Hale County This Morning, This Evening(2018)
dir. RaMell Ross
No narrator, no thesis, just looking.
Where to watch: Free on Kanopy; rent Amazon, Apple TVLetterboxd ↗
RaMell Ross spent five years in Hale County, Alabama, filming two young Black men, Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, in fragments: basketball, a baptism, a birth, the long afternoons. There is no narrator and no thesis, just attention. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Why it’s here
The film argues with how Black life gets photographed, as problem or spectacle, by simply refusing to do either. What's punk is the form: no talking heads, no explainer, and trust in the audience to look. What's pedagogical is that it trains you in seeing, which is the first skill of media literacy. A natural pick for a DoCR conversation about who gets to frame whose life.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- North America
Read Alongside
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Love in the Time of Cholera
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