Page 12
April 12, 2017
ESTO N
W
BUICK KIA GMC
Arthur “ART” Harrison
Product Specialist
If you really want the best treatment when you buy a car SEE ART
22309 SE Stark
Gresham,Or 97030
www.westonkia.com
(503) 676-2100
(503) 459-1422
aharrison@westonkia.com
A Chinese immigrant family fights to defend themselves and the legacy of their Chinatown community
bank in the new documentary “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.”
Opening Eyes to the Struggles of Others
New documentaries
offer something
for everyone
Good in the Hood
presented by
Advertise with diversity
in
The Portland Observer
Call 503-288-0033
or email ads@portlandobserver.com
There is something about my
yearly sojourn to the Full Frame
Documentary Film Festival in
Durham, N.C. that really helps me
reset my perspective. My own suf-
fering and struggle is placed back
into the context of struggle around
the world. After four days of em-
pathy with the struggles of others,
I’m ready to return to my own, in
solidarity.
The 18 films that I saw in four
days (including 15 feature-length
films) offer something for everyone.
Here are the first two days worth of
films, presented in my own order of
preference; the second half will ap-
pear next week:
“Abacus: Small Enough To
Jail,” offers a stunning depiction
of a case of structural bias--how it
plays out, the high cost to its vic-
tims, and the near impossibility of
combating it. I’m not sure that the
filmmakers realize what they have
here, though I tried to speak to it in
the talkback afterwards and certain-
ly expect to be using this film as an
educational tool myself. I’m afraid
audiences likewise won’t realize
what they are seeing; indeed, a Hol-
lywood Reporter review from its
premiere at the Toronto Film Fes-
tival completely dismisses any sug-
gestion that racial bias was at work
in this particular story, revealing
typical ignorance about how such
bias manifests.
The story involves a Chi-
nese-American family whose pa-
triarch immigrated to the U.S. as a
young man in the early 1950s and,
after building a successful career as
an attorney, sought to fill the unmet
need for a bank to serve the Chinese
immigrant community by opening
the Abacus Federal Savings Bank
o PinionAted
J udge
by
d arleen o rtega
in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Some
years after two of his four very suc-
cessful daughters joined him in run-
ning the bank, Abacus became the
only U.S bank accused of mortgage
fraud following the 2008 financial
crisis. There are banking explana-
tions for this, which are addressed
in the film, but the deeper story here
(demonstrated but never explained
directly) is structural bias; this bank
was an easier target, its functioning
served a community that does not fit
into the usual boxes, and its failure
would not affect anyone who offi-
cially matters. Skilled director Steve
James (“Hoop Dreams” and many
other wonderful films) knows how
to tell a story well, and it takes that
sort of skill to tell this one. It also
took a highly educated family of
lawyers (two of the four daughters
are former DAs) five years, sever-
al months of trial, and ten million
dollars to clear the bank, resources
far outpacing what most marginal-
ized people can access. I only hope
that a few privileged folks watching
this excellent documentary who
catch themselves marveling at the
unfairness and blindness of District
Attorney Cyrus Vance might for a
moment consider that his behavior
likely most resembles theirs in other
contexts. The film will have a theat-
rical release in May and will also air
on PBS’s Frontline. You can follow
the film’s trajectory at abacusmovie.
com.
“Whose Streets?” allows black
people who protested in the streets
of Ferguson, Missouri, after the
shooting of Michael Brown to tell
the story of their experiences of
speaking their truth to power and
reveals the extent to which they
went unheard. I was struck watch-
ing it by what an insistent effort
was required to tell their story, and
how contrary that story was to the
story told by the mainstream media,
whose version would more easily
(and incorrectly) lay claim to being
a “balanced” account. That makes
sense to me; the marginalized face
terrific struggle to make their voices
heard, and have little hope of doing
so without a degree of energy and
analysis that is not required of the
dominant culture -- and yet no claim
of balance is valid without account-
ing for their perspective. Director
Sabaah Folayan impressed me in
the discussion that followed the
screening; consistent with my theo-
ry, she conveyed a deep analysis of
the forces at work and the broader
context of what happened in Fergu-
son. The filmmaker used not only
camerawork gleaned from the pro-
tests but also cell phone footage of
police brutality and over-response,
along with footage of protesters
calling out the mainstream media
for not recording such actions. In-
stances of looting are shown as well,
but make a whole different kind of
sense against the backdrop of black
experience; we see how those ac-
tions represent only a small portion
of what happened and why, as Mar-
tin Luther King Jr., expressed, “a
riot is the language of the unheard.”
This film deserves attention and,
thanks to Magnolia Pictures, will be
released theatrically in September.
You can visit whosestreets.com for
updates.
“Strong Island” is the very per-
sonal work of director Yance Ford,
C ontinued on P age 15