film

"Hale County" feels like less like a movie that was made than a dream that has welled up in the subconscious of a nation unwilling to see it, rendered so beautiful that it's impossible to look away.

RaMell Ross's remarkable debut feature is as much an experimental film as it is a documentary, and it succeeds smashingly on both fronts.

At the same time that Hale County's collage style helps the film avoid becoming a Southern variation on Hoop Dreams, it refuses to lapse into anything resembling hand-wringing melancholy.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening has an impressive pedigree but that wouldn't count for much if it didn't achieve its aim to find a new language for the overlooked parts of neglected lives. But it does -- lovingly.

A lyrical meditation on the Black Belt experience, and the parameters of representing it...

There are moments of genuine lyricism.

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.

Through framing and editing, small moments are imbued with a sense of spiritual grace, and the entirely mundane is recalibrated as the sublime.

A poetic documentary with a gift for making enrapturing imagery out of what sound like ordinary, everyday events.

Though made modestly and intimately, the film embodies a vast conceptual and aesthetic ambition.