Director
Sierra Pettengill
Doc Society Support
Development support
Film Details
Format: Short film
RIOTSVILLE, USA is an archival documentary about the US Army’s response to the protests of the late 1960s: take a military base, build a mock city set, have soldiers play rioters, burn the place down, and film it all.
In 1968, following a devastating summer of civil unrest, President Johnson called upon the U.S. Army to set up a training program for the FBI, local police departments, and other branches of the Army, in order to begin to formulate the state’s response to the protests in Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
One solution they came up with was a theatrical one, dubbed ‘Riotsville, USA.’ On a handful of military bases across the country, a Hollywood-style set of a community was constructed - replete with a television and appliance shop, a sporting good store selling guns, a liquor store, and a drugstore. The Military Police (MPs) were split into two groups: half playing the riot control squad, the other half a swatch of activists – approximated versions of peaceniks, Black Panthers, Yippies, and assorted seditionaries – bearing signs entreating everything from “Better Housing” to “Make Love Not War;” from “Burn the Jails” to “Send the Boys Home.” During the day-long exercise, sniper fire hampers citizens, stores are looted, and troops quell every disturbance, be it political or criminal. But here the only damage is done by fake bricks, red smoke grenades, and talcum powder, a breathless play-by-play is narrated over a loudspeaker, and the bleachers are filled with spectators signing The Star-Spangled Banner.
Told through this archival imagery, RIOTSVILLE, USA will explore the dark intertwining of performance and state violence - the very grim spectacle of military force turning citizens against themselves.
Subjects
Society
Awards & Festivals
Awards
Festival Screenings
Reviews
This is not an objective film. It is a polemic, a work of activism, a challenge to the viewer.
A defiant critique of how political narratives are crafted to hurt communities.
A shiver of disquiet runs right through it.
Riotsville, USA is a definitely worth your time and attention.
What “Riotsville, USA” gets right about that pivotal year, and every year since, is the governmental paranoia and overreaction.
Sierra Pettengill’s disquieting documentary uses only archival footage shot by the military and clips from period news coverage to explore this uncanny episode in the country’s history.
It's a documentary about futility, about people trying to understand the problem of unrest but unwilling to understand the problem.
By the end, this becomes a film about how and why we seem to keep having the same arguments, generation after generation.
A searing indictment of the militarization of the police force as a response to civil unrest.
An equally dreamlike and urgent act of radical archiving, Sierra Pettengill’s Riotsville, USA traces the origin of America’s militarized dismantling of social justice movements to a specific time and place.
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