Filmmakers Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras received the 2003
Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award for Flag
Wars, their poignant documentary
on neighborhood gentrification that pits two historically oppressed
groups against each other.
Shot over four years in Columbus, Ohio, the film unfolds as a narrative
drama with multiple storylines. Black residents, working class or
poor and often elderly, fight to hold on to their homes and their
heritage. Realtors and gay home-buyers see the enormous, often rundown
homes as fixer-uppers. The inevitable clashes expose prejudice and
self-interest on both sides, along with the shared dream to have
a home to call one’s own. Both provocative and elegiac, Flag
Wars is a candid, unvarnished portrait of privilege, poverty,
and local politics, representative of changes and conflicts taking
place across America.
The CDS Filmmaker Award, presented at the Full Frame Documentary
Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, is now in its third year.
The $5,000 annual prize recognizes documentary films that combine
originality and creativity with firsthand experience in examining
central issues of contemporary life and culture. In keeping with
the CDS mission, the award was created to honor and support documentary
artists whose works are potential catalysts for education and change.
The award goes to filmmakers who best connect the power of the documentary
tradition with community life, who best lead viewers to understand
and reflect upon themselves and the world portrayed on film.
“One of the qualities of the lasting documentary is the ability
to shine light and lend artful interpretive insight into things
we all know about but don’t adequately deal with,” Tom
Rankin, director of CDS, said in presenting the award. “This
year’s winners do just that in the interweaving of the many
stories and perspectives of gentrification and economic transformation
from one particular place. Through their lyrical film we can see
beyond that particular place to understand many places.
“Combining issues of class, race, sexuality, age, to name
a few, Flag Wars lends us a
window into another place and others’ lives, but just as importantly
serves as a mirror into which we see our own participation in this
nearly universal American story.”
The film, broadcast on public television as a
P.O.V. season premiere in June 2003, was screened at film
festivals in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, and Provincetown that
summer.
Linda Goode Bryant is an independent producer/director currently
working on The Vote, a cinema
vérité documentary that follows the politics and passions
triggered in a small town by the 2004 presidential primaries, as
the film explores the reasons that Americans don’t vote. Her
work has been shown in national and international film festivals
and film programs. She is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships,
including an Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for
the Arts and individual artist grants from the New York State Council
on the Arts. Bryant was the founding director of Just Above Midtown
Inc. (JAM), an interdisciplinary artists’ space in New York
City.
Laura Poitras is a New York–based documentary filmmaker and
visual artist. Since 1996, she has worked as a freelance editor
and assistant editor for series that aired on HBO, IFC, and Bravo.
She was associate producer for Free
Tibet (1996), a theatrically released documentary featuring
musical performances by Bjork, Rage Against the Machine, and the
Beastie Boys. Poitras recently completed the twenty-minute film
Oh say can you see, a critical
examination of spectatorship and nationalism in the aftermath of
9/11.
Flag Wars
Production Credits
Producers: Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras
Director: Linda Goode Bryant
Co-Director: Laura Poitras
Editors: Linda Goode Bryant and Erez Laufer
Cinematographer: Laura Poitras
Second Camera: Linda Goode Bryant
Music: Graham Haynes
Associate Producers: Keisha-Gaye Anderson and Sam Connelly
Sound: Laura Poitras and Linda Goode Bryant
Additional Photography: Arthur Jafa, visual advisor
Flag Wars has received funding
and support from the Public Broadcasting Service (the Independent
Television Service, P.O.V., and the National Black Programming Consortium),
the Jerome Foundation, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the New York
State Council on the Arts, the Ettinger Foundation, and the Ohio
Arts Council.
Contact: Zula/Pearl Film, 215 West 90th Street, 12C, New York, NY
10004; telephone 212-874-5427; fax 212-595-3213
banner images, from left: Still image. Crazy.
Jasper, Texas, city limit.
Photograph by Steven Miller. Two
Towns of Jasper.
Realtor Nina Masseria (right),
a resident of the neighborhood for more than twenty-three years,
and her partner, Mary Jo Hood, in their living room. Photograph
by Steven Harrison. Flag Wars.
