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Sunday, December 15, 2024

Thoughts on Hale County This Morning, This Evening

    I watched RaMell Ross' 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, and really liked it. It was Oscar nominated, and it is centered on Black families in Hale County, Alabama. Ross had moved to Alabama in 2009 to coach high school basketball and teach in a youth program, and was already trained as a photographer and filmmaker, and he made a really interesting documentary with no narration, no music soundtrack, with natural interviews that don’t feel like sit-down confessionals, and brief intertitles between scenes. It’s a very intimate and personal film, very much of the time, as a teen boy named his baby son Kyrie, likely after the NBA player Kyrie Irving.

    I had just seen a Criterion Closet video with Ross, as he directed the new film Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel, and hasn’t heard of him before. This came up on my weekly newsletter from Le Cinéma Club, which uploads one movie at a time weekly, usually short films. This is 76 minutes long, and can be seen until Friday at https://www.lecinemaclub.com/.../hale-county-this.../



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