Mondo Mondo

This month, at Anthology Film Archives, FILM COMMENT contributor Nick Pinkerton has programmed a variety of shockumentary-style works ranging from the notorious Mondo Cane (an Academy Award nominee, for Original Song) to Thierry Zéno’s Des Morts. Many of these films aim to shock and titillate, sometimes purporting to document actual deaths, but they become politically and culturally revealing texts. None of this problematic entertainment holds a candle, however, to the real-life horror that has become a fixture of 21st-century visual culture: recordings showing police brutality—grim evidence of actual violence that is used in calls for justice. In a wide-ranging discussion that moves from the cinema of taboo to the complexities of recordings of police violence, FC Digital Editor Violet Lucca spoke with Pinkerton, critic and programmer Ashley Clark, and New Yorker video producer (and former FC intern) Cassie da Costa.