Power
Power
The issue of police brutality is one that never goes out of the news cycle. There have been many, too many instances and such events in different parts of the country which would indicate a greater misuse of state power. Some stories rise to the level of national news, others even if not will still leave scars on the place where it occurred. In the documentary ‘Power’, Yance Ford intends to reflect on the current events slightly by asking, how did we end up in this particular place in today’s world?
This time however in “Nanakusa commemorates ancestors,” Ford who previously followed every detail in ‘Strong Island’ where he looks after details of his brother who has been brutally murdered is more detached than he was in the last movie. This time, he is physically off the stage, and the voice of authorities is giving an account of the experience through images revolving around this complicated issue. As present and former academics, journalists, and police officers attempt to deconstruct the pictures that are all too well known, Ford’s depiction of these individuals encapsulates how pervasive the issue is in society tracing the history of law enforcement to the 19th century when the colonizers’ army managed the native people for the benefit of the colonizers, the slaveholders’ patrolling of Black people, and the militias suppressing lower class strikers.
The film also goes on to document changes within the police force, how the war shaped police conduct, how the end of slavery was followed by Black Codes which enabled white people to arrest Black people and numerous other similar diversions which lead us to the present day.
In filming interview segments one-on-one with the professors, they try to assess the other aspects, mainly why the blacks were singled out for such treatment, what justified that treatment, how white supremacy allowed even assimilated and oppressed people like the Irish and Italians to assimilate into the oppressor class. The implications of waging war against violence even as power is justified on the basis of liberty and democracy for citizens at large.
Apart from the bulk of interviewees making up scholars and other experts, Ford also tracks a police officer from the Minnesota police force, who is Black and Charlie Adams, who is torn between his profession and the narrative of violence within his profession. I think he provides an angle that has not been captured in the literature on this issue. He narrates how these children died of gun violence in emotional stories and how they have worked in his field satisfying the court most of the time. From Adams, we see and hear discouraging stories of how the judicial system in the U.S is failing the black infants, and the repercussions of helping other black police officers in the department have been on him.
He accepts the fact that there is the need for aspects to be altered but stands in the line of obligation probably because he wishes to witness one or some of those resolutions.
In the course of the essay ‘Power,’ Ford engages his audience, and even some of the expert speakers, in many questions that seek intelligent responses from them. When one of the speakers says that ‘we’ as the audience let the police use brute force, Ford is quick to inquire back and ask whose we are they talking about. This generation of ours did not approve any contract allowing the indefensible of coloniality for centuries, we just inherited it. In another portion, Ford smudges or wipes off some more dangerous police video recordings. Do you need pictures for a stick? Do you need to see when a person gets killed in order for you to believe that it is true? At one instance, he has a police officer in the 1950s dressed police uniform holding his family; as this is happening, there is a sound of a police incorporating excessive force towards a member of the public. There was big dissonance for the images that people have seen in the media of police and the pictures that police does not want the public eye to see of violence perpetrated by them.
The film is complemented by numerous archival pieces that help in the comprehension of the speakers and what they say and further substantiates their investigational work.
Ford herself uses footage from promotional videos such as Gazzara’s the Police Film, and riot training material which has made its way onto the despicable documentary Riotsville, U.S.A. For this reason, he delves into Spanish American war photographs, crime silent movies, and particularly innumerous news that backs this very health safety concern. Ford also includes today’s intrusions with cameras and police, the so-called eye in the sky which is much more penetrating than the target.
The objective of “Power” is not to put ‘police violence’ on trial but to contest it. It comes across as a textbook, a crash course when it should have been meant as more and the pity for those who are already aware of its dangers and its disturbing history in this country. The documentary follows the recent trend of splitting the story into parts and giving them titles, in this case ‘counter surgency’ or ‘violence work’, and when appropriate highlighting words from a quote which is yet to come from a future speaker’s note nearly as if this was some sort of outline points from a classroom lecture.
power is not needed because Ford seamlessly makes it from one subtopic to another without wasting a lot of time, explaining O’Brien’s qualified immunity and telling about the political wave that made the police budget so big, as well as why Stop and Frisk policy failed. That is the volunteers much activity because Ford tells the story of this policy over and over again but in smaller parts that help this audience discover something new about the centuries-old contemporary issues.
Then Ford constructs the narrative. Steve’s attractiveness trigger order had me looking for another word that could be messaged here. O’Brien’s qualified immunity says that it is not needed. And thanks of the huge funds raised the police audience grew enormously also the attention for the Stop and Frisk policy that was used a great deal of the time. Ford politely lets this audience upon their gentle volunteering efforts a lot.
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- Genre: Documentary
- Country: united states
- Director: Yance Ford
- Cast: Charlie Adams, Nikhil Pal Singh, Julian Go
