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Hale County This Morning, This Evening

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Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Film poster
Directed byRaMell Ross
Written byRaMell Ross
Maya Krinsky
Produced byRaMell Ross
Joslyn Barnes
Su Kim
StarringLatrenda "Boosie" Ash
Quincy Bryant
Daniel Collins[1]
Edited byRaMell Ross
Joslyn Barnes
Maya Krinsky
Robb Moss
Music byScott Alario
Forest Kelley
Alex Somers
Distributed byThe Cinema Guild
Release date
  • January 19, 2018 (2018-01-19) (Sundance Film Festival)
Running time
76 minutes [2]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$112,300[3][4]

Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama.[5] It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature.[6][7][8][9] The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision,[9] 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award[10] for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking.[11] It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[12] After its theatrical run, it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.[13]

Summary

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Lacking a linear storyline, Hale County This Morning, This Evening follows various inhabitants of Hale County in Alabama's Black Belt. Questions posited throughout as intertitles loosely structure the film. They are: “What is the orbit of our dreaming?”, “How do we not frame someone?” and “Whose child is this?” [14] Ross shared a list in Filmmaker of nonhierarchical aims and corresponding strategies to shape the film's avant-garde form including "to centralize my new community in documentary's language of truth"[15] and then to "participate, not capture; shoot from not at"[15] the community. The result is a non-fiction work that has the qualities of a visual orchestra, the 76 minute film following "the flow of five musical movements, as (Quincy) Bryant and (Daniel) Collins float in and out of frame, their lives progressing through college and fatherhood"[16] Important to Ross's imagery in the film and his art practice is what he calls the epic-banal, "the magnificence of the universe’s encasement in the social, awaiting other forms,"[17] which he says is "the direct result of looking at photography and film in the context of representation and lack of representation . . . its tendency to sensationalize." The epic-banal is "an epic moment in something incredibly simple"[18][19] that something can be profound, grandiose and deeply meaningful in the simple depictions of existence of Black people.

RaMell Ross said of the movie: "If we weren't stuck in our first-person points of view, I would argue that most problems in the world that have to do with inequality would be solved, because we wouldn't be stuck in our single points of views."[20]

Critical reception

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Hale County This Morning, This Evening received critical acclaim, with a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 69 reviews, and an average rating of 8.4/10; the website's consensus states "Intimate in scope yet thematically expansive, Hale County This Morning, This Evening draws extraordinary insights out of seemingly ordinary moments."[21] It scores 85 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[22] The Village Voice's Bilge Ebiri wrote "It’s not every day that you witness a new cinematic language being born, but watching RaMell Ross’s evocatively titled documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening qualifies".[23]

Glenn Kenny of The New York Times lauded Ross's "patient and focused eye. His camera’s gaze has a quality of reserve, one that insistently imparts respect to his subjects."[24] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film a full five stars and labelled it "visionary," while Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it a "transcendental scrapbook".[25][26] Its racial politics were commended by Melissa Vincent of The Globe and Mail, stating "At every juncture, Ross elects for ambiguity and poses a question to the viewer to answer how black bodies are viewed, encouraging the audience to perform the labour of challenging their expectations."[27] At The Atlantic Samantha N. Sheppard writes "Ross shows how cinema can do more than just relay a narrative",[28] placing the film in camp with the work of the Black Independent Movement member's Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima and Julie Dash as he "upends cinematic conventions, and in doing so, he shows blackness in a way that is rarely seen on-screen"[28]

Following the 91st Academy Awards nominations, Jason Parham of Wired argued Hale County This Morning, This Evening's inclusion for Best Documentary Feature signaled a "new age of documentary" in which "academy voters must now embrace their changing future."[29]

Accolades

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ RogerEbert.com
  2. ^ The Cinema Guild
  3. ^ "Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  4. ^ "Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)". The Numbers. IMDb. Retrieved April 23, 2019.
  5. ^ "The Documentary That Bucks Oscar Trends—And Still Got a Nomination". The Atlantic. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  6. ^ "'Hale County This Morning, This Evening'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  7. ^ Uhlich, Keith. "'Hale County This Morning, This Evening': Film Review | Sundance 2018". Hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  8. ^ Gray, Christopher. "Hale County, This Morning This Evening". Slant Magazine.
  9. ^ a b Pipes, Patrick. "Sundance Winner 'Hale County This Morning, This Evening' Acquired By Cinema Guild". Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  10. ^ "28th Annual IFP Gotham Awards Winners Announced". IFP. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  11. ^ "'Hale County This Morning, This Evening' Tops 2019 Cinema Eye Honors". Variety. 2019-01-11. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  12. ^ "Free Solo" wins Best Documentary Feature-Oscars on YouTube
  13. ^ "Hale County This Morning This Evening wins Peabody Award". PBS.
  14. ^ 'Hale County' documentary puts Oscar spotlight on Greensboro-News-Tuscaloosa News-Tuscaloosa, AL
  15. ^ a b Jacobson, Genevieve. "A Cut in Time: RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes and Maya Krinsky Break Down a Scene from Hale County This Morning, This Evening". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  16. ^ O'Falt, Chris (2018-11-07). "'Hale County This Morning, This Evening' Is the Most Significant Piece of Nonfiction Filmmaking This Year". IndieWire. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  17. ^ "Manifesto! Eleven Calls to Action". Film Quarterly.
  18. ^ "Hale County This Morning, This Evening Q&A with RaMell Ross & Garrett Bradley". Youtube. June 24, 2020.
  19. ^ "On Place: RaMell Ross & Curran Hatleberg". Youtube. May 11, 2021.
  20. ^ RaMell Ross, Filmmaker - Brief but Spectacular|PBS NewsHour
  21. ^ "Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
  22. ^ "Hale County This Morning, This Evening". Retrieved 27 February 2019 – via www.metacritic.com.
  23. ^ ""Hale County This Morning, This Evening": Witness the Birth of a New Cinematic Language | Village Voice". www.villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  24. ^ Kenny, Glenn (13 September 2018). "Review: A Multiplicity of Moments in Under 80 Minutes in 'Hale County'". Retrieved 27 February 2019 – via NYTimes.com.
  25. ^ Bradshaw, Peter (17 January 2019). "Hale County This Morning, This Evening review – visionary doc about lives in Alabama". Retrieved 27 February 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
  26. ^ Gleiberman, Owen (27 December 2018). "Film Review: 'Hale County This Morning, This Evening'". Retrieved 27 February 2019.
  27. ^ "Review: Hale County This Morning, This Evening expertly visualizes the complexities of black American life". Retrieved 27 February 2019 – via The Globe and Mail.
  28. ^ a b Sheppard, Samantha N. (2019-02-20). "The Documentary That Bucks Oscar Trends—And Still Got a Nomination". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
  29. ^ Parham, Jason (23 January 2019). "Oscar Nominations Prove We're in a New Age of Documentaries". Retrieved 27 February 2019 – via www.wired.com.
  30. ^ Reel World: Reviews From the 2018 AFI DOCS Film Festival
  31. ^ "HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING". Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  32. ^ 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Wins Best Documentary|Spirit Awards 2019|Hollywood Reporter
  33. ^ Hale County This Morning, This Evening|Independent Lens|PBS.org
  34. ^ Under the Influence: RaMell Ross on THE QATSI TRILOGY-criterioncollection on YouTube
  35. ^ 2019|Oscars.org
  36. ^ Schneider, Michael (June 10, 2020). "'Stranger Things,' 'When They See Us,' 'Watchmen' Among This Year's Peabody Award Winners". Variety. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  37. ^ How The Qatsi Trilogy Gave RaMell Ross a New Way of Seeing|The Current|The Criterion Collection
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