Doc Corner: 'Lakota Nation Vs. United States'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

If you ask me (and if you’re here, I would hope you hold my opinion in some sort of esteem), the best work of documentary so far this decade has been Raoul Peck’s four-part Exterminate All The Brutes from 2021. An epic feat of production, it brought a cinematic lens to a HBO doc-series that unflinchingly charted a history of white possession and genocide. I am hardly surprised it won a Peabody Award, but couldn’t make traction with mainstream awards bodies. Its content was tough, not made any easier as a viewing experience by the blunt-force storytelling of Peck that, maybe, people didn't expect from a multi-part doc series.

I bring this up to introduce Lakota Nation Vs. United States for a few reasons. For starters, they share an interest (if you can call it that) in the atrocities committed against Indigenous populations. It’s also very well made; beautifully shot and carefully edited with keen precision. A history book slicing a papercut into the viewer’s fingertip.

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Doc Corner: 'End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock'

By Glenn Dunks

The politics of protest are always going to provide filmmakers with the sort of loaded emotions that make for good movies. Even when peaceful, the fractured dynamics of a society that continuously pits side against side in the fight for progressive ideas have long produced the sorts of anger and fierce determination that explode on camera. Racial equality (and more recently, Black Lives Matter), queer rights and women’s liberation have all been seen in compelling documentaries for decades.

But as environmental issues become more engrained as a fixture in the political and societal landscape, the street-battles to protect the only Earth we have are just as pertinent even if they perhaps lack the more personal connections that so many of us find in narratives of struggle and protest. In fact, Shannon Kring’s End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock finds much of its power in the way race, gender and the environment overlap in the fight for our planet's future.

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