ADAMA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Racist War On Terror targets innocent teenage girl

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema's Canadian premiere of David Felix Sutcliffe's powerful Sundance-Award-Winning feature (T)error which he co-directed with Lyric R. Cabral, The Film Corner's Countdown to Hot Docs continues with my review of Adama. Broadcast in 2011 via PBS, Sutcliffe's first film is a provocative, rage-inducing portrait of America's racist anti-terror policies perpetrated upon the innocent.

Adama (2011)
Dir. David Felix Sutcliffe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In March of 2005, a 16-year-old honours high-school student living in Harlem was arrested and incarcerated (kidnapped and wrongfully jailed) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (America's Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the S.S.) under the spurious, unfounded suspicion of training with Al-Qaeda as a terrorist suicide bomber.

After being dragged from her home, family and in the middle of a successful school year (that was scuttled by this immoral action), the FBI decided they had nothing on her, so the American Government, in its racist policies masquerading as a war on terror on home turf, instead placed her under a strict curfew (replete with ankle bracelet to monitor her comings and goings) and charged her with being an illegal immigrant, in spite of the fact that she had been living in America since the age of 5 years old.

Her friend, also arrested, wasn't so lucky. She was immediately deported to Africa. Her father, was even more unlucky. He was imprisoned for 16 months and then deported to Africa. Without a sole bread-winner, the teenage daughter had to give up school completely to earn money for her mother and younger siblings. She was then flung into the harrowing experience of never knowing if she would be deported or not.

Welcome to America's War on Terror against the innocent and driven by racist racial profiling of the most heinous, egregious kind. The aforementioned events represent the tip of the iceberg that is the story of the innocent teenage girl of the film's title Adama. This terse, powerful 60-minute documentary was produced for PBS in 2011 and directed with both economy and urgency by David Felix Sutcliffe. It presents a world of Kafkaesque horror and plays out like a direct cinema thriller steeped in humanity.

We experience the terror of this young lady as she is dragged through endless immigration hearings over a period of months, all of them inconclusive and adding to the fear and paranoia of both Adama and her family. There's one set piece in particular that is on-the-edge of the seat scary as she races back to her home, fearing she'll be late for the ankle-monitored curfew (the result of which could mean re-incarceration). There's also the very real threat of other petty bureaucratic agencies investigating the lack of money in the household and considering the horrendous solution of breaking the family apart into the foster-care system. One of the most deeply moving sequences involves Adama's brother pleading to America to leave his innocent sister alone and to let his family continue as they have to live freely in America and to experience a better life.

Sutcliffe has fashioned a sickening, alarming portrait of America's delusional and just-plain mean-spirited war against people of colour in the name of protecting the country. It's not a pretty picture and for much of the film's running time, you will be outraged, frustrated and thrust into Adama's point of view.

What America has been doing and continues to do is appalling. Adama is a film that puts a very human face to the country's own acts of psychological terrorism. And Canadians, no need to be smug, our country has been racial profiling for a long time - see my review of the powerful Hot Docs entry from last year, Amar Wala's The Secret Trial 5. And if what you see in that film and Adama is scary, just wait until Chancellor (Canadian Prime Minister) Stephen Harper enacts his grotesque anti-terror legislation which will plunge the country beyond America's bilious attack on human rights all in the name of Der Führer Harper's belief that "Jihadist terrorism is not a future possibility, it is a present reality.”

See Adama, see Sutcliffe's new documentary feature (T)error, see The Secret Trial 5. The real terrorists are our own governments. We, the people, are supposedly the government. Not so. We're mere fodder for the attack upon anyone even vaguely outside the Status Quo.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Adama is available to be viewed for FREE online at Sutcliffe's Vimeo page HERE. (T)error will play at the 2015 Hot Docs (The Film Corner review coming soon).

HERMAN'S HOUSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Premieres on PBS July 8, 2013: An Absolute MUST-SEE!

HERMAN'S HOUSE, a film by Angad Singh Bhalla, produced by Lisa Valencia-Svensson, from Ed Barreveld's visionary Storyline Entertainment, is a call to action. Call it activist cinema, if you must. Ultimately, it is cinema in as fine and pure a form imaginable. Telling the harrowing story of an African-American convict who has spent over 40 years in solitary confinement within a prison once used as a slave breeding plantation and a committed young artist who seeks to deliver a glimmer of hope to this wrongfully convicted human being, it's as maddening as it is moving. Welcome to America! The PBS Premiere is July 8, 2013. Check your local listings It's Online: July 8, 2013 – Aug. 6, 2013. PBS direct link below. The following is a slightly revised reprint of a review that first appeared during the Hot Docs Film Festival and the film's Bloor Cinema theatrical run.

Herman's House (2012) ****
dir. Angad Singh Bhalla
Starring: Jackie Sumell, Herman Wallace

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Herman Wallace.

African-American.

Black Panther activist.

Commits armed bank robbery.

Sentenced to 25 years in Louisiana's Angola Prison (a former slave breeding plantation). 1972: Wrongfully convicted of murdering a prison guard. The evidence is clearly trumped up. Even the wife of the murdered guard believes a miscarriage of justice might have occurred and wants the truth. Appeal after appeal. Nothing.

Herman Wallace was placed in solitary confinement. In 1972. 23 Hours a day. Every single day. A cell measuring six feet by nine feet. It is now 2012.

Solitary confinement is torture. Herman Wallace has been tortured for 40 years. Repeat. 40 years. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to America.

In light of a statement made by Jon Hubbard, a Republican legislator from Arkansas in his book, "Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative", it's even more clear where America is headed unless people say "No!" to this continued madness. (And in Canada, we can't afford to be complacent about this. We're currently ruled by psychopaths also.) In his book, the moron Hubbard wrote:

"“… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”

I've never been more proud to be a Canadian after seeing Herman's House. This is an American story, but it took Canadians to bring it to the screen.

Herman's House is an extraordinary film about extraordinary people in a country that has sadly learned nothing since 1776 but the right of might, the power of the dollar and the exploitation of the poor - a country that purports to be the most powerful democracy in the world, but is little more than a backwards Totalitarian State - run by a greedy, mean-spirited, prejudiced Old Boys Club. Or, call them what you will - an oligarchy, gangsters, the New World Order - or Hell, why not all three? Bush I, Bush II, Clinton, Obama, all those before and all those who will come after - they're just puppets anyway. To paraphrase Michael Corleone in Godfather II: They're all a part of the same hypocrisy.

The people, the Real People, are the victims. Surprisingly they persevere. They shed their victimhood by fighting back - not with fists, but with the weaponry of activism, the fighting spirit of the soul.

This is a movie that will anger, frustrate and yet finally, move you to tears as it explores real compassion and understanding amongst those with the only power they have - their hearts, their minds and most of all, imagination. At times, the storytelling in this miraculous work is so artfully wrought, one occasionally forgets it's a documentary and you find yourself thinking, "Jesus, if this really happened, things are more fucked in America than I ever imagined." Then comes the proverbial pinch. You're not dreaming. You're not watching a neo-realist drama. These are real people, this really happened and is, in fact, really happening.

In America.

When the New York artist Jackie Sumell heard about the plight of Herman Wallace, she began to correspond with him. In time they forged a deep friendship on opposite ends of the country - one free, the other in prison. And not just prison - solitary confinement.

For a crime he did not commit. (And even if he did, which he clearly did not, but just saying - even if he did, you do not torture someone for 40 years. Unless, of course, you are a Totalitarian State - which, though some try to deny it - America most certainly is.)

Jackie began to use her power as an artist to imagine and create the world in which Herman lived. Soon, she began to plumb his imagination and try to discover what a man in solitary might concoct if he could have his very own dream home. Working strictly from Herman's specifications, Jackie created an art piece that represented Herman's design. Not only did Jackie create a work of art (that has toured to five countries), she was able to provide a vehicle for Herman to plumb the depths of his dreams.

Director Angad Bhalla spent five years following this story. We meet with Herman's family, friends and former cell mates and are privy to telephone conversations between Jackie and Herman. On subject matter alone, this would have been a fine film, but it goes well beyond having great material. This is a real movie made by a real filmmaker, surrounded by a first-rate team of collaborators - all of whom have rendered a picture of finely wrought drama and cinematic artistry of a very high order.

Ricardo Acosta's editing skillfully juggles several years worth of material and delivers a compelling forward thrust. The top-drawer cinematography by Bhalla and Iris Ng is full of superlative compositions and a magnificent, deft use of light. Punctuating much of the film are a series of stunning animated sequences by Nicolas Brault that blend perfectly with the overall mise-en-scene.

The sound mixing by the legendary Daniel Pellerin is especially brilliant - capturing the delicate blend of superb location sound, voice-over, Ken Myhr's highly evocative musical score and most astoundingly, the recordings of Herman on the phone (eerily and occasionally punctuated with a computer generated voice that reminds us that the State Correctional Institute is monitoring the conversation).

Welcome to 1984 in 2012.

Welcome, once again, to America!!!

What I love about this film is that it's infused with an independent spirit. The production value and artistry are of a high order, but there's nothing slick about it. Nothing feels machine-tooled in the way so many contemporary documentaries are fashioned. It's grass-roots storytelling - replete with passion, vigour and a deep emotional core.

And, Goddamn!

It's one hell of a great story!

The PBS Premiere is July 8, 2013. Check your local listings It's Online: July 8, 2013 – Aug. 6, 2013. Visit the PBS website HERE. The official Herman's House website is HERE.