Ways of Seeing: Images and Politics of 'Hale County'

I first saw Hale County This Morning, This Evening, RaMell Ross’s cinematic look at daily life in the Alabama Black Belt, at last year’s CPH:DOX. It was one of those unexpected festival finds, a film up for the DOX:AWARD, and thus required viewing for us international critics serving on the Danish film magazine Ekko’s annual Starbarometer jury. As I wrote of the doc in my final assessment, “A series of exquisitely framed snapshots alternate with kinetic camerawork, set to an ambient sound design weaved with an elegant score. The poetry of daily life in the rural South is deftly captured through unexpected sounds and intricate specific images.”

That’s a critic’s winded way of saying, “I fell for the film.” So it was quite a thrill to be able to chat with Ross over the phone nearly a year later to get the scoop on his Oscar-nominated debut (the result of a five-year production process that included not only industry heavyweights like Joslyn Barnes and Field of Vision’s Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook onboard, but even, quite surprisingly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.