Mandel Public Library Of West Palm Beach: Public Spaces, City Streets, And Elsewhere: Documentaries About The World Outside Our Front Doors

Press release from Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach:

03/10/2022 10:45 AM

I’ve become something of a homebody after enduring two years of lifestyle adjustments brought on by the pandemic. If you also find yourself curled up with a blanket and a device instead of out in the world, you might consider watching one of these documentaries. While these films don’t necessarily provide a distant escape to a far-away land, they’re a thoughtful getaway to the places we’ve been missing – to public spaces, city streets, and elsewhere.

The Institute (2013)

What would you do if walking home one night you noticed a flyer taped to the bus stop advertising a device that could play your memories back to you on video? What about an ad for an algorithm alleged to bring world peace? A human force field, perhaps? Would you pull a tab from any of those fliers and venture to call the number? Honestly, I’m not sure it would have appealed to me to phone in about these “as seen on TV” scams, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone to the address the cryptic recording invited me to visit. Remarkably, some people really did take a trip to the “induction office” of the Jejune Institute. In doing so, they became avid participants in what is called an “ARG” or alternate reality game, a game played in real life that often takes on a scavenger-hunt format. This documentary chronicles the phenomenon that took place from 2008 to 2011 in the San Francisco Bay Area and includes interviews with the people who played and created it. The Institute reminds us of our ability to transform this gloomy day-to-day world with just a small shift in perspective.

Banksy Does New York (2015)

If you were keeping up with news and social media in the two-thousand tens, you’ve likely seen Banksy’s work turn up in your feed before. Banksy is an anonymous street artist whose work often includes striking imagery accompanied by a slogan. He tends to include elements of mediums not traditionally associated with street art such as installation and performance art. This documentary covers Banksy’s Better Out Than In residency in New York which took place in October of 2013. The anonymous artist presented a new piece daily, drawing fanfare and criticism alike. Every day, he shared the location of his next piece via Instagram, and crowds would flock there in anticipation, some ready to change or obfuscate the work. This documentary is comprised of crowd-sourced photos and videos from the internet showing us the power of street art to spark public discourse.

The American Sector (2020)

On November 9 of 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. After the wall came down, many pieces of it were given to various institutions worldwide. The film visits pieces of the Berlin wall on display all over the U.S. Some locations include the men’s toilet of Main Street Station Casino in Las Vegas, Ripley’s Believe it Or Not, the lobby of a Hilton in Dallas, Missouri College in Fulton, Florida International University in Miami, and many more. The format of this film is simple to follow and quite soothing if you ask me, but also manages to get at something bigger – what is achieved by the re-contextualization of Cold War relics in the United States long after? What do we know about our past, and how will we arrive at our future?

This press release was produced by Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach. The views expressed here are the author’s own.