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Babycinema presents

3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets

Dir: Mark Silver, 2005, USA, 98 mins, Cert: 15

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Wed 21 October 2015 // 11:00

Tickets: £3, Babies free

Our watching-with-baby screenings are for parents/carers with young babies (up to one year) to enjoy a movie from our weekly film programme in the company of other parents and their offspring. The Cube provides an area for prams, baby changing facilities, lowered movie volume and extra lighting in the auditorium. There will always be a friendly Front of House on hand to help. Those of you without babies, are of course, more than welcome. If you would like more information, please email nanoplex@cubecinema.com

On Black Friday 2012, four middle-class African-American teenagers stopped at a gas station to buy gum and cigarettes. One of them, Jordan Davis, argued with Michael Dunn, a white man parked beside them, over the volume of music playing in their car. The altercation turned violent when Dunn fired 10 bullets at the boys, killing Davis almost instantly.

Examining the legality that paved the way for an altercation of this nature to escalate into deathly violence, 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets is as engrossing as it is baffling. The film carefully and measuredly explicates, through both courtroom footage from Dunn's trial and personal interviews with Davis' friends and family, how changes to Florida’s gun laws led to racially incited violence being defended in a court of law. What's known as the 'Stand Your Ground' self-defence claim is successfully challenged by the film, through a very human and very upsetting story. 

Teasing out various social injustices through one striking example, 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets is as much a lesson in polemic as it is a single case study. The intimate camera work reveals at least a thousand voices as each character speaks their mind. A provocative, and occasionally chilling, examination of the structures behind American social and court laws.