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The US filmmaker Nathan Truesdell specialises in deploying archival footage to shine a light on local government incompetence and malfeasance – often to droll, tragicomic effect. For his most recent film, When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood, he trains his pointed editing skills on an incident from 30 June 2021 in which the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad detonated some 42 pounds of confiscated fireworks in a residential, working-class neighbourhood. The resulting explosion destroyed the armoured vehicle intended to contain it, injuring 17 and badly damaging many nearby homes. Weaving together local news reports and footage from press conferences, Truesdell untangles the web of carelessness and incompetence that led to the explosion, as well as the lack of accountability and inadequate response that followed.
Director: Nathan Truesdell
Producers: Will Lennon, Kat Nguyen
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
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Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
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Fairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes
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Food and drink
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner
14 minutes