You guys, I’m freaking out! Over this past week, I had the opportunity to go to not one, but TWO Sundance documentary screenings. This experience really gave me an appreciation for independent filmmaking, as well as so many important conversations that are happening in our world right now. I was given tickets by one of Sundance’s partners at the University of Utah (they give away so many tickets to those in the community) and I got to see two very different — but very interesting — documentaries!
Coded Bias
The first Sundance film I ever saw was a documentary called Coded Bias. This followed activists in the US and UK that are trying to ensure that artificial intelligence and algorithms that are used daily within the United States and around the world are fair. These systems are used to monitor and influence people’s behaviors and access to resources, sadly without many people even noticing. This documentary followed things such as AI not recognizing faces of color and women as effectively as lighter-skinned men, Big Brother style surveillance in the UK, US, and China, and how artificial intelligence screens out women from job interviews. Understanding how these algorithms work to marginalize minority communities not because they are explicitly told to by programmers, but instead because they are reflecting what they see in our world, was a very interesting revelation to me. The main takeaway from this film was that we need to fight for regulations around the algorithms that are used in our lives and that dictate people’s futures — and to do this we need to go right to the legislature.
The Fight
This documentary focused on four of the 147 legal challenges the ACLU has taken up against the Trump administration since its inception. This documentary started the night of the executive order for the Muslim ban when ACLU lawyers went to JFK airport as well as the Brooklyn state courthouse to fight for the right of people to lawfully enter the United States. The four cases that this documentary revolved around were the issues of reproductive rights, census questions, child separation, and the trans military ban. This looks into the various perspectives on the cases as well as the way the Trump administration tried to roadblock the ACLU. There was also a discussion around how ACLU defends the civil liberties of everyone, regardless of their political affiliation, which was very interesting to me. The main takeaway from this film was that there are people out there who are working to defend our civil liberties against an administration that is desperately trying to roll them back — and it’s often a thankless job.
If you have the chance, I’d recommend watching these documentaries! Sit back, grab some popcorn, and learn more about the world that we are living in.