Bisbee '17

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2:24

Bisbee '17

2018

2h 4m

Documentary

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

93%

Tomatometer

61 Reviews

59%

Popcornmeter

100+ Ratings

Locals stage re-creations of the town's controversial past.

Critics Consensus

Bisbee '17 offers one town's reckoning with its own history as a compelling argument that the mistakes of the past are truly corrected only when they're faced head on.

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Mark Asch

Film Comment Magazine

10/30/2018

Bisbee '17 speaks to the stakes of local history and amateur genealogy for places and people that are twinkling out of living memory.

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Ann Hornaday

Washington Post

10/24/2018

3.5/4

A fascinating exercise in nonfiction filmmaking as a performative, interdisciplinary, collective act, as well as a provocative inquiry into how selective memory, ideology, shame and unspeakable trauma shape what we come to accept as official history.

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Chuck Bowen

Slant Magazine

10/19/2018

4/4

The film's epic canvas fuses a procedural documentary with tableaux that wouldn't be out of place in a horror western.

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Vadim Rizov

Filmmaker Magazine

01/06/2023

A lot of the method relies upon scenes in which characters are given a prompt whose successful execution is less the point than the moment when something goes wrong and a revealing moment that couldn’t possibly staged breaks through...

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Jason Adams

My New Plaid Pants

07/02/2021

It's a post-modern sort of spirit photography, as the ectoplasm of the past spews into visibility, possession like, a document of how we're all whether we realize it or not formed out of the molecules of the dead

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Dustin Chang

Floating World

02/13/2021

Greene is not only a good filmmaker but a great teacher. Serrano belongs to the generation which will inherit this country very soon, is awoke. The film deeply affected me deeply on an emotional level.

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dave d

@RT34924333 03/01/2020

Bisbee '17 was a 2018 film directed by Robert Greene. Partially documentary and partially acted, it's based on a true story Western. It chronicles the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, 100 years later. This gets a little goofy as the actors often give backgrounds of themselves. Some may call this more of a reenactment, but it's small town theatre acting. There is a lot of information here, but I wanted to know in great detail about the deportations of Americans to other states. Can anyone imagine that this happened 100 years ago. Remarkable. There are bizarre musical numbers which are a gimmick. It's hard to know if it's the documentarians who are paying the actors or if it's the city. Most are locals, but there are a few "professionals" mixed in. It's just kinda lays there. Take it or leave it movie that should have been a lot better with a better narrative structure. Final Score: 6.1/10

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02/07/2020

Very repetitious. The people of Bisbee, AZ have mixed feelings about an illegal, forced emigration in 1917. Again and again and again. Okay, I got it after the first 15 minutes. I was hoping for more history and less current opinion. But then they found a way to get the same current opinion over and over and over.

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09/23/2019

Different times, only those living during this period know what really happened.

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10/15/2018

i thought it was one of the best movies I saw this year.

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10/08/2018

The movie is a pathetic attempt to justify rampant racism, rich privilege and environmental destruction in Arizona. The wobblies and abused mine workers are vilified, not explained. This is not a documentary, it is blatant propaganda by a rich family trying to justify past atrocities..

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10/06/2018

First the story itself is fascinating—a town’s secret vigilante deportation? The mix of traditional documentary and re-enactment of a shocking event by modern day locals enables us to see residents come to terms with the history of the town that can’t help remind us of current political divisions. The filmmaker takes great care to not chose sides while allowing the town to wrestle with the ghosts of the past. Highly recommend.

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Robert Greene

Director

Robert Greene

Writer

Susan Bedusa

Producer

Bennett Elliott

Producer

Douglas Tirola

Producer

Dan Cogan

Executive Producer

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Bisbee '17: Trailer 1

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Synopsis

Locals stage re-creations of the town's controversial past.

Director: Robert Greene
Producer: Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott, Douglas Tirola
Screenwriter: Robert Greene
Distributor: 4th Row Films
Production Co: Doc Society
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Sep 5, 2018, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 24, 2019
Box Office (Gross USA): $114.6K
Runtime: 2h 4m

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