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April 24, 2019
Films Explore Race and the Environment
o PinionAted
J udge
by
d arleen o rtega
d arleen o rtega
At the beginning of this month,
I made my annual pilgrimage to
the Full Frame Documentary Film
Festival in Durham, North Car-
olina and saw 16 feature-length
documentaries. Reviews on eight
of those films ran in the April 12
Portland Observer. Here’s my
take on the other eight films worth
watching:
“Mossville:
When Great
Trees Fall,” won the Kathleen
Bryan Edwards Award for Hu-
man Rights at Full Frame. It tells
the story of a once-proud and in-
dependent Louisiana community
founded by formerly enslaved Af-
rican Americans whose once-lush
farmland has now been decimated
by petrochemical and industrial
plants. The biggest encroacher
is an apartheid-born South Af-
rican-based chemical company,
Sasol, which, like some creature
from the deep, devoured the com-
munity with buy-out offers that
property owners were not really
meant to refuse. One resident, Sta-
cey Ryan, holds his ground, but at
the cost of his health and peace,
by
illuminating patterns of environ-
mental oppression that draw little
public notice and that target mar-
ginalized communities like this
one. The brazenness and relentless
impact of greed and racism in this
community deserves the careful
attention paid here. You can fol-
low the film’s progress in finding
an audience and distributer on
facebook.com/MossvilleProject.
“Where the Pavement Ends”
offers another take on racial in-
justice, probing some little-known
history of Ferguson, Missouri,
where the police killing of Mi-
chael Brown sparked protests
and national outrage in 2014. It
turns out that Ferguson was for-
merly a whites-only “sundown
town” adjacent to Kinloch, a black
town separated from Ferguson
by a blockade, where black peo-
ple could see but not visit white
neighborhoods that had access
to services and infrastructure not
available in Kinloch. This medi-
tative investigation into that his-
tory, which culminated in a pub-
lic dispute over the blockade in
1968, invites residents of these
Photo Courtesy iMdb
Environmental racism destroys a once-proud and independent African American community in
“Mossville: When Great Trees Fall,” a new feature film previewed at the Full Frame Documentary Film
Festival by Portland Observer columnist and Opinionated Judge film critic Darleen Ortega.
communities to reflect on history and granddaughter of a construc- system, focus on a 2012 story of
that people tend to avoid thinking tion executive who was aligned undocumented teenagers who
about, in hopes of illuminating with the country’s moneyed elites. turned themselves in to immi-
remarkably consistent patterns of For Americans who, like myself gration enforcement so that they
racial strife.
have only passing familiarity with could bring attention to the plight
Visit facebook.com/wherethe- Brazilian politics, Costa’s account of folks being held for months
pavementendsfilm/.
is surprisingly accessible and co- and years inside a for-profit Flor-
One of my favorite films of gent. She is clear about her own ida detention facility. What began
the festival was “The Edge of point of view, defends it well, and as a short film and then a second
Democracy.” For director Petra provides the means for us (wheth- expanded from there, in conversa-
Costa, the personal is political, er inside or outside her home tion with the activists themselves
and she sets out to address re- country) to grapple with the larger (part of the National Immigrant
cent political upheavals in Brazil questions of how fragile democra- Youth Alliance--worth watching),
in the context of the country’s cy is and why, around the world, to this feature-length film that
larger social and political history the interests of the owning class won awards at Sundance and the
as well as her own history as the are emerging in such an oppres- Ashland Independent Film Fes-
daughter of political dissidents sive way, purportedly employing tival. The NIYA activists appear
the vehicle of democracy itself. in the film and are also depicted
The rise and fall former President by actors in reenactments of what
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Work- happened inside the detention fa-
ers’ Party in Brazil ends up being a cility. The result plays more like a
fascinating vantage point for such caper film than a documentary at
exploration, both in terms of un- times, which may serve to draw
derstanding Brazil but also for ex- audiences in deeper than they
amining the larger trends at work. might otherwise willingly go into
The film will premiere on Netflix the rabbit hole of the immigration
sometime this year.
system. These young people--and
“The Infiltrators” doesn’t this film--seek to shake us up and
squarely fit into a conventional motivate us to question the arbi-
documentary frame, which serves trariness of immigration enforce-
its subject well. Filmmakers Cris- ment. Visit facebook.com/Infil-
tina Ibarra and Alex Ribera, aim- tratorsfilm/
ing to shed light on the senseless-
C ontinued on P age 7
ness of the American immigration
Good day African American
business owners, skilled people, church organizations,
etc. If you seriously believe that we should help support
our own and encourage others to do the same, then we’re
inviting you to come and get registered to participate in the
upcoming “20/20” Regional African American Business
directory, featuring what black people are doing in Seattle,
Tacoma, Olympia, Vancouver WA, PTLD, Salem etc.
Registration is taking place now at 2205 N. Lombard,
room 103, PTLD, Oregon. After they are paid for, there
will be thousands of directories produced and distributed.
Basic business directory listing is less than $40 a year,
less than $15 for skilled people listings.
For appointment hours phone Gloria at 360-952-1432,
Ruth at 360-723-8497, John (503) 358-9655 or Lottie
(directory organizer) at 206-271-0311.