Power
Throughout 'Power,' Yance Ford draws a startlingly clear line from the origins of modern policing as a slave patrol to its present-day iteration.
Power
In the United States, police have been granted extraordinary power over our individual lives. The police decide who is suspicious and who ‘fits the description.’ They define the threats and decide how to respond. They demand obedience and carry the constant threat of violence. Thousands of these interactions play out in our cities and towns every day, according to real and perceived ideas of criminality and threats to social order—as decided by the police. Police make the abstract power of the state real. POWER traces the accumulation of money, the consolidation of political power, and the nearly unrestricted bipartisan support that has created the institution of policing as we know it. The film offers a visceral and immersive journey to demonstrate how we’ve arrived at this moment in history, from the slave patrols of the 1700s and the first publicly funded police departments of the 1800s to the uprisings of the 1960s and 2020s. Part essay, part interview, and part archival collage, POWER uses historical materials to illustrate our contemporary realities and examines urgent questions about a growing and largely unchecked authority—who is policed, who is protected, who gets to decide, and why.
Genre
Documentary,
Politics,
History
Runtime
89
Language
English
Director
Yance Ford
Played at
Monica Film Center 5.10.24 - 5.16.24
Power Get Tickets
There are currently no showtimes for this film. Please check back soon.