April 22, 2015
Page 9
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A Sharp Focus to Controversy
O PINIONATED
J UDGE
BY J UDGE
D ARLEEN O RTEGA
New documentaries
worth waiting for
I see a lot of feature-length documentaries throughout
the year, and the few that achieve wide release are not nec-
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careful editing that enables the best docs to make plain a
complex story.
The last 11 docs that I saw at the Full Frame Documen-
tary Film Festival in Durham, N.C., this month represent
a range of quality, too. None are in theaters or online yet,
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them from best to least successful.
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time this summer. The picture won awards at both Full
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in Austin, Texas addressing complex issues around the in-
creased militarization of police.
Its co-directors, Brad Barber and Scott Christopher-
son, weren’t originally attracted to that topic, but rather
to William “Dub” Lawrence, the relentless former sheriff
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own son-in-law was killed in a brutal show-down with the
same SWAT team that Lawrence himself founded back in
the 1970s, Lawrence’s own investigation into the incident
caused a major shift in his thinking about law enforce-
ment, from trust to alarm.
Calling on his long years of experience as a sheriff and
his particularly dogged skills as an investigator, Lawrence
became concerned about the increasingly violent respons-
es of police in making arrests and serving warrants. For
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public, which he sees getting lost in the escalation of as-
sault weaponry and military gear that has become so prev-
alent.
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spects law enforcement and appreciates the real dangers
they face. He also credibly analyzes several incidents in
which members of the public were killed or injured as a re-
sult of police conduct and presents convincing alternatives
to the justifying narratives put forth by police.
Barber and Christopherson did not rest on the fact that
they found a compelling spokesperson; rather they build
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out to the larger issues around police conduct. They also
give meaningful air time to the views of law enforcement.
They have assembled an extremely compelling and nu-
anced approach to a topic that demands but rarely gets that
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legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her
family group, The Staple Singers.
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making that I hope will attain a larger audience.
Another award winner that deserves a broader audience
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prizes at Full Frame and the Sundance Film Festival in
Utah, and provides a gutsy look inside an active FBI coun-
terterrorism sting operation. Filmmakers Lyric R. Cabral
and David Felix Sutcliffe follow the story through the per-
spective of “Shariff,” a former Black Panther turned FBI
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perceptions of the government’s counterterrorism tactics.
It would be hard to imagine more treacherous terrain to
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of reasons for concern about how the war on terror is being
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and on the BBC later this year.
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ples. Director Jessica Edwards was inspired after seeing
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here is standard, Edwards has assembled a wealth of won-
derful footage of the performances of the Staples Singers
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documentary celebration of their astonishing range of
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