What Is Democracy?

What Is Democracy? is a 2018 documentary film written and directed by Astra Taylor. The documentary blends everyday experience and political theory to address questions viewed as central to democracy.[1] Interview subjects include academics, activists, politicians, refugees, trauma surgeons, students, and a barber.[1][2][3] While attempting to address the primary question, the documentary also looks at pressing issues of contemporary times, including the Greek debt crisis.[4] In the documentary, Taylor suggests that the current form of democracy is bad and people should seek a more direct democracy.[5] Reviewers noted that the documentary never directly answers the title question.[6]

What Is Democracy?
Directed byAstra Taylor
Produced by
  • Isaac Linares
  • Lea Marin
Written byAstra Taylor
Music byHeather McIntosh
CinematographyMaya Bankovic
Edited byRobert Kennedy
Production
company
National Film Board of Canada
Distributed by
Release date
  • June 9, 2018 (2018-06-09) (SIDF)
Running time
107 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

Summary
The Allegory of Good and Bad Government is used as a structuring device in the film.

At the beginning of the documentary, Astra Taylor discusses the meaning of The Allegory of Good and Bad Government with Silvia Federici in front of the fresco.[2][4] In this discussion, Federici highlights that early European democracies recognized that a democracy came with its winners and its losers. The discussion of the fresco is used throughout the film as a structuring device, alongside discussions in important sites of ancient Athens with Efimia Karakantza and quotations from Plato's Republic.[3][5][6]

Cornel West builds on the winners and losers that Federici discussed to observe the large number of people left out of modern democracies.[5] He also discusses when important change has come about as an undermining of majority-rule.[6] The documentary then turns to a local healthcare group, operating illegally, as an example of people organizing at a local level to solve problems that no one else is.[5]

Later, Wendy Brown discusses the divide in philosophy between philosophers who prioritize individual bodily security, such as Thomas Hobbes, and philosophers who believed in the possibility of collective action, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Brown also presents the question of how to "make a democratic people out of an undemocratic one" and describes it as "our problem today." The film, however, presents a perspective of the people interviewed as people who are civically-minded, even when democratic institutions do not work for them.[1]

Distribution

The film premiered in June 2018 at the Sheffield Doc/Fest,[7] and was screened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival[8] and the 2018 Vancouver International Film Festival.[9]

It was released commercially on January 16, 2019.[10]

Critical reception

What Is Democracy? has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes's Tomatometer and score of 71 from Metacritic.[10][11] For the Los Angeles Times, Gary Goldstein viewed the film as a "crucial first step" in "surveying anew where democracy stands — and falls — in our present universe."[2] John Defore reviewed the film for The Hollywood Reporter, finding it to be "unfocused" and "scattered", but nonetheless "consistently engaging".[4] Ben Kenigsberg of The New York Times reviewed the film, saying, "Yet the movie has a tendency to take arguments to overbroad ends (should grade school be a democracy?) and is inevitably unwieldy. It's easy to imagine a more cogent film that weighted either philosophy or reportage more heavily."[6] Charlie Phillips awarded four stars to the film, when reviewing it for The Guardian, writing "An extended and good-looking essay, it serves as a sharp reminder to pay attention to politics and to remember that the personal and the local are political."[5]

The film received a Vancouver Film Critics Circle award nomination for Best Canadian Documentary at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2018.[12]

References
  1. Thomason, John (2019-01-15). "From Athens to North Carolina, Filmmaker Astra Taylor Asks: "What Is Democracy?"". The Intercept. Archived from the original on 2019-05-03. Retrieved 2019-05-03.
  2. Goldstein, Gary. "Review: Documentary asks 'What Is Democracy?'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2019-05-03. Retrieved 2019-05-03.
  3. Gessen, Masha (2019-01-18). "A New Film Offers a Multitude of Answers to the Question "What Is Democracy?"". The New Yorker (Serial). ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 2019-02-03. Retrieved 2019-05-03.
  4. DeFore, John (2019-01-16). "'What Is Democracy?': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 2019-05-03. Retrieved 2019-05-03.
  5. Phillips, Charlie (2018-06-11). "What Is Democracy? review – searing analysis of who's really in control". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2019-04-22. Retrieved 2019-05-03.
  6. Kenigsberg, Ben (2019-01-15). "'What Is Democracy?' Review: Going Back to Greece, Documentary Asks Who Rules". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2019-05-03. Retrieved 2019-05-03.
  7. Allan Hunter, "'What Is Democracy?': Sheffield Review". Screen Daily, June 9, 2018.
  8. Norman Wilner, "TIFF review: What Is Democracy?". Now, September 5, 2018.
  9. Dorothy Woodend, "The Tyee’s VIFF Riff: Ten Bite-Sized Film Reviews, Plus More Tomorrow". The Tyee, September 20, 2018.
  10. "What Is Democracy?". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 2019-01-16. Retrieved 2019-07-18.
  11. "What Is Democracy? (2019)". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 2019-05-21. Retrieved 2019-07-18.
  12. Josh Cabrita, "2019 Nominees Announced". Vancouver Film Critics Circle, December 14, 2018.
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