With the U.S. election taking place on November 5, Le Cinéma Club has decided to dedicate its next four weeks of programming to films that contextualize this political moment. The Electoral Blues series addresses momentous — and worrisome — facets of contemporary American life, from the rise of far-right militias to the widespread distrust in journalists and authority figures. Our selection of films includes works by auteurs such as Robert Kramer and Roberto Minervini, as well as media artists like Brian Springer and Soda Jerk. 

The Italian-born documentarian (and long-time Texas resident) Roberto Minervini’s The Other Side (2015) acts as the perfect introduction to understand some of the most dramatic shifts in recent electoral history. Documenting the lives of the residents of West Monroe, Louisiana, Minervini shows how America’s forgotten communities — disenfranchised citizens, drug addicts, and veterans — have adopted radical far-right politics because their needs as citizens have gone largely ignored by recent administrations. As a work of extreme foresight made ahead of Trump’s 2016 election, The Other Side reflects Minervini’s unique ability to have his finger on the pulse when it comes to American politics, something that his new film — the Civil War drama The Damned, which makes it US Premiere at NYFF next week as part of the Currents program — promises to continue exploring.

Minervini began filming The Other Side after meeting Todd Trichell’s (the father of a young rodeo rider in his previous film, Stop Pounding the Heart) estranged family in North Louisiana. What began as a simple look at Trichell’s past soon became a sprawling investigation into one of the U.S.’s most impoverished states and how its citizens have formed bonds around their mutual hatred toward the political institutions that shunned them, as well as the many hardships afflicting their communities. 

“Donald Trump’s victory did not come as a surprise to me. If anything, I expected him to win by a larger margin than he actually did. For the past eight years of the Obama administration, I have been closely observing the germination and proliferation of right-wing grassroots movements in America. As I found myself based in the South — in Houston, Texas, of all places, for reasons beyond my control — I was given the opportunity to come in contact with an entirely different face of America, far from the liberal elite milieu of New York City.” ROBERTO MINERVINI

The relations of power and intimacy that Minervini works with as a filmmaker have helped him develop a style “in the limbo between documentary and fiction.” For him, the decision to blend these approaches came about as a means of both evading self-censorship as it manifests itself in conventional documentaries and holding himself accountable when representing people at their most vulnerable. Minervini’s distinct style takes from real-life, but mixes people and scenes in such a way that he becomes responsible for the resultant patchwork of characters and stories. Through this process, he also magnifies many of the anxieties that dictate modern life in the US, showing the viewer the country as it really is: a series of alarming contradictions.

Roberto Minervini was born in Fermo, Italy, in 1970. After obtaining a degree in Economics and Commerce from the University of Ancona in Italy and a doctorate in the History of Cinema from the Autonomous University of Madrid, he moved to New York and earned an MA in Media Studies from The New School. He began making films in 2005 and slowly developed a singular approach to filmmaking that married fiction and nonfiction together. His 2011 film about a family of goat farmers, Stop the Pounding Heart, earned him a Special Jury Prize at the Torino Film Festival, in addition to several accolades from across the globe. The Other Side was similarly lauded after premiering in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. And his latest film, The Damned, won him a Best Director Award in Un Certain Regard this year.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to series co-programmer Courtney Muller.