While the cultural battle continues to rage in the United States, a documentary co-produced by Arte offers an immersion in a local election in Elizabethtown, in the heart of this deep America which is tearing itself apart. Interviewed Monday by RTS, its director Auberi Edler expressed her concern for the future of the country.
Like many others, the small town of Elizabethtown, a rural community of 12,000 people in Pennsylvania, has in recent years been the scene of bitter battles between ultraconservative supporters of Donald Trump and their adversaries, from moderate Republicans to Democrats. .
It is in this locality that the Frenchwoman Auberi Edler decided to take her camera for six months in 2023, offering a striking insight into the campaign for the election of the School Commission, the body which controls the city’s public schools . A little over a year before the re-election of Donald Trump, we follow a fierce battle on the level of values between fundamentalist Christians and their Democratic adversaries, supported by certain Republicans.
“A Civil War, Elizabethtown, USA” received the best achievement award at the prestigious Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA).
“Laminate from the bottom”
“I wanted to allow Europeans to understand how an election took place, even one as local as that of a school board. Show the depth of the divisions which are now fracturing the country, and which will fracture it for a long time,” she said. explained Monday in the RTS show Tout un monde. “And then also show what are the areas of attack of the administration which will be put in place in a few days, that is to say education, culture and gender.”
For her, following this school election made it possible to illustrate these different themes, but also to highlight two essential components of the political battle taking place in the United States: education and the battle at the local level. “Tackling public education means transforming the future of the country. So I think this battle is crucial,” she believes.
Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly difficult for moderate currents to exist locally in very conservative regions. “Trump’s idea, after the failure of the assault on the Capitol, was to crush from below. Invest the most ordinary structures at the local level, such as a school board or a local chapter of the Republican Party, to then set up all the instances”, explains Auberi Adler.
“Moderate Republicans were gradually ousted from local committees, and therefore were not even invested at the time of the campaign. And when you go door to door, if you explain that you are not invested, you a priori lose the vote of your interlocutors.”
A very deep hatred
If the interactions captured by her camera remain civilized, the director only sees “facade” to preserve a semblance of living together. “We are in a small town, there are only two main streets in the center, these are neighbors who see each other every day, who meet at the supermarket. So there is an obligation of politeness, if I dare say,” she explains.
“But the hatred is very deep on both sides. What was said, the invectives, the slander, these fights which are now taking place on social networks, all of that leaves its traces,” she continues. “In reality, these people are no longer able to live together at all. At the school board, we see them sitting side by side, they are obliged to put up with each other. But the conversation no longer takes place and it no longer takes place. won’t happen for a long time, I think.”
These people live in terror for their children, because the first targets will be gay, bi or trans children, anyone who does not fit the line imposed by the fundamentalists.
More than anything else, the documentary therefore questions the possibility of renewing the dialogue. “That’s the whole question of the next four years,” warns Auberi Edler. “Since the end of this long filming, Trump’s victory has finished dividing, fracturing the community of Elizabethtown. Obviously, some on the far right have become extremely arrogant, because they have power at the school and they will soon have it at the national level.”
Two separate projections
Opposite, “a fraction of the Democratic Party has become extremely radicalized, because [elle craint que] the first targets will be gay, bi or trans children, anyone who does not fall into the line imposed by the fundamentalists. These people live in terror for their children, for what will happen at school and perhaps elsewhere in town,” she continues. “I don’t see today how these two communities would be able to sit around a table and chat.”
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Moreover, specifies the journalist, while it is customary to organize a screening of the film for those who participated, it is now impossible to bring them all together in the same room. “We have to find a way to organize two separate screenings on the same day, at the same time,” she laments.
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