Bisbee ’17
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“We Found Ways to Combine Drama Therapy with Filmmaking into Something New”: Director Robert Greene on the Netflix Documentary Procession
At the root of the word “procession” is “process” — really a fitting description for any Robert Greene film. But the title of the nonfiction veteran’s latest foray into character-collaborative doc-making has other meanings. It nods specifically to the Holy Spirit’s procession and also to the dictionary definition of people moving forward, a march that includes the risk-taking filmmaker himself. Procession (which premiered at Telluride and just hit Netflix November 19) is perhaps Greene’s boldest cinematic move yet. Once again the director (and “filmmaker-in-chief” at the University of Missouri’s Murray Center for Documentary Journalism) blurs the lines between narrative and nonfiction, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 22, 2021 -
Grasshopper Film Acquires Robert Greene’s Bisbee ’17
Grasshopper Film announced today the acquisition of US distribution rights to Bisbee ‘17, the latest documentary from filmmaker Robert Greene. Following its theatrical release, Bisbee ‘17 will be released on Blu-ray, DVD, and streaming platforms this spring, as well as on the non-theatrical market. From the press release: Bisbee ‘17 follows several members of a close-knit community as they attempt to reckon with their town’s darkest hour. In 1917, nearly two-thousand immigrant miners, on strike for better wages and safer working conditions, were violently rounded up by their armed neighbors, herded onto cattle cars, shipped to the middle of the New Mexican desert, and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2019 -
Minding the Gap Leads This Year’s Cinema Eye Honors Nominees
The non-fiction-centric awards body Cinema Eye Honors announced its nominees for 2018, ranging over 10 categories, such as directing, production, cinematography and, of course, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. Among the biggest recipients is Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap, which raked up a total of seven nominations — the most of any title this year. Others with multiple nominees include Robert Greene’s Bisbee ’17, RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening and Sandi Tan’s Shirkers. The winners will be announced at the 2019 Honors Awards Ceremony on January 10, 2019, which will be held at the Museum of […]
by Matt Prigge on Nov 9, 2018 -
“Stories Make Order and Help Us Understand the Awful Noise”: Director Robert Greene | Bisbee ’17
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? The relationship between chaos and order is at the heart of all documentaries, especially films like ours that play with genre, performance and narrative. This means that we kind of need to do two kinds of films at once. It’s hard to make a good documentary and hard to make a good fiction film – but […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2018 -
“The Psychedelic Colors of the Earth”: Cinematographer Jarred Alterman on Bisbee ’17
Documentary filmmaker Jarred Alterman began his career on an unlikely note: as the director of more than a dozen episodes of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s animated show Tom Goes to the Mayor. Alterman would later serve as the DP on Contemporary Color, a 2016 concert film starring David Byrne. He collaborated on that film with Robert Greene, the esteemed documentary filmmaker and indie film editor. Alterman shot Greene’s latest non-fiction creation, Bisbee ’17, which screens in competition at Sundance. Alterman spoke with Filmmaker about the film’s western aesthetic, singular setting and unique blend of scripted and documentary scenes. Filmmaker: How and why […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 3: Crime + Punishment, Monsters and Men, Bisbee ’17
I’ve written before about my fondness for local news: “a fun, seemingly randomized mash-up of crimes caught on security cameras, traffic and weather updates, forced banter, cooking segments, deep concerns about marijuana use and ‘reporting’ that’s thinly veiled support for the NYPD.” One segment in the latter mode still regularly replays in my mind: following the 2014 shooting of two NYPD officers, one channel — playing to that unflappable demographic which believes the police are always in the right — aired a particularly shameless segment in which a reporter found a seven-year-old black child to tearfully state how much he […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 21, 2018 -
“The Bisbee Deportation Doesn’t Matter Unless it Relates to our Real Lives Today”: Robert Greene on Bisbee ’17
Sundance vet Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress) returns to Park City this year with a film quite unlike his previous features, at least in subject matter if not approach. For Bisbee ’17 Greene turns his trademark technique of fusing fiction and nonfiction elements on the story of a sordid anniversary, the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, in which 1,200 immigrant miners in Bisbee, Arizona were rounded up, shipped out of the copper town on cattle cars and left to die in the desert. Through staged recreations developed and performed by local residents — including an actor whose mom was deported to […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 21, 2018
