portly Jackson in the ring with Muhammad Ali for a promotional boxing match. News footage and interviews of the Atlanta child murders that rocked Jackson’s second term remain potent. And Jackson’s legacy-burnishing renovation of the Atlanta airport into an international hub truly speaks to his lasting accomplishments.

Pollard with Shirley Franklin, former mayor of Atlanta

But it’s the talking heads that give weight to Pollard’s film and Jackson’s story. Famed mayors Andrew Young and Shirley Franklin. Civil rights heavy-hitters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Former President Bill Clinton. Attorney Vernon Jordan. Pollard gets them to speak personally about Jackson. The voices of Jackson’s family wring true intimacy from the proceedings. Jackson’s son, daughters, ex-wife and widow bring the Jackson legacy into focus. Their contributions went beyond speaking in front of the camera, though. It was the Jackson clan that brought Maynard to life. Pollard says he was sought out by the family to bring the story of the late mayor to the screen.

“The family reached out to me,” he says. “They were looking for someone to help produce a film about their father.”

The family understood its patriarch’s place in history. A quote by Jackson’s daughter Bunnie Jackson Ransom—“He was the Obama before Obama”—has been used in some promotional materials.

Maynard was not a perfect mayor. He belatedly contended with a corrupt cabinet member, and seemed to lose his zest for politics during his apprehensive third term. Pollard intended to create a full portrait of the man.

“The easy part would be to not have complexity,” he says. “I wanted a very rounded perspective.”

Bill Clinton on Maynard Jackson

To that end we see former mayors still touched Maynard’s influence, Bill Clinton’s eyes brighten as he relates a Jackson anecdote as only he can. And the scene in which the news of Maynard’s untimely death reaches each of his family members is masterfully filmed and edited.

The documentary gained from what Pollard calls the “benefit of living witnesses.” The film boasts participation from other trailblazers of the era.

“They are still alive. All these former mayors touched by him,” he says. “You can hear directly from people who pass on his legacy.”

Up next for Pollard is a feature film on the life of Bert Williams, a black entertainer from the Vaudeville era. The Bahamas-born Williams rose to become one of the most popular comedians of his day. Pollard’s film, sure to be as provocative as Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, is in the fundraising phase.

Maynard debuts Nov. 16 at DOC in NYC.

Official site here

Sam Pollard’s filmography here

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Quik Flix Hit

Posted on by in Movies, Politics | Comments Off on Quik Flix Hit

The Age of Consequences (2016)

Unrated

 

PF Films

We’ve seen climate change documentaries that present us with the unnerving prospects of global environmental dangers, real and theorized, pushing our ecosystem past a bleak point of no return. Have we seen one arguing that a cluster of catastrophes—international conflicts, migration, scarcity of resources, even terrorism—emanate out from the epicenter of a man-made ground zero: global warming?

I might be slightly exaggerating when I say The Age of Consequences edges into the realm of a horror film.

The new documentary, professional and smartly directed by Jared P. Scott from PF Films, arrives Jan. 27 in an intense political season that either amplifies the stakes of its dire message, or will work against the film just as its call for cultural and legislative action is needed most. You know where you stand on the issue of climate change.

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SOPHIE ROBINSON

Age works to tilt viewers away from partisan perspectives, hoping that fact-of-the-matter, up-to-moment catastrophes will speak louder than political talking points. The doc gets a big lift by featuring military experts speaking convincingly of their beliefs and, more importantly, experiences in the real cause-and-effect of environmental destruction. We’ve heard environmentalists and left-leaning politicians’ pleas for action, but Scott’s film mostly looks to admirals, generals, veterans to bolster an overarching theme that environmental abuses/neglect can cascade into civil conflict, migration catastrophes, food shortages, terrorism recruitment, and overwhelm humanitarian efforts.

What was once laughed off as “tree-hugger” hyperbole has been termed in some corners of the military as a “threat multiplier.” The film follows the dominoes as they fall: Climate change exacerbated one of the worst droughts in Syrian history. The three-year drought begun at the end of 2006 ultimately triggered 1.5 million Syrian men to leave their farmlands and move to city locations, seeking jobs and food. Additionally, Iraqi refugees were at the time migrating into Syria. These two factors alone spurred a 30 percent population growth in urban areas, which in turn drove up food and apartment prices, as well as drained the health-care system. Such strife is cited by officials in the film as a factor giving rise to civil war. Broken social structures leave openings for terrorist recruitment. The film suggests climate-change hazards will increase such migrations and their consequences.

And look at the threat multiplier from a financial perspective: A 2010 Russia-China drought, the film states, lead to wheat shortages in those countries. The countries responded by purchasing wheat on the global food market, which drove up prices across the planet, spurring economic chaos.

And from a humanitarian perspective: When global warming wreaks havoc on populated regions, getting aid to displaced millions increasingly is becoming a logistical nightmare, and soon, the film suggests, an unsustainable effort. The U.S. military alone spends increasing amounts of time exclusively on humanitarian and recovery efforts. It would take but a small cluster of these catastrophes occurring simultaneously to break the back a nation or create a devastating domino effect across the globe.

Scott and his cameraman Michael McSweeney keep the film moving by using sharp visuals. A reoccurring radar chart graphic works well as a visual interpretation of the tangled arms of environmental and social threats across the globe. The film makes good use of archival footage from current conflicts and catastrophes. Hurricane Katrina footage still chills to the bone. A technique of placing a subject center frame and at a distance (to highlight beautiful corridors and staterooms of power) subvert the common method of using standard shots of talking heads.

The Age of Consequences left me wrung out and the solutions belatedly offered—better stewardship of the planet, alternative resources, a more aggressive timeline to confront environmental hazards—are of the stripe we’ve heard before and don’t completely mitigate all the dread it previously piled on. Perhaps they can’t. Maybe the film hopes to shock the viewer out of complacency. What remains to be seen is how it lands in an era in which those in seats of power and their supporters don’t exactly seem like cheerleaders for climate-change activism.

 

 

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

 

 

 

Quik Flix Hit

Posted on by in Movies, Politics | Comments Off on Quik Flix Hit

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Rated PG-13

star-trek-into-darkness

Paramount Pictures

As the end credits rolled for Star Trek Into Darkness, an obviously old-school Star Trek diehard (I’m not using the ‘T’ word) came up to me and my wife in dire straits over his belief of the new film’s disrespect of the space drama’s canon.

Bloghouse“The finale, shot-for-shot, matched the finale of (1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan),” he shouted at us in the dark.

“Well, they did swap the main characters’ fates this time around,” I antagonized, to my wife’s chagrin. This guy has singlehandedly assured that I won’t be watching anymore of these films in the theater with my wife. Thanks, pal.

OK, this isn’t your father’s Star Trek, or even your older brother’s. But it does manage to hit the sweet spot between Roddenberry devotees, Next Generation Gen X’ers and millennials, who have no intention of looking back as they head warp speed into J.J. Abrams’ universe. But that was the plan all along, wasn’t it?

Am I mistaken in my understanding that the franchise reboot established that this was a different approach to the Trek of yore? Wasn’t the 2009 film’s debut the time to rail against this new Star Trek, or just bow out altogether? That film was a smash, though, drawing in hardcores and newbies alike. My wife, no fan of sci-fi, thought it was fantastic. So if you came back for more, Mr. Shot-by-Shot, why complain? The new franchise is firing on all its Abrams cylinders, which is to say it holds respect for the original series, but doesn’t feel bound to be a slave to it.

Quick summary: Young Capt. Kirk, still the rogue, against-the-regulations leader of the USS Enterprise, is fuel by revenge after the Federation is attacked by an unknown terrorist. Shades of 9/11 abound, as a shaken Federation looks to harsh, secret strategies in the wake of the devastation. This includes the machinations of Dick Cheney, I mean, Peter Weller’s Federation muckety-muck Marcus, whose sneaky efforts could precipitate all-out intergalactic war.

Spock’s cool logical Vulcan mind collides with Kirk’s burning ideas of revenge, but as always, the two level each other out. A quick lovers’ quarrel between Spock and Uhura, Bone’s dalliance with Tribbles and Scotty’s silly/brilliant hijinks fill in the gaps between story proper, which is largely told in bold swaths of action.

Benedict Cumberbatch is wonderfully powerful as Khan. I don’t know how we get from this to Ricardo Montalban, but, hey, this guy was a fierce and daunting opponent who, at turns, outwits and/or outfights the Federation, Kirk, Spock, Marcus and special guest, the Klingons. By the hour-and-a-half mark I was about to put a big “S” on this guy’s chest and call it a day.

blog-see_it

 

 

 

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Using your voice

Posted on by in Politics | Comments Off on Using your voice

Go vote!