Yance Ford’s Documentary ‘Power’ Trailer – About Policing in America
by Alex Billington
April 22, 2024
Source: YouTube
“Is your America and my America the same place? Has it ever been?” Netflix has revealed an official trailer for the documentary film titled Power, the latest from acclaimed doc filmmaker Yance Ford – who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2018. This premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and it also played at the CPH:DOX, Full Frame, and Hot Docs Film Festivals after the premiere. Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, it can be described by one word: power. The film offers a visceral, immersive journey to demonstrate how we’ve arrived at this moment in history, from the slave patrols of the 1700s and first publicly funded police departments of the 1800s to the uprisings of the 1960s & 2020s. Part essay, part interview, and part archival collage, Power uses historical materials to illustrate our contemporary realities, examining urgent questions about a growing and largely unchecked authority — who is policed, who is protected, who gets to decide, and why. A very intense and unsettling film – you’ll never be able to forget this one after watching it.
Here’s the official trailer (+ poster) for Yance Ford’s doc film Power, direct from Netflix’s YouTube:
In the United States of America, police have been granted extraordinary power over our individual lives. The police decide who is suspicious and who “fits the description.” They define the threats & decide how to respond. They demand obedience & carry the constant threat of violence. Thousands of these interactions play out in our cities & towns every day, according to real & perceived ideas of criminality and threats to social order—as decided by the police. Police make the abstract power of the state real. The film Power traces the accumulation of money, the consolidation of political power, and nearly unrestricted bipartisan support that has created the institution of policing as we know it. The film offers a visceral and immersive journey to demonstrate how we’ve arrived at this moment in history, from the slave patrols of the 1700s and the first publicly funded police departments of the 1800s, to the uprisings within the 1960s and 2020s.
Power is directed by acclaimed American indie doc filmmaker Yance Ford, director of the doc films Strong Island and The Color of Care previously, plus more work on a few other doc series. Produced by Yance Ford, Sweta Vohra, Jess Devaney, Netsanet Negussie. This initially premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Netflix will debut Yance Ford’s doc Power in select US theaters on May 10th, 2024, then streaming on Netflix worldwide starting May 17th coming soon. Highly recommend watching this doc film.