Riotsville USA
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“I Don’t Want to Make Seamless Films”: Sierra Pettengill on Riotsville, USA
Where Sierra Pettengill’s previous all-archival film, The Reagan Show (co-directed with Pacho Velez), asked the question “How did we get here?” by re-examining the ’80s, her new feature Riotsville, USA goes back further, to the oft-examined period from roughly 1967 to 1968. As she explains in a press kit interview conducted by programmer Nellie Killian (also credited as a researcher on the film), the project originated when, while reading Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, Pettengill grew curious about what, exactly, might have happened at the titular sites. “I Googled [“Riotsville”] and I didn’t find much of anything—and for me, as an archival researcher, that’s just the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 22, 2022 -
“I Thought About How Crucial It Is to Try to Extract Meaning From the Visible and Invisible Historical Layers of a City” | Sierra Pettengill, RIOTSVILLE, USA
The last two years have prompted much contemplation and reconsideration of the reasons why we make our films as well as the ways in which we make them. What aspect of your filmmaking—whether in your creative process, the way you finance your films, your production methodology or the way you relate to your audience—did you have to reinvent in order to make and complete the film you are bringing to the festival this year? Across a year molded by the pandemic, RIOTSVILLE, USA.‘s writer Tobi Haslett, editor Nels Bangerter, and I did the entirety of our collaborative work remotely. While […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2022
