Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Description
“I already had my troubles for today, so I can’t worry about tomorrow,” states Daniel, one of the protagonists in award-winning photographer RaMell Ross’s inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people. Set in an African-American community in rural Alabama where the director moves to coach basketball in 2009, the film captures small, but nevertheless precious, moments in Black lives – church services, a toddler running circles, an eclipse – with rapturous attention.
“It’s not every day that you witness a new cinematic language being born, but watching RaMell Ross’s evocatively titled documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening qualifies. The director, a photographer and teacher who was coaching basketball in the middle of the Black Belt region of the American South, knew the subjects of his documentary for several years before deciding to create a film around them. The finished work, a half decade in the making, is informed by his deep familiarity with its characters, which might be one reason why he has the confidence to abandon traditional narrative structures and strike out on his own lyrical path.” – Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice
“Ross has a preternatural talent for capturing moments, souls, and unorthodox time-lapses. Every shot seems to maximize the cinematographic potential of the scene through dexterous camerawork, while excellent sound collaging matches the scattered but chain-linked visuals. This is a man overflowing with vision.” – Theo Schear, Film Threat
RaMell Ross has a BA in English and sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His photography has been exhibited around the world and has appeared in such publications as The New York Times and Oxford American. In 2015, Filmmaker Magazine named him one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” and for Hale County This Morning, This Evening, he won a Special Jury Prize for Creative Vision at the Sundance Film Festival. He says, “The film is also a process of me coming to understanding the way in which I deal with imagery and the way in which I deal with myself and my own people.” (Village Voice)
Film Details
Language English
Year 2018
Runtime 77
Country USA
Director RaMell Ross
Producer RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim
Writer RaMell Ross, Maya Krinsky
Editor RaMell Ross
Cinematographer RaMell Ross
Music Alex Somers, Scott Alario, Forest Kelley