Streaming Friday October 15 — Monday October 18

Deborah Stratman, 2009, US, 52 min

An audiovisual tapestry woven with eccentric, ominous threads, Stratman’s documentary experiment is a mesmerizing slice of paradoxical Americana. Without comment, she depicts a country fascinated by the reenactment, spectacle and simulation of the defense of the freedom, including border patrol trackers, a machine gun festival in the middle of the woods, a tour of luxury Winnebagos, fire-fighting drills and a high school football game with its requisite, interchangeable rituals. This often-explosive urge to fight and protect lands both physical and ideological, culminates in the film’s unforgettable centerpiece. Colonel William Rankin’s harrowing description of a two-hour fall from a fighter jet through a thunderstorm in 1959 swirls together these tangled dreams of heroism and technological control, fueled by an awestruck fear of the unyielding, unbound forces of nature.