MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Film round-up: March 30, 2023
MARIA DUARTE reviews of Riotsville USA, God’s Creatures, Law of Tehran and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
MESMERISING: Payman Maadi in Law of Tehran
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Riotsville, USA (12A)
Directed by Sierra Pettengill
★★★★
SIX years in the making, Sierra Pettengill’s painstakingly researched documentary lifts the lid on the shocking fake towns — or “riotsvilles” — the US military built to militarise the police and train them to snuff out the uprisings and civil rights protest movements of the late 1960s.
Set in 1967-68 and created entirely from archival footage shot by the US military or broadcast on television, the film shows a national psyche hell-bent on maintaining law and order no matter the cost.
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