The same day I watched Riotsville, USA, the fascists came to town.

I spent the morning of January 14^th, 2023 (as did many others) demonstrating outside of the Peterborough Public Library in support of their Drag Story Hour, hosted by local drag queen Betty Baker. All the while, on the opposite side of the street, far-right nationalists, Christofascists and their ilk wove banners, hefted crosses, and yelled hate screed through megaphones. 

A sad fact about our city (and our society at large) is that fascism here proves a rather endemic disease. This fact has only become more apparent over the course of the still-ongoing pandemic, though with the disbandment of disease-control measures by any level of government, the fascists instead have turned their gaze towards the transgender community, specifically targeting queer and gender-non conforming youth. I’ve been involved in anti-fascist organizing of some form or another since almost as long as I’ve been able to think critically about politics. If there’s one thing I’ve noted during that five-some year time, it’s that things have without a doubt gotten worse. Probably the most evident symptom comes in the form of the police.

Riotsville, USA (2022)—so dubbed after the tongue-in-cheek name of a U.S. Military model village used for training riot police—recounts, through archive footage, the emergence of the modern militarized police force. The film serves as a compelling snapshot of the transition from a twentieth-century model of discipline to the late-capitalist model of direct control (yes, I’ve been reading Mark Fisher for an upcoming article).

Highly stylistic, with prolific long takes and limited voiceover, the film is a definitive example of the poetic documentary mode, a veritable tone poem constructed of chemical celluloid and packing all the punch of a tear gas canister. At ninety minutes, Riotsville is not too demanding of its viewer’s time, though some might find the deliberate slow burn of its pace grating. Personally, I adore a simmering and atmospheric outing, and the subtler tendencies of Riotsville’s technical construction provide ample opportunities for introspection.

The concluding note: “This film was made between 2015 and 2021,” serves a muted reminder of the renewed prevalence of police brutality seen over the last several years, as law enforcement continues to be permitted to exact more direct, decisive, and disproportionate appeasement measures. With 2020 having seen a resurgence of civil disobedience in cities like Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Portland in response to widespread anti-Black violence by American police, the documentary proves once again timely in a rather circular fashion.

Despite its overtly American framing, to the conscientious contemporary Canadian viewer, Riotsville proves equally damning of a domestic failing of our own. Canada has yet to reckon with its own history of colonial violence, likewise expressed through similar state-sanctioned brutality such as the Oka crisis and the continued occupation of sovereign Wet’suwet’en traditional territory. Equally, considering the occupation less than one year ago of Canada’s national capital by self-declared far-right insurrections, Riotsville’s highlighting of the overtly anti-Black edge of American policing leads viewers to reflect on the Canadian State’s similar systemic mistreatment of the indigenous peoples living within its colonial borders.

While marching to Parliament Hill at Climate Strike 2019, a friend of mine punched a cop. Or at least, he tried to. Nothing came of it—the stocky officer easily deflected the blow and shoved the lanky, seventeen-year-old anemic anarchist off of him—though the episode sticks with me to this day. The police are the most overt expression of the state apparatus, and resentment for them abounds within the political left. Nonetheless, they’re continually provided more power and armaments, all of which they use year after year to further enact arbitrary subjugation of those they’re supposed to protect. If anything though, the scary thing about Riotsville, USA, is that it demonstrates we’ve not come very far.

‍The 2023 ReFrame Festival runs from January 26th-February 3rd. A list of films, tickets to events and screenings, and more information can be found on the Festival Website.