Author Archives: basiltsiokos

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, May 8:
THE ART OF THE SHINE

Director:
Stacey Tenenbaum

Premiere:
Hot Docs 2017 (longer version under the title SHINERS)

Select Festivals:
Edmonton, Socially Relevant, Hot Springs Doc, Sarajevo

About:
Shoe shiners around the world talk about their profession.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Photo: BBC/Antelope South/Louis Armstrong House Museum

Director:
Hugo Berkeley

Premiere:
Full Frame 2018

Select Festivals:
Newport Beach, Harlem

About:
On America’s Cold War propaganda campaign which deployed African-American musicians around the world.

During the 1950s and ’60s, the Cold War was waged on many fronts. One, seemingly strictly cultural in its focus, actually spoke to a far greater sociopolitical intent. The jazz ambassadors program recruited celebrated African-American musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington – and their integrated bands – to travel to African and Asian nations experiencing liberation from colonial rule, trading on their popularity to sell democracy and combat the feared encroachment of communism. At the same time, however, they were meant to sell the idea of inclusion, putting the lie to Russian propaganda campaigns against the US that pointed out deep disparities along racial lines – injustices experienced by the very ambassadors taking part in the program, leading to conflicted experiences about their participation in some cases. While bearing the at-times clunky hallmarks of PBS’s house style, including a reliance on narration and largely superfluous re-enactments – Berkeley’s film offers a fascinating lens through which to consider Cold War politics and cicil rights history.

New to DVD and VOD this week:
PRE-CRIME

Directors:
Monika Hielscher and Matthias Heeder

Premiere:
Hot Docs 2017

Select Festivals:
CPH:DOX, DOK.fest Munich, Hamburg, Chicago, Tel Aviv Human Rights, Zurich, Docs Against Gravity

About:
Controversial “predictive policing” methods are used to identify likely perpetrators of future crimes.

Taking as its title the term coined by Philip K Dick in his 1956 story “The Minority Report,” Hielscher and Heeder’s film explores the present-day employment of big data surveillance and predictive algorithms by police to identify suspects who are supposedly at high-risk of becoming criminals. Understandably such systems are deeply troubling for their potential to be misused, primarily to encourage racial or economic profiling and harassment; or, frankly, to be inaccurate, targeting innocent people because of circumstantial associations. It’s a fascinating, disturbing topic, but unfortunately, one that is not particularly well-developed here. Despite overly-slick production values, including some nice graphics, the film is overlong and repetitive, and includes the bizarre choice to include intermittent, superfluous, and distracting scenes featuring Heeder at the ocean contemplating the issues and making strange little sketches.