Video Visit
2021 · 23m · USA
Directed by Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A documentary following a Brooklyn Public Library pilot program that offers free weekly video calls connecting people incarcerated on Rikers Island with their families, while librarians navigate the bureaucracy of the NYC Department of Corrections and for-profit prison telecom companies to keep the service running.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
23-minute Field of Vision doc on Brooklyn librarians fighting for-profit prison telecom to keep Rikers video calls free. Unsexy systemic work documented without grandstanding — exactly the kind of doc more people should make.
Zouhali-Worrall (Field of Vision) treats the Brooklyn Public Library as cross-institutional mediator between families and the carceral state — observational documentary in the Wiseman tradition with contemporary urgency. Twenty-two minutes of necessary attention.
22-minute observational doc using the public library as the unlikely institutional-mediator site between families and prison telecom monopolies — that's a smart structural angle on mass incarceration via an institution nobody expects. Field of Vision provenance backs it.
Reviews
Compassionate and important filmmaking at its very best.
Couldn't help but think of Wiseman in this cross-institutional study with some terrific meeting / phone call scenes. We must protect the library.
Festivals
- BlackStar Film Festival 2021
- BAM Cinemafest 2021
- New Orleans Film Festival 2021
- Rooftop Films 2021
- AFI Fest 2021
- SXSW 2022
- Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2022
- Salem Film Festival 2022
- Aspen Film Shortsfest 2022, Jury Award, Best Documentary