In their political video diary, Mitch McCabe returns to their home state of Michigan amid the cacophony of early 2020. Centering a diverse populace, the artist listens to and converses with people in the streets at overlapping uprisings and rallies. These competing and conflicting protest narratives defy stereotypes and challenge expectations of the binary divisions running through America today. Viewing 2020 as a touchstone and turning point, 23 MILE creates a complex and nuanced portrait of ground-level ideas, perceptions, and ongoing battles. 2023, US, DCP, 78 min.
A conversation with filmmaker Mitch McCabe, Dr. Morgan Adamson, and Dr. Catherine R. Squires follows the screening.
Bios
Morgan Adamson is a scholar-practitioner who works at the intersections of nonfiction film and cultural studies. Grounded in archival research and collaboration, her experimental cinematic practice animates hidden histories and infrastructures as a form of social engagement situated in place. Her recent essay film, Brutal Utopias (2023), examines the struggle to define social utopia through architecture that traces resistance to urban renewal in the 1970s and its aftermath in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. She is the author of a book on political documentary from the 1960s and 1970s, Enduring Images: A Future History of New Left Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), in addition to numerous scholarly and popular essays on histories of finance, race, and geographies of dislocation and social reproduction. Her work has been reviewed in Cineaste, Film Quarterly, and Hyperallergic, among other places. She is currently Professor and Chair of Media and Cultural Studies at Macalester College.
Mitch McCabe is an artist, filmmaker, and educator whose work spans narrative and nonfiction film, and the many areas in between. Their most recent film, 23 MILE, premiered at the 2024 True/False Film Festival. McCabe’s short films Playing the Part, September 5:10pm, Highway 403, Mile 39, To Whom It May Concern, Civil War Surveillance Poems (Part 1), and You Have Been Lied To have screened at Sundance, New Directors/New Films, New York Film Festival, Camden, True/False, and Ann Arbor Film Festivals, and internationally at DocSheffield, Clermont-Ferrand, Winterür, Dresden, and Visions du Réel, among others. Their experimental narrative feature This Corrosion premiered at the Haugesund Film Festival and Anthology Film Archive. Their feature HBO documentary Youth Knows No Pain (an HBO coproduction) screened at IDFA, Lincoln Center, and AFI Silverdocs. McCabe is a six-time fellow of MacDowell, a 2018 Flaherty Seminar Fellow, a 2019 winner of the Sarah Jacobson Award, and a 2022 winner of the Princess Grace Special Projects Grant.
Dr. Catherine R. Squires retired as Associate Dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and is Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of multiple books and articles on media, race, gender, and politics, including Dispatches from the Color Line and The Post-Racial Mystique. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Squires has engaged in multiple community partnerships in the Twin Cities to uplift and share local Black histories, share accessible yoga practices, and facilitate intergenerational story sharing. Currently, she consults with local organizations to support community-empowered research, storytelling, and healing. She is always on the lookout for interesting birds.
Accessibility
This film has open captions. The introduction and Q&A will have ASL interpretation.
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