In his new film “Silver Dollar Road,” Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”) focuses on the Reels family in North Carolina, who fought for decades to protect their waterfront property passed down from generation to generation. The film chronicles how the Reels withstood fraudulent land claims, violence, and having two family members sent to jail for eight years because they refused to vacate their home. Peck builds upon the work of reporter Lizzie Presser who wrote about the Reels in an article jointly published by ProPublica and The New Yorker; and videographer Mayeta Clark who covered the Reels alongside Presser.
Pure Nonfiction host Thom Powers talks to Peck about how the filmmaker formed his own bond with the Reels family, how he personally relates to this story about land, and how he grew inspired early in his career to make documentary films from watching Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA.”