Welcome to Riotsville, USA--a point in American history when the nation’s
rulers--politicians, bureaucrats, police--were faced with the mounting
militancy of the late-1960s, and did everything possible to win the war in
the streets. Using training footage of Army-built model towns called
“Riotsvilles” where military and police were trained to respond to civil
disorder, in addition to nationally broadcast news media, director Sierra
Pettengill connects the stagecraft of “law and order” to the real violence
of state practice. Recovering an obscured history whose effects have shaped
the present in ways both insidious and explosive, RIOTSVILLE, USA is a
poetic and furious reflection on the rebellions of the 1960s–and the
machine that worked to destroy them.
