A Binding Truth

Woehrle rides a whirlwind of subject matter with impressive mastery. She continues the maverick tradition of indie documentaries where you never know what will happen next. Movies like this are the reason the documentary format is red hot right now. Kirkpatrick expresses his own surprise in the opening over how his sports story morphed into a civil rights story before finally blooming into a dark study of the enslavement of humans in a community. There are revelations galore as the participants bravely face this horrible past.

Speaking openly about the unspoken is what it is all about here. In one sequence, De spends the night in some historic slave quarters to get a taste of what being owned was like then. We also found out that children under ten were purchased as laborers and that it was understood you could rape your own property. Confronting these ungodly aspects of Charlotte’s history also helps correct the course in light of the city’s more recent race troubles. The cooperation and genuine love captured reflect what recordings of Jimmy Lee’s mother say about integration being a divine act in order to force people to love one another. All of this is woven together seamlessly thanks to the fancy fingers of editor Donna Marino.

“…another great example of the power of the sports documentary…”

One of the topics highlighted was the literal destruction of the black community in Charlotte beneath bulldozers of urban renewal. Second Ward High School was leveled to the ground in 1970, with only its gym left standing. Successful black-owned businesses and thriving neighborhoods were wiped out and built over. So when Jimmy Lee is showing his children and grandchildren where he grew up, Woehrle does these gorgeous superimpositions of black and white pictures of the old buildings on the modern scenery. This has an impact that lands in your guts and stays there.

A Binding Truth is also another great example of the power of the sports documentary as a spyglass on racial injustice. It joins the recent Black Ice about the Canadian Black Hockey League as proof that discussions of race framed through sport help the medicine go down. Is it due to the natural endorphins sports released that allow an average audience to face the ugliness that was and still is? Or is right and wrong clearer when presented in the sports arena? In the end, it doesn’t matter, as Woehrle and company get us somewhere that hasn’t been filmed yet. Expect both jocks and hippies to be thrilled, as there is plenty for every taste here. A Binding Truth shows the pulsating connections that run throughout humanity and hopes we all work it out for real.