The 15th annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival treated a receptive and engaged audience to the Kirby Dick retrospective, highlighting six films from the inimitable director spanning 2002-2015. His ambitious career launched in 1982, and his films became increasingly political in their reach starting with his 2004 film, Twist of Faith; an expose into the life of a young man preyed on by priests in the Catholic Church. Known for shining a light on massive, sprawling stories with meager coverage, Dick’s attacks on social injustices sets him apart. His documentaries are structured through a nonpartisan yet critical lens, successfully handing out walloping, undeniable evidence that has compelled policymakers to act.
And when does policy need to act?
Policy needs to act when prominent players in the game of socialization betray trust, prey on the vulnerable, violate their own, and walk in broad daylight licking their rotten, corrosive chops. It needs to act when the molestation of our democracy is Mordor descended. Dick’s body of work, when seen all at once, calls to mind, in some ways, the vulnerable, empty, stunned grief of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, when there are no words, when all the birds can say in response to a massacre are things like "Poo-tee-weet.”
Policy needs to act when women and men are raped and assaulted in all branches of the military with no recourse for justice. When young altar boys whose trust in the Catholic Church is decimated. When college-aged women are attacked at the place where they should feel safest and are let down by their administrators, as seen in The Hunting Ground. When gay citizens are penalized by the hypocrisy of closeted gay politicians voting in favor of their own self-hatred, covered in Outrage. Policies across the board have failed to adequately respond, and thus these populations are intimately familiar with the lack of forward momentum to snuff out the inertia of their abuse.
It’s Dick’s work that has been a driver in forcing policy’s hand to act regarding this abuse. While promoting the accolades and the pride that come with dedicating one’s life to the United States military, the filmmaker does not avert his eyes to statistics that reveal regular patterns of negligence and incompetence from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and thus any audience of The Invisible War bears witness to this broken justice system. The film raises questions about why, exactly, it takes a year and a half to investigate a rape and/or assault case. It questions the justification and process behind the VA’s consistent denial of medical coverage to rape victims. It reveals the belligerence in rape being listed as an occupational hazard of military life and so, sorry, no protection. This in conjunction with statistics that 15% of incoming military recruits have been charged with rape or attempted rape. Not to mention that so-called preventive measures such as the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SARP) program are a ill-equipped, poorly researched, and heavy-handed in their victim-blaming advertising. Woman after woman describe what HE did to violate the individual and collective SHE. This singular cacophony of HE is a surging rip current of toxic masculinity. What makes this toxicity even more blistering for many women, is less the rape and assault and more the collusion of their male commanders and peers allowing these violations to happen.
The selection in this retrospective conjures up Dick’s films as a White Wizard of sorts, shining light on what’s presented as the unbearable, unending squelch and stench of shit plaguing trusted U.S. institutions. His films stand out in that they set the foundation for achieving some justice for the groups represented. The road to accountability is still being travelled, but Dick’s rigorous investigations and delivery created a path where there was none before. Present for each screening’s Q&A, Dick discussed the impact of The Invisible War, citing the 35 reforms Senator Kirsten Gillibrand spearheaded, making the ending of rape in the military her signature issue after seeing the film. Another resource the public can utilize in making their voices heard, is engaging with the organization Protect Our Defenders, dedicated to ending the epidemic of military rape and abuse. It’s worth noting too, that the film did not fall on deaf military ears, as the Army SHARP (Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention) Program purchased copies of The Invisible War to be screened during their training.
Unmasking toxic masculinity through a different lens, in Outrage, Dick takes the audience on a tour that contextualizes the plight of the gay American man in his relationship to himself as a politician and to his constituents--particularly when his voting records are contradictory to a his life. Seen is the perspective of gay reporters outing closeted politicians, not as a way to intrude upon privacy, but to report on hypocrisy and illuminate the damage done by anti-gay legislation. Prominent in the picture are examples from former Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig, arrested in 2007 for lewd bathroom conduct. As Craig makes clear he is not gay, evidence of homosexual activity and his voting record against gays is stamped on the big screen. Outrage deftly navigates the perspectives of different players in what can really only be called a cruel game, one that fields players into scores of self-flagellation and repression. American playwright and activist Larry Kramer outlines his disgust with the hypocrisy, proclaiming that “Activism IS about anger, it is responding to something you know is wrong.”
If one peers below the surface of Dick’s impactful political films: Outrage, The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground, Twist of Faith, and This Film is Not Yet Rated, Dick’s philosophical leanings emerge through the lens of Derrida, the least political film of the six, where one might truly grasp Dick's impetus for attacking these issues and industries. Derrida, a dream-like reverie swimming around the thoughts and movements of renowned French deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida, illuminates the concept of the French word l’avenir, noting the difference between a future that is predictable, and l’avenir, a “future to come whose arrival is totally unexpected.” The strength and immeasurable power of Dick’s work, alongside the brilliant Amy Ziering, his long-time co-director, has been and continues to be in his redirection of the future. His films illuminate the consequences of futures never expected by those betrayed. It’s not so much that he swings the pendulum of injustice back to justice, but rather uproots the pendulum’s foundation, laying waste to its rotting structure and facilitating the dawn of a new day.