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Show Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, January 21-24, 2017 The Park Record A-10 Film explores policing amid time of racial strife Courtesy of the Sundance Institute The Sundance Film Festival documentary “Long Strange Trip” explores the history of the Grateful Dead, which emerged from the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s. The filmmaker, Amir BarLev, says the band was “animated by big ideas and revolutionary ideas.” Film will ripple through fest Grateful Dead doc screens at Sundance By JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record A documentary about the Grateful Dead is expected to ripple through the Sundance Film Festival. The film “Long Strange Trip,” with a name taken from a famous Grateful Dead lyric, is scheduled to premiere during the festival. It will be another in a lengthy list of Sundance entries spotlighting famous acts from the rock ’n’ roll era and one that the filmmaker says offers insights into a band that has perhaps been more closely documented than any other in the decades since it emerged from San Francisco in the 1960s. The Grateful Dead spent more than 30 years leading a communal group of Deadheads across the U.S. and foreign lands before the death of singerguitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995. The surviving members of the Grateful Dead performed a set of farewell concerts in 2015 marking the 50th anniversary of the band. “This is a group of people who were animated by big ideas and revolutionary ideas, and those are ideas that we tried to kind of burnish and polish and grapple with again,” said Amir Bar-Lev, the filmmaker. “They gave away their music for free. They never pursued celebrity and rock stardom in the way that most people do. And they invited their audience to be part of the experience rather than be on the receiving end of a polished, phony performance.” Bar-Lev, a Sundance veteran who has previously screened four films at the festival, said he wanted to move away from a typical documentary about a rock ’n’ roll band. The film is closer in style to his previous works than the “cookie-cutter form” of documentaries about musicians, he said. Bar-Lev, who is 44 years old and based in Brooklyn, N.Y., went to his first Grateful Dead concert in 1986 and saw the band numerous times while growing up in the San Francisco area. “It’s like the many-headed In the same way that teenagers pick up Jack Kerouac today and find it relevant, and it changes their life, I think teenagers into the future are going find the Grateful Dead and it will work its magic on them” Amir Bar-Lev “Long Strange Trip” filmmaker hydra. The Grateful Dead is not just one person. The Grateful Dead is something that, in a way, can’t be killed. It’s a pluralistic idea. The band is part of it and the fans are, too,” he said. “Long Strange Trip” culls archival footage to complement more recent interviews with the surviving band members conducted two years or so ago. Bar-Lev also spoke to members of the Grateful Dead family, including roadies and a tour manager from the 1970s. He said the documentary, though, does not feature interviews with experts like music critics or modern-day musicians discussing the Grate- ful Dead, two staples in rock ’n’ roll documentaries. Bar-Lev said he wants young people to see the documentary to learn about a band that is much different than the acts of today. The authentic and the fictitious in today’s world are difficult to delineate, he said. He said he made the documentary for teenagers of today “in the hopes that they can pull their nose out of their phones.” “If you think about what it is like to be a teenager today, and how blurred the distinctions are between what’s real and what’s fake, what’s music and what’s branding, I think the world needs the Grateful Dead again. Culture needs the Grateful Dead again, maybe never stopped needing it,” he also said. Bar-Lev said there is an “urgency” in rock ’n’ roll that has been forgotten. The documentary attempts to recapture that ideal. He said the Grateful Dead “really are outlaws in a way.” He likened the influence of the Grateful Dead to the famous Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road.” “In the same way that teenagers pick up Jack Kerouac today and find it relevant, and it changes their life, I think teenagers into the future are going find the Grateful Dead and it will work its magic on them,” Bar-Lev said. Three of the surviving band members are anticipated to travel to Park City for Sundance – guitarist and singer Bob Weir and the two drummers, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. “Long Strange Trip” is scheduled to screen at the following times: • Monday, Jan. 23, 8:30 p.m. at the Yarrow Hotel Theatre • Tuesday, Jan. 24, 8:30 p.m. at the Yarrow Hotel Theatre • Thursday, Jan. 26, 6 p.m. at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City • Saturday, Jan. 28, 8:45 p.m. at the Yarrow Hotel Theatre. THE PARK RECORD is always looking for new letters Send in your letter to editor@parkrecord.com Courtesy of the Sundance Institute “The Force,” premiering in the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the reforming Oakland Police Department during a time of intense racial tension throughout the country. Filmmaker Peter Nicks says he hopes the film provides a more nuanced look at an issue that has become a flashpoint in society. ‘The Force’ documents progress, failure By BUBBA BROWN The Park Record Filmmaker Peter Nicks carried with him a number of preconceived notions when he decided to spend two years embedded with the Oakland Police Department. As an African-American man, he was well familiar with the troubling role police had played in the history of black America. And he was set to explore the department as racial tensions in the country were swelling following several high-profile police shootings that ignited a nationwide backlash against perceived police brutality. But Nicks -- who said he grew up in a “fairly privileged environment” and never experienced firsthand discrimination from the police -- was not interested in shaping a film around a predetermined narrative. In the documentary “The Force,” which is set to premier in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, he aims to show the complexities surrounding a topic whose shades of gray are far too often ignored. The film isn’t trying to convince viewers that the majority of cops are corrupt and violent, nor does it attempt to downplay the devastating affect institutional shortcomings of a department can have on the community it serves. What it tries to do, instead, Nicks said, is reframe the conversation surrounding police accountability by showing the reality from inside the Oakland Police De- partment, an agency grappling with the ramifications of its own checkered past. “We needed to learn and experience reality in such a way that we can hold two truths at once,” he said. Finding that balance, though, was difficult. As Nicks and his crew began their project, Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent was working under federal oversight to reform the department, known in the past for brutality and corruption. The film depicts the idealistic Whent and other officials preaching to new recruits about the importance of their role in the Oakland community and urging them to behave at all times with integrity. The success of many of the reforms ultimately drew national attention, and some hailed the department as a model others could follow. But outside the department walls, more police shootings around the country birthed the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice efforts and ignited the ire of residents in Oakland, who were skeptical the department had changed for the better in any meaningful way. As a filmmaker, Nicks found working through that contradiction challenging. “It was difficult because we, on some level, had to reconcile these calls for justice and the public’s perception of the police with what we were seeing on the ground, which was a very progressive police department in Oakland,” he said. The film offers rare glimpses into how police officers, themselves, wrestle with the issue. In one scene, academy recruits watch body-camera footage of an officer shooting a suspect who appeared to be reaching for a weapon inside his jacket. The recruits vigorously debate whether the officer’s action was appropriate or an abuse of lethal power, giving viewers a sense of the type of conversations taking place in departments all across the country. “Moments like that really capture and present the audience a type of access and nuance that you just don’t get, for the most part, in the news,” Nicks said. “These shootings are typically framed by the polarization between Black Lives Matter and the police unions and there’s no nuanced conversation between us.” Even after two years embedded with the police department, exploring the issue, Nicks doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. Despite all the progress the agency made under Whent, by the end of the film he has resigned amid a wide-ranging sexual misconduct scandal implicating several officers -- though not Whent directly -- giving Oakland residents yet another reason to be distrustful of their police department. That development, and the fallout from it, left Nicks ultimately wondering whether America’s institutions, led by fallible human beings, are destined to fail or if there’s yet reason for hope. Viewers will be left pondering the same question. “I saw so much complexity in both the progress the department made but also in the ultimate moral failures that took place and the institutional failures that took place,” he said. “What we wanted to do in the film was communicate that complexity and leave the audience really searching for their own answers.” “The Force” will screen in the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition at the following times and locations: • Sunday, Jan. 22, 3 p.m. at the Temple Theater • Tuesday, Jan. 24, 11:30 a.m. at the Prospector Square Theater • Thursday, Jan. 26, 5:30 p.m. at the MARC • Friday, Jan. 27, 9 p.m. at Redstone Cinema 7 • Saturday, Jan. 28, 12:30 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center FREE DINNER SEMINAR UNDERSTANDING GENETICS, HEART DISEASE, BELLY FAT, & THYROID HORMONES PRESENTED BY JOHN LAWRENCE M.D. AND REGAN ARCHIBALD, LAC SKI PAIN FREE Board Certified Physician specializing in Regenerative and Functional Medicine DO YOU SUFFER FROM… • Alzheimer’s • Dementia • Autoimmunity • Chronic Pain • Macular Degeneration • Lung Issues • Nerve Damage • Inflammation • Back Pain • Knee Pain • Shoulder Pain • Hip Pain • Osteoarthritis • Neuropathy • Plantar Fasciitis Join us for Our Seminars Held at our Park City Office Find out if Surgery-Free, stem cell therapy can help relieve your joint pain and get your life back! 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