Thu, Nov 1 / 7 pm
Directed by Robert Greene
2018, USA, 124 min
Skype conversation with director Robert Greene after the film.
A town’s traumatic past reverberates into the present in this stirring, complex look at American struggle and resistance. In 1917, the copper mining workers of Bisbee, Arizona – many of them immigrants – went on strike to fight for safer working conditions. In response, posse of 2,000 men rounded up 1,200 strikers, dumped them in the desert, and effectively exiled them from the town forever. One hundred years later, Bisbee’s residents prepare to re-enact this dark episode – a sort of historical exorcism that brings to light contemporary tensions between labor and management, union-building and capitalism, immigrants and nationalists. Directed with rousing cinematic flair by Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress). Bisbee ’17 resurrects a neglected slice of American history and connects it to our own urgent political moment. – BAMcinemafest
PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE BELL MEDIA HOT DOCS SHOWCASE.
