Reconstruction in documentary filmmaking is an eternally divisive technique: What some deem vivid and immediate, others find distancing and artificial, cloaking and blurring reality in the language of fiction cinema. Yet what if the reconstructions don’t just feature the documentary’s real-life subjects, but are expressly conceived and realized by them — not recreating reality so much as their lingering, haunted memories thereof? That’s a different proposition entirely, as is “Procession,” a risky, wrenching film in which celebrated docmaker Robert Greene frequently surrenders the directorial reins to his subjects and collaborators: six middle-aged, middle-American men living with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic Church priests and clergymen.
With each of these survivors given the means and support to make an interpretive short film rooted in their decades-old experience, “Procession” is intricately woven from the amateur filmmakers’ original work, alongside Greene’s patient, empathetic observation of their creative process.
With each of these survivors given the means and support to make an interpretive short film rooted in their decades-old experience, “Procession” is intricately woven from the amateur filmmakers’ original work, alongside Greene’s patient, empathetic observation of their creative process.
- 2/8/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
“Procession,” the Netflix documentary directed and edited by Robert Greene, focuses on six men who were abused by Catholic priests who are now trying to heal from their trauma. But instead recounting their stories in a standard talking-head style format, the men reenact their trauma through scripted short films as a form of drama therapy. It’s a unique form of therapy that Greene himself wasn’t sure they would all be on board with — and he was ready to wrap at any point in the process.
“The first meeting you see in the film when we’re talking through ideas, it’s not just like, ‘Hey, I have an idea and would like to do this.’ It was very much, ‘Should we do this?'” Greene tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: Film Directors panel (watch above). “We were prepared that that was going to be the...
“The first meeting you see in the film when we’re talking through ideas, it’s not just like, ‘Hey, I have an idea and would like to do this.’ It was very much, ‘Should we do this?'” Greene tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: Film Directors panel (watch above). “We were prepared that that was going to be the...
- 11/30/2021
- by Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
Robert Greene had an idea. The filmmaker behind such blurred-line experimental documentaries as Kate Plays Christine (2016) and Bisbee ’17 (2018) had seen a Kansas City press conference, in which an attorney named Rebecca Randles and her clients — four men who’d been abused by Catholic priests as kids — were demanding that the authorities in Kansas and Missouri begin criminal investigations into the incidents. Never mind the statute of limitations; after discovering that more than 230 priests “that we know of” in the area who’d been actively abusive over several decades, it was...
- 11/19/2021
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
There have been many movies about victims telling their stories for the first time, but “Procession” is one of the few to put survivors in control of the narrative itself. Filmmaker Robert Greene’s boundary-pushing documentary explores the experiences of six adult men who suffered sexual abuse from Catholic priests and clergy, but rather than simply asking them to recall their harrowing experiences, the movie finds them collaborating on reenactments as a form of drama therapy.
This risky gamble tracks with Greene’s other experimental approaches to teasing out the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, but it also introduces a more holistic qualify to the approach. The six victims at the center of “Procession” — Joe Eldred, Mike Foreman, Ed Gavagan, Dan Laurine, Michael Sandridge, and Tom Viviano — work together throughout the movie to develop scenes that capture the power dynamic behind the abuse they suffered. They also revisit locations where...
This risky gamble tracks with Greene’s other experimental approaches to teasing out the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, but it also introduces a more holistic qualify to the approach. The six victims at the center of “Procession” — Joe Eldred, Mike Foreman, Ed Gavagan, Dan Laurine, Michael Sandridge, and Tom Viviano — work together throughout the movie to develop scenes that capture the power dynamic behind the abuse they suffered. They also revisit locations where...
- 11/15/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Robert Greene’s documentary follows the stories of six men abused as children by Catholic priests in Kansas City with remarkable care and creativity
“I can’t risk not being believed and people thinking I’m exploiting what happened to me,” says Ed Gavagan, a survivor of child sexual abuse and one of the participants in this remarkable documentary. He is one of six adult men who work with director Robert Greene, their lawyer Rebecca Randles, child actor Terrick Trobough and drama therapist Monica Phinney to make a film about their experiences of abuse by Catholic priests in their home town of Kansas City. What could have been a disaster in the hands of a less sensitive film-maker ends up an extraordinary feat of care, collaboration and creativity.
Greene, who also directed innovative nonfiction projects Kate Plays Christine and Bisbee ’17, learned of the men via a TV press conference. Given...
“I can’t risk not being believed and people thinking I’m exploiting what happened to me,” says Ed Gavagan, a survivor of child sexual abuse and one of the participants in this remarkable documentary. He is one of six adult men who work with director Robert Greene, their lawyer Rebecca Randles, child actor Terrick Trobough and drama therapist Monica Phinney to make a film about their experiences of abuse by Catholic priests in their home town of Kansas City. What could have been a disaster in the hands of a less sensitive film-maker ends up an extraordinary feat of care, collaboration and creativity.
Greene, who also directed innovative nonfiction projects Kate Plays Christine and Bisbee ’17, learned of the men via a TV press conference. Given...
- 11/13/2021
- by Simran Hans
- The Guardian - Film News
It begins with a press conference wherein Michael Sandridge, Tom Viviano, and Mike Foreman—all survivors of abuse—discuss how the Catholic Church in Kansas allowed priests to groom and assault them. It’s an obviously tense scene, in large part because of how the Church has engaged in a coordinated cover-up spanning decades, moving pedophiles around to deflect and confuse while simultaneously expanding the number of their victims. Foreman is justifiably enraged as he incredulously scoffs at the fact that the establishment has propped itself upon the salvation of statutes of limitations rather than the empathetic, Christian principles dictated via confession. Those in power would rather hide and lie than admit their complicity while sanctimoniously asking us to believe they’re God’s chosen few.
Thus it’s no surprise to learn director Robert Greene approached the trio’s mutual lawyer, Rebecca Randles, about the potential of doing this movie,...
Thus it’s no surprise to learn director Robert Greene approached the trio’s mutual lawyer, Rebecca Randles, about the potential of doing this movie,...
- 11/9/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
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