Reality
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Almost Famous (2000), Brubaker (1980), Copying Beethoven (2006), Enemy at the Gates (2001), Freedom Writers (2007), Gandhi (1982),
Mississippi Burning (1988) Sleepless in Seattle (1993),
Watch afterAnatomy of a Fall (2023),
The immediate issue with Tina Slatter’s debut feature, Reality, is how disengaging it is as a movie. A direct adaptation from Slatter’s theatrical piece Is This a Room, the conceptual background is probably the more interesting part. That show took the recorded transcript of FBI agents and former veteran and NSA translator Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) about Winner's leaking of classified information on Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election and used it as a verbatim dialogue. Everything uttered on the tape is replicated almost exactly in the play and, now, the film. The stutters, pauses, coughing, dog barking, doors opening. Everything. Recreated in minute detail. Continue Reading →
Reality Winner
From depictions of Black beauty to the ethics of whistleblowing, two female-focused docs out of SXSW struggle to hammer home a central message.
(This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.)
Subjects of Desire, from director Jennifer Holmes, looks at the way Black beauty has changed over the last century. Holmes examines the boxes that Black women have been forced into through the lens of the Miss Black America beauty pageant. Interviewing a range of contestants, coupled with small group sessions of Black women of varying ages, Holmes’ film forces you to reckon with the sexualization of this unrespected and often disregarded group of people. Continue Reading →