Flag (1989)

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Linda Gibson revisits the emotional disturbance produced by her early fascination with patriotic symbols and rituals. She assembles a patchwork of scenes around discrepancies between democratic rhetoric and the reality of racial exclusion, mingling a child's diary entries, stills and home movies, printed texts, street interviews with people attempting to define the meaning of the American flag, and a medley of physical routines in which idiosyncratic dance movements collide with stylized variations on saluting. "Flag" flickers with the uncertainties of memory, the evocation of a child's credulous view of equality tempered by an adult knowledge of social hierarchy and oppression. -- Paul Arthur