what (not) to doc

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.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, May 1:
ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM

Directors:
Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard

Premiere:
Tribeca 2017

Select Festivals:
AFI Docs, Montclair, Traverse City, Indie Memphis, Cucalorus, St Louis, Milwaukee, Napa Valley

About:
An exploration of the manufactured controversy that led to the downfall of a powerful community-based advocacy group.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 27:
LOVE & BANANAS: AN ELEPHANT STORY

Director:
Ashley Bell

Premiere:
Washington DC Environmental 2018

Select Festivals:
Sedona, Earth Focus Environmental, International Wildlife Missoula

About:
An elephant conservationist sets out on a mission to rescue an Asian elephant in Thailand.

Bell’s earnest but clunky film ostensibly focuses on the efforts of Sangdeaun Lek Chailert to rescue Noi Na, a blind elephant in captivity for decades, forced to five tourists rides. Lek, a Thai women whose lifelong advocacy for the endangered Asian elephant made her, for a time, an enemy of the state, and turned her own family against her, is a sympathetic and inspiring figure, and her mission is worthwhile and potentially compelling, if only Bell would trust in its impact enough. Instead, the actress-turned-director can’t help but insert herself in virtually every frame of the film – in addition to being ever-present onscreen, Bell also narrates, to a superfluous and distracting degree. While it’s clear Bell has the best of intentions for the film, its execution is wanting, even if its message may still rightly sway viewers to its cause.