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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
(click on broll or dschwartz for all his posts)
Hard Times: Lost on Long Island
"Hard Times: Lost on Long Island" tells the story of four families who live – well, you know where they live – and are dealing with long-term unemployment related to "The (totally predictable, totally preventable) Great Recession of 2008".
The film follows the families for six months as they speak of their happy, hopeful pasts; their dire presents; and their uncertain futures. For those of us who know about unemployment in the United States only as statistics reported on the news or brandished on political campaign advertisements, producer/director Marc Levin's film is an emotional confrontation with a representative microcosm of the human tragedy born of this recession.
The feeling response to tragedy is, in part, ineffable. But, of course, there are the simple words – sadness, horror, pain, frustration, futility and fear (This can happen/is happening to me.). In its 53 short minutes Levin's film evokes those feelings, deeply. He does include the aforementioned sobering unemployment statistics – as well as the mean-spirited right-wing rhetoric about unemployment, blaming, as usual, the victims.
The implied message – We are not taking care of ourselves. – is echoed by countless documentary films past, present, and, of course, more to come.