Sundance-Winner Brett Story, Oscar-Nominated Yance Ford Talk ‘Union,’ Netflix’s ‘Power,’ Capitalism, Race at CPH:DOX Panel
22.03.2024 - 23:57
/ variety.com
Annika Pham Coming straight from Sundance with their respective buzzy docs “Power” – a Netflix Original – and “Union,” U.S. director/producer Yance Ford and his Canadian counterpart Brett Story delivered March 20 an empowering talk at Copenhagen’s “Film:makers in Dialogue” session, where they bounced ideas between each other about power structure in American society, capitalism, race and class divides from historical and contemporary perspectives. “Power,” which was competing at CPH:DOX for the Human Rights Award, is a forceful documentary essay on the origin of U.S.
policing spanning 300 years, turning on its dynamics and impact on American society. “I’m interested in U.S. institutions, power, control in our society,” said Ford about his sophomore feature and follow up to his Academy Award-nominated “Strong Island,” acquired by Netflix for global distribution in 2017.
“After the George Floyd murder [in 2020], I saw the way the police was acting with unfiltered violence towards people protesting, and decided to step back. I started to ask basic questions such as what is the function of police, who are they there for, who do they police and why.” To dig deep into the system of control from a historical perspective, and demonstrate that race and class-biased attitude from law enforcement forces in the U.S. has spiralled out of control, the filmmaker used an impressive wealth of interviews with academics, activists and archive materials.
“We brought in archival producer Jillian Bergman early in the process,” Ford explained to the CPH:DOX audience. “She came to my office in Queens [N.Y.] where I had like 100 cards on the wall with plot points, questions. From there came conversations about themes.
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