Bisbee ‘17
Description
Prolific editor and filmmaker Robert Greene brings us to Bisbee, Arizona – a remote copper mining town close to the Mexican border where 100 years ago, there was a violent deportation of 1,200 striking miners who were ultimately left for dead. In this hybrid film, where the past is confronted by staged present-day reenactments of the events leading up to the deportation, Greene taps into the current political climate while questioning what is the “real” history.
“It’s a very rare documentary that can be both formally daring and so emotionally powerful as Bisbee ’17. The former often leads to a disconnect with the latter — style over substance that disengages the viewer from the emotion of the subject — but Robert Greene achieves something special with Bisbee ’17, a movie that feels instantly essential.” – Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
“That palpable sense of power is also a testament to Greene’s evolving skills as a storyteller, which grow more impressive with each film. Snaking together a dozen emotional through-lines and marshaling the whole of Bisbee towards July 12th with the inexorable force of a prophecy, the director creates an unreal vibe that never cleanly aligns with traditional modes of narrative or documentary cinema.” – David Ehrlich, Indiewire
A prolific editor and producer as well as director, Robert Greene made his feature directing debut with Owning the Weather (2009). His other features include Kati with an I (2010), Fake It So Real (2011), Actress (2014), and Kate Plays Christine (2016). “The relationship between chaos and order is at the heart of all documentaries, especially films like ours that play with genre, performance, and narrative,” says Greene of his distinct style blending documentary with fiction and that he employees in Bisbee ’17. “This means that we kind of need to do two kinds of films at once. It’s hard to make a good documentary and hard to make a good fiction film – but I was asking our team to make both at once!”
Film Details
Language English
Year 2018
Runtime 119
Country USA
Director Robert Greene
Producer Douglas Tirola, Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott
Editor Robert Greene
Cinematographer Jarred Alterman
Music Keegan DeWitt