Yesterday was unseasonably warm at True/False. Today, with the temperature, I am reminded that it is only March and l am still in the Midwest. Even so, the documentaries are still coming hot and heavy in Columbia, Missouri, and this second dispatch offers an idea of just how diverse the stories and styles are here: a searing political archival documentary, a fond trans biography, and a vérité slice of life are just some of the available films.
Some documentaries just feel like a sock to the mouth. Ian Bell’s fiery and explosive archival picture “WTO/99” is that kind of film. Built on local news footage, MiniDV videocassettes, CCTV images, and more, Bell’s charged film (which feels akin to “Riotville USA,” another work that interrogated totalitarian police strategies against public demonstrations) takes viewers back to 1999, a moment when class united more than politics divided.
See, in December 1999, officials of the World Trade Organization (WTO) arrived in Seattle for their latest set of negotiations. With over 130 member countries at the time, the organization—which isn’t composed of publicly elected representatives—was formed to enact free trade under the guise of a global economy. This session hoped to add China to the ranks, thereby allowing American brands to break into a country that promised cheaper labor and more consumers. Occurring at the tail end of President Clinton’s second term, a major supporter of the WTO, the pro big business world body proved controversial across the political spectrum: from the far right to constitutionalists, labor unions, environmentalists, and human rights organizations. The tight tension set Seattle as a potential showdown between protestors, the city’s government, and the delegates of the WTO.
The footage of Seattle’s hosting of the WTO, of course, predates the modern cell phone, but it is no less immersive. By this point, the personal camcorder was ubiquitous enough to inspire a new kind of citizen journalism that takes viewers to the heart of the struggle. We are within kinetic crowds as heavily armored police turn violent against nonviolent protesters, hurling stinging tear gas and firing bruising rubber bullets at unarmed activists. Bell’s incisive editing cross-cuts us from the hard reality in the street—bonfires, swinging billy clubs, rampaging cops, and fleeing protestors—to the hollow narrative the mayor and police chief are trying to sell to the world. Most of all, we see the composition of the protestors: grisled tradesmen, buttoned-up economic conservatives, and young students banding together to fight class oppression.
“WTO/99” also keenly shows how dissolvable our First Amendment rights are when faced by an oppressive force. Within the first 24 hours of the multi-day conference, tear gas masks and demonstrations are banned, and the mayor’s calling of a local emergency necessitates the national guard’s arrival. The crackdown is overwhelming to watch not solely because of the onscreen violence inflicted against protestors but also because of how fresh these images remain (only recently, Black Lives Matter demonstrations found the same resistance).
The only quibble one might find with “WTO/99” is a second needle drop during the epilogue that somewhat blunts the hard gut punch a prior drop tries to strike. But in totality, “WTO/99” is nothing short of a galvanizing historical document that tells us exactly how we arrived on the crumbling ground we’re presently standing on.
Argentinian trans activist Claudia Pía Baudracco spent her life fighting on behalf of trans women. Now, years after her sudden death, her friends are gathering to comb through her photos, clothing, and other personal items to form a library and archive dedicated to her life. “Family Album,” director Laura Casabé’s loving portrait-as-tribute, provides a window into Pía (a moniker used by her friends) that can sometimes feel blurred.
As the title suggests, Casabé’s film isn’t so much a chronological retelling of Pía’s life but an impression of her omnipresent aura told from memories and a smattering of home videos and archival television footage. We learn that very early on, Pía was an organizer, helping trans sex workers and fighting for their safety as she rode her rumbling motorcycle through the streets of Buenos Aires. For a time, she headed the present-day ATTTA (The Travestis, Transsexual and Transgender Association of Argentina) and spent most of her life spearheading the campaign for Argentina’s Gender Identity Law. She was a tireless advocate, even from behind bars when she was wrongly incarcerated for participating in a drug ring. And she was energetic in her personal life: partying, drug taking, and communicating with friends to the point of excess.
Accompanying the hitting of the big beats of Pía’s life are the charming and funny stories shared by her cutting friends. Casabé’s excited camera eats up their delightfully catty shit talking, providing a candid picture into their community. We don’t learn many biographical facts about Pía: who her parents were, if she had siblings, who were her childhood friends—granting an intended impression that her life indeed took shape when she transitioned. Casabé’s deliberate collage, however, sometimes appears to be too broad. Though we’re watching a library/archive being put together, the director rarely zooms in on specific objects and how they relate to Pía. That touch-and-go tangibility suggests an intermittent distancing that needed a bit of smoothing.
Still, considering the film runs at a tight 73 minutes, the entertaining recollections, sharp banter, and imperative storytelling provided by Argentina’s trans community makes “Family Album” a charming piece of oral history.
Just about the entire Western genre is built on the age of the cowboy ending, inspiring a cinematic vision of the cowboy fading off into the blurry rays of the sun. But Tamar Lando’s earthy feature debut “Land With No Rider” is wholly grappling not with a mythological conclusion but a true endangerment of a way of life.
Her film follows four weathered ranchers—a mix of Latino and Anglo cowboys—living in the lush yet craggy landscape of southwestern New Mexico. Each man remembers a far different terrain than the present barren ground their cattle occupy, fondly reminiscing about the past while staring worriedly at an uncertain future. They’re facing plenty of challenges: eroding land and prolonged droughts being the primary ones. Each man is quick with a yarn and long on experience, providing a salty texture to the myriad of memories that flow out with the crystallized richness of a river. But they’re all working to quickly adapt to a changing world that feels unwelcoming to their life, a harsh modern existence that would rather see them fade into archetypes rather than living, breathing people.
Lando began her career as a still photographer before transitioning to filmmaking, and her background is evident. Her soulful cinematography captures the rhapsodic poetry of the West with a picturesque grandeur: tangerine-soaked sunsets, vast, vibrant violet skies, and verdant, bushy rolling hills. The entire countryside often looks like a storybook, even when the harsh reality of climate change settles in. The same can be said of the sound, a swirling rustic atmosphere that envelops viewers into an organic world.
Hard times and bitter losses do arrive in “Land With No Rider,” whose title finds inspiration from Cormac McCarthy’s writing, and Lando’s humanistic lens keeps these obstacles grounded within the cracks of these men’s hands and in the light of their eyes for a stirring ode to the last few acres of the West.
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