Monday, April 29, 2024

Knock Down the House Review: A Reminder That AOCs Triumph Almost Wasnt

knock down the house

The newly minted congresswoman first realizes she has won upon hearing a ruckus while outside the bar where her victory party will be held, and so the shot frantically follows her as she runs inside before cutting to a second camera catching her entry from the front. We share in the overwhelming energy of the room, getting a vicarious taste of the triumph. Nearly everyone who watches the news has seen by now the electric moment captured by news cameras when Ocasio-Cortez realizes, with elated shock, that she’s won the primary. It might be strange to come away from a documentary about Ocasio-Cortez with the fact that she is not extraordinary, but I think she would understand what I mean. ” Ocasio-Cortez says in front of the camera, long before she even gets on the ballot in April 2018. Because the alternative is no one.” It’s an unadorned distillation of the progressive movement’s people-powered momentum post-Trump, whose defeat of the Democratic Party ignited a battle for its soul, one that longtime activists and organizers were ready to wage.

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Vilela also recalled in an interview with HuffPost “the dismissiveness [toward] women, especially in politics” that she experienced. She also chose them because she wanted to document candidates who were running for deeply personal reasons ― partially because their “charismatic presence” would make for a compelling film but also because of logistical reasons. Naturally, Knock Down the House was received with rapturous applause at its premiere at Sundance, where the choir was ready to hear its sermon with ecstatic delight. But such is the seductive emotional power of the film, so sympathetic are its subjects, that it’s hard to imagine it won’t melt at least a few conservative hearts. They say Democrats have to fall in love with their candidates.

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knock down the house

But the pendulum swings back, and two years later a young bartender from the Bronx pulled her own upset, using nothing but wit, will, knowledge, perseverance and confidence, and did it with practically no money. The victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the entrenched political “boss” Joe Crowley isn’t quite winning the presidency, but Rachel Lears’ documentary Knock Down The House rolls up its sleeves to show just how extraordinary her campaign was. Because the result, documentary Knock Down the House, is a pretty extraordinary cinematic artifact. It’s not just that it takes a snapshot of the left’s fastest-rising star at the moment she went interstellar.

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Nothing is given to us—even now Ocasio-Cortez is the target of establishment fundraising campaigns from both sides of the aisle to get her out of office—so everything, then, is there for the taking, if only we try. Her words offer a pragmatic kind of hope, moving in its simple premise that the oppression of the status quo automatically ordains the few who are willing to challenge it with purpose. If Americans, down on their luck in a country ruled by wealth, are looking for a champion, they have it. But Lears started filming AOC before she was AOC, and in the context of those other candidates who ran people-funded campaigns like her—and lost.

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The approach allows the women’s messages to take centerstage and show their determination; Bush has already filed to run again in 2020. And no one can contextualize Ocasio-Cortez better than Ocasio-Cortez. Ticking off all the reasons why no Democrat dared to oppose Crowley in the primaries in 14 years, she concludes that the only possible challenger who could defeat him is “an insurgent outsider candidate that’s a woman of color from the Bronx.” Then she grins. “This is not about electing me to Congress,” says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just before her debate versus longstanding New York Rep. Joe Crowley. The style of Lears’s on-the-fly handheld camerawork reinforces her assumed position as embedded reporter, rather than the well-trained film-maker she is. The scene in which Ocasio-Cortez receives the news that she has beaten the odds to win her district is the kind of footage any documentarian would kill for, and yet Lears must be strategic about how she shoots it.

Then trailing far behind in the polls, few expected her to win the race for New York's 14th district and unseat incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, who had served for two decades and hadn't faced a primary challenger in 14 years. Reader funding is one of the key ways we support our newsroom. Would you consider making a donation to help fund our news during this critical time? HuffPost believes news should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it. Any contribution you can make — even as little as $2 — goes directly toward supporting the impactful journalism that we will continue to produce this year. Even in its depiction of loss, “Knock Down the House” is quietly charting a new path for political documentaries by showing moments of vulnerability in women, as Vilela reflected.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said his client’s actions were “run-of-the-mill” business. Nondisclosure agreements are common among the wealthy and famous, he said, and influencing an election is no crime. The week also brought more accusations that Mr. Trump had violated a gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors. Justice Juan M. Merchan has not ruled on the prosecution’s request to hold Mr. Trump in contempt, and said he would hold another hearing next Thursday to address allegations of new violations. The Town of Islip in March granted owner Miguel Garzon authorization to demolish the existing building, despite opposition from local historians who still hope to find a last-minute savior to buy or relocate the building. The Brentwood Historical Society is working on a digital replica of a historic Brentwood home, even as the Town of Islip has given its owner permission to demolish the decaying mid-19th century structure to build an office on the site.

Further west, we meet Amy Vilela, a chief financial officer in Nevada taking on Steven Horsford, a machine politician backed by the usual PAC-money interests. Vilela, on the other hand, is inspired to run by the tragic death of her daughter, who passed away soon after a hospital refused to treat her when she couldn’t provide proof of insurance. A number of candidates that have made that pledge are actually finding loopholes and ways to take some of that funding anyway. But the fact that they're having to answer that question and talk about what accountability to voters looks like, I think that's very important.

Sundance Film Review: ‘Knock Down the House’

Lears follows AOC and three other insurgent, nothing-to-lose female candidates “primary”-ing longtime incumbents from the left. (Her daughter passed away after being refused treatment for not having the right insurance.) All four were “selected” (though it’s a little fuzzy how) by the groups Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress as part of a push for diversity in political representation. Ocasio-Cortez and three other women who challenged congressional incumbents in the 2018 midterm elections — Cori Bush, Paula Jean Swearengin and Amy Vilela — were among the scores of new candidates who entered politics after the 2016 elections.

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Posted: Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:37:18 GMT [source]

Naturally, the tale has since been turned into a series on Netflix. Ms. Graff continued her service during his 2016 presidential campaign and after Mr. Trump moved into the White House. Ms. Graff heard about a job opening in 1987 at the Trump Organization and cold-called to get the position. Six years later, Ms. Graff’s wedding announcement was published in The New York Times. She married Lucius Joseph Riccio, the city’s commissioner of transportation, in a wedding officiated by Mayor David N. Dinkins. Ms. McDougal is a former Playboy model who has claimed to have had sex with Mr. Trump.

Sign up for CNBC's new online course How to Earn Passive Income Online to learn about common passive income streams, tips to get started and real-life success stories. Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.

He called Mr. Cohen, who spent time in prison on charges stemming from the matter, a criminal who “can’t be trusted.” He said Stormy Daniels was “biased” and had profited from her story. Prosecutors sketched a secret scheme to influence the 2016 election. They said Mr. Trump directed men in his inner circle to suppress negative stories about him and then agreed to cover up the payment to Ms. Daniels after taking the White House. Preservation Long Island listed the Shutt House among seven Long Island properties on a list of endangered historic places this December, a move that Cubie, preservation and advocacy director at the nonprofit, said sometimes helps save historic sites. Froebel has created 3D models of historic Long Island structures before, including a cottage from Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Brentwood and a Flanders boarding house. "Imagine having a house back in the day and you could play music everywhere in it from a record player," he says.

About two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, he wired the payment to Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Ms. Daniels. The third witness in the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump is Gary Farro, a banker who is testifying on Friday about his work with Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer on a $130,000 hush-money deal in 2016. Trump looks utterly spent as he rises at the end of the long first week of testimony in his criminal trial.

knock down the house

It also limns, both through AOC’s story and those of the other three progressive challengers tracked here — Cori Bush, Amy Vilela and Paula Jean Swearengin — an extraordinary juncture in American politics when the landscape terraformed in a way that we still haven’t finished mapping. Ocasio-Cortez’s story became the movie’s spine, in part because the couple was also based in New York — their shoestring budget didn’t allow them to travel to the other candidates as much. (They filmed for a year before getting outside financing, via Kickstarter; only after Ocasio-Cortez won her primary in June 2018 did they feel confident about securing industry backing.) Their son, now 3, also accompanied them on the road. “We didn’t have child care, so that was my job,” Blotnick, 39, said. The women’s stories emerge piecemeal in “Knock Down the House,” which follows them on the campaign trail up to election night and, in one case, beyond. Some are more sharply delineated — what makes them run and why — than others.

Their geographic diversity, gender and race — in what became a historic midterm for women and people of color — was meant to illustrate “a group that would make a national movement,” Lears said. Lears selected four subjects for the feature that would ultimately blossom into her film Knock Down the House, premiering on Netflix this week. She trained her lens on Cori Bush, a woman of color who thought Missouri’s seats in the House of Representatives should reflect its diverse populace. She followed Nevada’s Amy Vilela on her tireless crusade to overhaul healthcare after insurance complications resulted in the death of her daughter.

Learn how to host a digital screening of Knock Down The House with the resources below. Once you register your event, our team will be there to help you plan it every step of the way. A galvanizing glimpse behind the scenes of a pivotal election, Knock Down the House should prove engrossing for viewers of all political persuasions.

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