Every summer, teenage girls from across Missouri spend a week building a government from the ground up. Coming from different ends of the political and socioeconomic spectrum, they all share a passion for reimagining the future of America. The filmmakers behind Boys State (T/F 2020) return to the world of teen politics to capture the 2022 program – the first time in history that Girls State and Boys State take place simultaneously on the same campus. With rumors of Roe v. Wade being overturned in the real world, the stakes feel higher than ever for these ambitious and dedicated young women. As the days unfold and rumblings from the Boys program make their way across campus, discontent begins to emerge over the disparities between the two. An exhilarating portrait of our political landscape and the pivotal issue of gender equality.
James Benning’s first film called The United States of America was a 1975 trip across the country, capturing its scenery through a car windshield. This second one also crisscrosses the nation, but without a car, carving it up instead into a series of static shots of just under two minutes, one for each state, presented alphabetically, from Heron Bay, Alabama to Kelly, Wyoming. The names of the places are nondescript, but the images attached to them are anything but, immaculately composed shots of landscape, cityscape and the spaces in between. As we move from A to Z, the images coalesce into a portrait of today’s USA, tracing out its fault lines almost in passing: fenced-off facilities, a river bed running dry, factories and refineries, run-down streets and gas stations, a camp under a bridge. The past is there too, seeping up through the songs and speeches that sporadically pierce the background noise or the motifs that evoke a whole career; the clouds, trains and cabins are stand-ins for films, not just states. As always, there’s time for more abstract thoughts too: each image may stand for a state, but representativity is slippery. Which state is more cinematic than the rest?
In the wake of the debut of Masters of the Air, Apple TV+ will stream The Bloody Hundredth, a new documentary honoring the real-life heroes of the 100th Bomb Group.
