There are many words to describe Kim A. Snyder’s festival documentary award winner The Librarians. Dystopian. Incendiary. Tragic. And many of these adjectives are used by the actual principal people in the film. The word I kept muttering to myself was urgent…. something librarian Audrey Wilson-Youngblood mentioned in the post film Q&A as she implored everyone to find out who their book loving city council members are since bills are being discussed in the political chambers of Texas this very second. These bills will devastate Texas libraries and only open the floodgates for further acts of censorship and God-fearing rhetoric to overtake our public spaces.
And that’s the single, powerful premise of the film as it follows several librarians around the country (but mostly centered here in Texas since this is where the infamous Krause list originated) as they become not only stewards of books, but often a minority voice for the opposition to far right speaking points and Moms For Liberty insanity.
Working from a treasure trove of online media, CCTV school board meeting footage, and talking head interviews, The Librarians looks at the issue from several angles. In addition to the librarians who are front and center, there are others whose voices must be heard, including one school board member who abandoned her quest after finding out some of the root causes of the bills. There’s a preacher whose calm but forceful voice is often a breath of reason after shouting matches at various meetings. And there’s people from all over the country who return home to speak on behalf of the benevolence and necessity of library books being available to everyone…. on every subject. Snyder melds all this together with ease.
The Librarians, most likely, won’t alter the attitude of those pushing to ban books, but for those of us that hold knowledge, inquisitive thoughts, and the basic right of every person to know about their history, race, or identity, The Librarians is essential viewing and one of the many vanguard explorations of our current social and political erosion.
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To Use a Mountain, a documentary by Casey Carter, also explores subject matter that will make your blood boil. In 1982, the Reagan Administration enacted the Nuclear Waste Removal Act that pinpointed 7 different locations around the country that would be evaluated for the deposit of waste material. Through actual U.S. documentation, interviews with people in each community, and an eye for the texture of the world set to be upended by the possibility of becoming a radioactive dumping ground, To Use a Mountain paints a powerful testimony.
Alternating between cold, calculated information (the graphic design of the documentation is spectacular) and passionate conversations with the people within each community, the film moves forward with an entropy that’s hard to shake. Ultimately, the sight chosen (no spoiler) gives the final third of the film a special thrust as the ideas of land ownership and civil protest becomes the central point. Not only does the government displace and dispose of people, but the almost mundane, analytical way they describe portions of this country are damning.
Through it all, director Carter maintains a beautiful point of view, training his camera lens on the long shadows of bodies against vacant buildings, the sun through blades of grass, and the sound of crunching rocks beneath feet. It’s as if the film is celebrating the natural wonders of the environments around us, which is a bracing juxtaposition since it’s a landscape once deemed irreplaceable by 10,000 years of atomic waste.
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In Yael Melamede’s Ada: My Mother the Architect, there’s a scene that describes the jarring difference between Jerusalem’s Supreme Court building and that of the United States. In the U.S., one enters amongst tall columns and a rotunda that creates a feeling of minimalism compared to one’s surroundings. In Jerusalem’s, co-designed by Ada Karmi, one walks up a narrow flight of concrete steps and into a foyer with windows where all of the Old City lies before them as if they’re a part of the justice process and the vestiges of their city are at hand. It’s a beautiful observation in a film full of them as daughter Yael turns the camera on her mother.
Coming from a long line of successful architects, Ada chooses to say little for the first half of the film. She eventually opens up to her daughter’s camera lens, but not before we get a sense of a woman who lives life just as orderly and self-contained as the straight lines on her drafting paper. There’s not a lot of history here, either personal or political. Ada mentions a few lines about the current political situation in Israel, but Ada: My Mother the Architect instead narrows its focus on one family, and more specifically, the history of them through the buildings their family has a great hand in giving birth to. It’s fascinating to watch how Ada uses light (and Yael films it) in her structures. It’s wonderful to see a woman of few words express so much in concrete and plaster. And it’s a very good film about the necessity of documenting the lives of those people around us before they’re gone.
The 2025 Dallas International Film Festival runs through Thursday May 1st. Information and tickets can be found at diffdallas.org
Dallas Film Now. 