Riotsville, USA

Using military training footage, Sierra Pettengill's archival documentary traces the origins of police militarisation in the US.

In the 1960s, in plywood model towns reminiscent of children’s play sets, American soldiers practised riot control. These “riotsvilles” replicated the average Main Street in an American town, complete with painted shop fronts and glass windows – there’s the appliance store next to the pawn shop, Joe’s Place on the corner. As civil resistance movements and anti-police demonstrations took hold of some of the country’s major cities over the decade, these forces rehearsed their unrestrained methods of containment and control in simulated environments before turning them on the real thing.

Through sole use of archive footage, documentarian Sierra Pettengill pieces together an illuminating history of this practice and the resulting effect on American civil rights movements in Riotsville, USA. Much of it was recorded by government or military officials and shows role-playing soldiers carrying out arrests, subduing crowds or seeking out hidden snipers while other officers watch along, clapping and cheering, from the bleachers.

They reenact riots that have already taken place, such as the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in 1965, distorting the narrative to one of army success and aggressive civilian blame. Given that much of the unrest across America in the 21st century was the result of a public refusal to accept police brutality against Black people, or the violence of white supremacy, it is significant that riotsvilles were constructed at military bases named after slave labour camps and Ku Klux Klan members.

The model towns are a compelling entry point in the film for what becomes a wider portrait of a dark watershed moment in American history, often lyrical in composition thanks to the dynamic voiceover by Charlene Modeste reading the work of writer Tobi Haslett. Central to Riotsville, USA’s explorations is the 1968 report by the Kerner Commission, a group established to investigate the causes of city riots by President Lyndon B Johnson, which acknowledged the root problems of racism, poverty and the lack of social support for Black communities instead of blaming these communities as aggressors as Johnson had hoped. Despite these findings, one of the government’s only implementations was the Commission’s misguided suggestion for greater police funding.

The content of all of this footage is key to Pettengill’s approach, but so is the very nature of how it is being employed. The filmmaker uses a blurring, almost pointillist visual effect, to obscure images of violence being enacted against protestors, and favours turning the military’s own documentation against itself over centering any footage that may have once been used to condemn those eager for justice.

The question of which narratives are given space to breathe is central to the film’s critique of this period: of the lies and myths it produced; and to the filmmaker’s rebellious reclamation of the truth. Haslett writes that the riotsvilles were the places, “where the state assembles its fears.” Pettengill’s film is an invigorating indictment of these constructed falsehoods – their fears, their riotsvilles, their scapegoats and their reasons for destruction.

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Published 29 Mar 2023

Tags: Riotsville, USA Sierra Pettengill