Pineland
At a traffic stop, distinguishing reality from fantasy becomes the difference between life and death. Pineland is a real-world story inviting critical inquiry about truth, perception, and militarism in America.
Pineland is informed by my background as a civil-rights lawyer representing victims of fatal police shootings. A collection of short films— case studies—will tell this true story multiple times from a range of perspectives, in collaboration with a survivor, in several genres.
The first version, Pineland/Hollywood, is an 11-minute experimental piece employing almost 400 fair-use clips from 188 Hollywood films to tell the story under a voice-over soundtrack of survivors' testimony from the actual court case. Two people testify about the same incident, but they seem to be inhabiting different worlds. The real testimony might as well have been scripted in Hollywood. Trauma is mined for entertainment, and we as viewers readily consume it.
The story begins on the next page.
The Pineland concept was shortlisted for the 2019 & 2020 Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award.