What a year to turn camera on U. S.
Alexandra Pelosi uses the word ironic a lot these days. It beats the other term she might feel disposed to: despair.
The veteran documentary filmmaker, whose latest work “American Selfie: One Nation Shoots Itself” arrives on Showtime on Friday, Oct. 23, set out in the late summer of 2019 to cover an event each month in different parts of the country that would check the attitudes of a variety of citizens as this election year unfolded.
History, as we all know, soon went in unpredictable directions. But Pelosi — the San Franciscoraised daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose films have covered several presidential campaigns, grassroots political movements and 21st century cultural shifts — was not entirely caught offguard by the coronavirus pandemic and resurgence of Black Lives
Matter demonstrations.
“When I started making the film, the whole intention was to make an artifact of 2020,” Pelosi told The Chronicle by phone from her home in New York’s Greenwich Village. “The idea was to take the temperature of how America felt, whatever that would be, wherever that took me.”
“American Selfie” begins jauntily enough, with young women at Chicago’s “Cloud Gate” sculpture happily demonstrating the best way to pose for their camera phones, followed by interviews outside a Manhattan Apple Store with people in line to get the new iPhone 11 in September 2019. The mood shifts, however, as in subsequent months Pelosi visits a Minnesota street clash outside a Trump rally, the anniversary of the El Paso Walmart massacre, gun rights demonstrations in Virginia’s capital and other polarizing gatherings.
Then came COVID19 and George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police.
“Ironically, the one thing that blew it all up was the 17yearold girl with her iPhone,” the documentarian noted. “To me, the Oscar for the best documentary film of 2020 goes to Darnella Frazier, the girl who filmed George Floyd’s murder, because she sparked a revolution.
“When I was filming those people lining up at the Apple Store, yes, I was intentionally mocking the narcissist cuties that were getting new iPhones to take pictures of their perfect selves to post on their social media feeds. But you can’t make fun of iPhones anymore because that little camera was fueling the revolution.”
Though she’s quick to make fun of the fact that she’s resided for all of her 50 years in the liberal bubbles of San Francisco and New York, Pelosi points out that she works in America. Most of her films are primarily set in the heartland, and like “American Selfie” include many rightleaning voices.
“Growing up in San Francisco taught me to be liberal and openminded,” she said. “But that means open to all opinions, not just liberal opinions.”
Her biggest takeaway from making the film, both before and after everything seemed to go sideways in March?
“Regardless of who you’re going to vote for, universally, everybody said social media is destroying the public conversation,” Pelosi observed. “People who were voting for Donald Trump would say to me, ‘ This is not my America. I feel like the conversation has gotten so hateful online.’ I had plenty of conversations with people who got along fine in their life, but if they were on social media would be pitted against each other as enemies.”
One of her teenage sons, both of whom she fears are getting warped forever by social media, did point out a funny coincidence, though: the iPhone 12 is coming out the same day “American Selfie” premieres.
“I thought that was just beautiful irony,” she said. “My son said to me, ‘ Are you going to get an iPhone 12?’ I said, ‘ Did you learn nothing in the last year?’ ”
When asked if she was going to go film the Apple’s pandemic release Friday, Pelosi said perhaps for a potential “American Selfie 2.0.”
“I’ll go check it out,” she said. “Sociologically, I’m intrigued to see how they’re gonna keep the masses away from their beloved new iPhone.”
In the meantime, Pelosi continues to shelter in place like much of the rest of America.
She and her children spent most of the COVID19 lockdown at her parents’ home in San Francisco, far from New York when it was ground zero at the start of the pandemic. She praised San Francisco’s early and relatively effective disease control measures. She also lauds the efforts of her 80yearold mother, the nation’s top elected Democrat, in these contentious two weeks before the presidential election.
“It’s about time everybody knew what a baller Nancy Pelosi is,” her daughter said. “I love seeing her put people in their place, set the world straight. For so long she was so polite, but now she’s unplugged and she’s just letting everybody know how she really feels. And that’s really refreshing.”
Somewhat ironic, too, considering how Alexandra Pelosi feels about her country at this point in history.
“It’s so hard not to be sad about America right now,” she said. “So we have to look for silver linings.”