Documentaries for dorks who care about democracy and diets

NEW YORK—This year at the Tribeca Film Festival, we tried the many alternate uses for Virtual Reality storytelling (aside from gaming), but we also found four documentaries that appealed to our nerd tendencies.

Do Not Resist

Do Not Resist (84 minutes), winner of best documentary feature at TFF, opens with more than 9 minutes of footage from the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2015. Shots of angry crowds and police in riot gear lead to foreboding lightning flashes in the clouds as police use tear gas and enforce a curfew.

From that point on, the film focuses on the various paramilitary enhancements being made in local and state police departments across the US. One of the first (and last) scenes is a police training session that focuses on violence as a “tool” to fight violence, even classifying people into two camps: "Skywalkers" and "Vaders"—a discomforting glorification of brutality against an inhuman enemy.

Then we are bombarded with a flurry of scenes: militant SWAT team training; a conference where FBI Director Comey praises the militarization of police (while we mostly see a shot of a random man on the panel, conveniently named "Craze"); the Concord, New Hampshire, city council listens to citizen arguments against their police buying military tanks (as we see tanks roll through quiet suburban neighborhoods); and police teams raiding houses of black citizens and finding nothing incriminating (while the film focuses on women holding crying babies).

The film’s most terrifying “revelation” is the existence of “pre-crime” technology in action today. However, this is not a revelation at all, as law enforcement has been using these techniques for years. A university professor says that computer analysis of individual profiles, starting from infancy, will no doubt be used as an effective crime-deterrent in the near future. Since no other viewpoint from an "expert" is presented, we are expected to believe this is the way that everyone in the scientific and law enforcement community feels.

Though the film's subject is undoubtedly horrifying, audiences are ill-served by the one-sided, Michael Moore-esque juxtaposition of images and audio skewing toward a single viewpoint. Though we see city council meetings, congressional hearings, scary future tech, protests, and police actions, not once does the film display any meaningful dialogue between the sides.

Though a documentary is not expected to be a piece of "fair and balanced" journalism, Do Not Resist suffers from its one-sided presentation of the issues; it only reveals part of the humanity involved and thus lacks important nuance. If the movement against police militarization is meant to shame the rainmakers, this filmmaker is merely preaching to the choir, and it makes no meaningful appeal to the ones who matter in this issue—the ones making these questionable decisions.

I Was a Winner

The Swedish short I Was a Winner (14 minutes) follows three stories of game addiction cleverly intercut using animated game avatars (from a WoW-style game) that move around their game-space as they speak, synced to real voice-over. There’s no music soundtrack, but we hear the sound-effects of clothes rustling, footsteps, fire, or weapons being toted along through the environment as they tell their tales.

The three subjects reveal their real-life game obsessions, which started due to various reasons: hopelessness from unsupportive parents and game-bonding with a step sibling, a work injury and alcoholism, and a desire to be “with” a boyfriend who was already a gamer. These highly detailed, heartbreaking stories of addiction and severing human interaction are eye-opening but not surprising. Obsession with the virtual world is nothing new, but now, as one character says, it can be medically diagnosed.

Game titles are not mentioned, nor are anyone’s names used, as these stories are meant to appeal to any gamer who has forsaken the real world for the game world. For non-Swedish speakers, the pacing is a bit quick, so reading the subtitles and experiencing the avatar visuals is a difficult task, but it’s worth the effort. It also seems more of a sample than a full film, and if that’s true, I’d like to see a longer version.

Command and Control

"Deterrence is worthless if you don’t demonstrate you’re willing to do it." We hear this line at the start of Command and Control (92 mins), a documentary based on the 2013 book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), and it serves as a structure for this powerful film.

The film faithfully follows the book, a retelling of the Titan II missile explosion in Damascus, Arkansas, in 1980. It uses small amounts of actual film footage intercut with faithful re-enactments (the visuals were very close to what I pictured while reading the book). Facts about nuclear weapons history and accidents involving warheads since 1945 are inserted throughout the Damascus story.

Several of the men involved at Damascus relive how a simple accident due to a break with procedure caused what could have been the largest disaster in US history. But they stress that how the incident was handled is even more worrisome. The same bureaucracy we mock is the one managing armed nuclear warheads, and those in charge of procedure and maintenance (SAC) have little idea how the tech actually works.

The men who bravely tried to diffuse the situation were ultimately the ones who were assigned the blame, and in the end, two of them died as a result of their exposure. When the Titan II missile exploded, for a time they couldn’t find the warhead; some thought it had "gone nuclear."

Though the Damascus site is now shut down, the worrisome question, “How much does the US Defense Department not know about how to manage nuclear accidents?” is still being asked about the 7,000+ nuclear warheads remaining active in the United States.

"It will happen" is a phrase we are left to contemplate.

BUGS

In the delightfully disgusting documentary BUGS (74 mins), we follow two men intent on bringing edible insects into the public eye. At the Nordic Food Lab in Denmark, they test different recipes that include insects, trying to create something that is both nutritious and delicious.

We are taken on a ride around the world with Josh and Ben, who visit Africa, Australia, Japan, Netherlands, and Puerto Rico, exploring various farms and sites where edible bugs are harvested. They ingest everything they can, including maggots, worms, ants, termites, locusts, crickets, beetles, flies, larvae of every sort, and honey from stingless bees. Their particular favorite: black soldier fly larvae fat.

At one point in my notes I wrote: "I feel itchy."

The visits with self-sustaining insect farmers in Africa was a revelation to the pair, who found that not only are insects a sustainable food source, they are also a primary food source, not replacing anything or filling diet gaps in any way. They also found some drawbacks: collecting insects at night under bright lights can cause blindness, which is an epidemic in some communities. But farmed insects just do not taste as good as those found in the wild.

As they make their way around the world to find more unique tastes, they find themselves presenting at an insect conference, and even at the UN, making their case for insects in Western diets as the world population grows. However, just as the UN audience reacted with relative silence, the film’s audience will also find themselves at a loss as to what their message is.

In long exchanges with each other and their investors, Ben and Josh struggle with the aim of their research. They found that if edible insects are to be introduced into a Western diet, the entire market needs to change. High consumption and desire for profit would merely replace a small amount of protein needs, but it’s pointless if insects merely become a "fad" or additive to an already saturated market. How to achieve an entire food market upheaval is a daunting and seemingly impossible reality.

By the end of the film, I didn’t feel itchy anymore. I actually wanted to try some of that larva fat.

Listing image by Tribeca Film Festival