Illustrious director previews new film at USC
Raoul Peck held a showing at Stark Family Theatre of his upcoming documentary.
By FABIÁN GUTIÉRREZ
This past Monday, renowned Haitian director and Academy Award nominee Raoul Peck screened his newest documentary feature, “Silver Dollar Road,” at the Stark Family Theatre. The film tells the story of a Black family’s fight to keep their ancestral land, invoking the powerful themes of racial injustice seen previously in Peck’s other acclaimed work, such as 2016’s “I Am Not Your Negro.”
“Silver Dollar Road” gives the floor to the Reels family of North Carolina, amplifying the story of two brothers, Melvin and Licurtis, who were jailed for nearly eight years for “trespassing” on their own property. To best portray their story, Peck said he took creative liberties that are rare to see in documentaries made in the United States.
“Most of the time [a documentary] is a story about either victims or a sad story with an eventually happy ending, but you don’t feel it’s connected to a bigger structural problem,” Peck said. “In that sense, I had to find a way to make a decision [on] who is telling the story.”
Instead of giving the land developers responsible for the events of the film an opportunity to present their side of the story, Peck chose to tell it from the perspective of the family alone. This, he said, was the most rational choice to make when it came to amplifying the Reels family’s story.
“The family needed to have the whole project for themselves,” Peck said. “They have been subjugated enough … it’s very hard for them to confront the power of the other side.”
Peck also added a visual aspect to the feature to keep the audience engaged and connected to the story as much as possible. The filmmakers included recurring illustrations using roots, connecting the Reels family tree together and, later on, linking the brothers once both were separated from their families in county jail.
“How can I make people feel what it is [like] to spend eight years in jail?” Peck said. “We need to find that thing that we can multiply in different ways in the film. [The illustrations were] something that came organically, step by step, during the editing process.”
Filmmaker Mona Ibrahim attended the screening of “Silver Dollar Road,” commenting on Peck’s unapologetic and forceful retelling of history. (Fabián Gutiérrez / Daily Trojan)
In the audience for Monday’s screening was filmmaker and curator Mona Ibrahim, a longtime supporter of Peck’s work. Working on activism and filmmaking herself, Ibrahim said she admires Peck’s propensity to embrace the nuance and complexity of the issues he decides to cover in his work.
“He doesn’t sugarcoat,” Ibrahim said. “He deconstructs history, he deconstructs preconceived paradigms that were spoonfed and he forces us to really interrogate history and interrogate the narratives that are shoved down our throat.”
Ibrahim’s evaluation of “Silver Dollar Road” also had to do with its timeliness. She said she believes context matters, both in the world of the story and when it comes to watching the film, and has an influence on the experience of seeing the documentary. In the current geopolitical climate, Ibrahim saw a variety of links between oppressed groups across the globe and the story told in the documentary.
“To watch this on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, you’re talking about displacement and dispossession … this is what this day is about,” Ibrahim said. “[Peck] is constantly holding imperialism, settler colonialism to the fire, however it manifests.”
School of Cinematic Arts Director of Programming and Special Projects Alessandro Ago spoke on the process of choosing films to screen as part of SCA’s screening series. He said he hopes to bring a grand variety of films to the fore and inspire the desire in students and other members of the community to get out of their comfort zones with films like “Silver Dollar Road.”
“I know that I’m not going to have a hard time, say, filling Norris [Cinema Theatre] for the film that won the Palme d’Or,” Ago said, “but I would love to have people come in for an international documentary.”
The current state of what is popular in film means less people diversify their tastes, Ago said. Some time ago, he said, moviegoers watched, appreciated and discussed a greater variety of films than they do now.
“If a film doesn’t have the same kind of marketing as a bigger Hollywood film, there might be less of a desire to take the night off and come in,” Ago said. “Actually, those are the most important movies because that’s when you find something new that you didn’t know, something you’re going to find challenging, interesting, fun.”
Ago mentioned that he often has a variety of different genres, filmmakers and sources to consider when choosing what to screen. Sometimes, certain screenings are more attractive for students and classes. However, when he heard of “Silver Dollar Road,” he could not resist bringing the film to USC.
“It’s a little bit about what gets proposed to me and then what I go after,” Ago said. “In this case specifically, the publicity team reached out … I was like, ‘This is absolutely worth doing. No matter what time of day, we can make it happen.’”
“Silver Dollar Road” begins its limited theatrical run Thursday before releasing on Amazon Prime Video next Friday.
