Riotsville, USA

Synopsis

1968: Massive civil unrest, followed by a rare chance for justice. Riotsville, USA is the untold story of what we did instead. Told through a series of all-archival chapters chronicling forgotten and increasingly bizarre events, the film reveals the mechanism by which a nation declares war against its own.

Sierra Pettengill, Director

Sierra Pettengill is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker who works primarily with archival material. Her feature and short documentaries have screened at festivals including the Locarno Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, and in theaters around the world. She was a 2017/2018 Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow, a fellow at the MacDowell and Yaddo Artist colonies, and writes frequently about film for publications including frieze magazine and Film Comment.

Sara Archambault, Producer

Archambault is a creative producer dedicated to the craft of artful nonfiction storytelling. She has an extensive professional history in production, programming, and foundation work—including 10 years as Program Director at the LEF Foundation and 9 years as Head Programmer of award-winning documentary film series The DocYard. Past producing credits include Emmy-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade/dir. Katrina Browne (Sundance, POV 2008), Street Fighting Men/dir. Andrew James (IFFBoston 2017), award-winning short Community Patrol/dir. Andrew James (Big Sky, T/F 2018) and Truth or Consequences/dir. Hannah Jayanti (Rotterdam 2020). Sara's work has received support from Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, SFFILM, Catapult Film Fund, Hot Docs International Pitch Forum, Film Independent, Stella Artois/Women in Film Finishing Fund, and IFP Spotlight on Documentaries. She was a 2013 Sundance Producing Fellow, a 2020 Impact Partners Producing Fellow and received the 2020 Nonfiction Vanguard Award from SF DocFest.

Jamila Wignot, Producer

Wignot is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her directing work includes the The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (PBS), hosted by Henry Louis Gates and chronicling the five hundred year history of African Americans, the series won Peabody, Emmy, and NAACP awards; Town Hall, a feature-length co-production with ITVS and co-directed with Sierra Pettengill following Tea Party activists determined to unseat Barack Obama; and for PBS’s American Experience series, the Peabody Award-winning, Triangle Fire and Emmy-nominated Walt Whitman. Jamila’s producing credits include W. Kamau Bell’s Bring The Pain (A&E); Sundance Award-winning director Musa Syeed's narrative feature, A Stray (SXSW); Street Fighting Men, following Black Detroiters fighting for the city they love; and The Rehnquist Revolution, the fourth episode of WNET’s series The Supreme Court, which was an IDA Best Limited Series winner. She is currently directing the first feature-length documentary about the visionary choreographer Alvin Ailey.