Coming to NYC’s Anthology Film Archives today, Friday, October 31: BRADDOCK AMERICA
Jean-Loïc Portron and Gabriella Kessler’s portrait of a former steeltown debuted at La Rochelle’s Escales Documentaires last year. It went on to screen in a sidebar program at Cannes, Thessaloniki Doc, Cleveland, Lussas, Nashville, France’s International Environmental, and Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers film fests.
Braddock PA was once at the heart of US steel, but as that industry collapsed, so to did the town, losing the majority of its population. Expertly employing copious archival footage and often emotional interviews with residents, Portron and Kessler chronicle the decline of the town through the decades, leading to today’s sad present, with shuttered factories and mills, rows of abandoned houses, and a crumbling infrastruture. Still, against this backdrop, the community tries to maintain hope, banding together to manage small-scale maintenance projects in the absence of funding or to protest the shuttering of the only hospital. From their outside perspective, and notably without fetishizing the urban decay, the French filmmakers craft an at times affecting look at the wages of greed on post-industrial America, as localized in one town and the challenges it faces.
what (not) to doc 