Banner Bandits (2017)
★½ — Banner Bandits (2017)
Guam is one of those places that rarely shows up on the film world's radar. A small island territory in the western Pacific, it sits in an unusual position as an unincorporated territory of the United States, carrying American influence while maintaining its own distinct Chamorro culture and identity. The Liberation Day Parade, held each July to mark the island's liberation from Japanese occupation in 1944, is the centrepiece of the Guamanian calendar, a genuinely significant annual event that draws the whole community together. It is, perhaps, an unlikely backdrop for a piece of youth activism, but that is precisely what director Don Muña found there. For a sense of just how rare it is to find Guam on a film blog, it's worth noting that the island's other notable screen appearance in these pages is Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon (2004), which is, to put it charitably, a different kind of cinema entirely.
Produced with the backing of the Guam Department of Youth Affairs and GIFF Independents (the latter being the production arm connected to the Guam International Film Festival), Banner Bandits is a short documentary running to 56 minutes. Don Muña's film centres on a group of young people who take issue with the prominent use of alcohol and tobacco advertising at the Liberation Day Parade and, more broadly, across the island, arguing that such signage is disproportionately aimed at children and young audiences. It is the kind of grassroots, community-focused filmmaking that documentary as a form does particularly well when it fires on all cylinders. As a point of comparison with other documentary work from around the same period, the site has covered films as varied as Next Goal Wins (2014) and Nom Tèw (2009), both of which demonstrate how much mileage a well-focused documentary can get from a single, clear subject.
The principal figures on screen are Adonis Mendiola, David Afaisen, and Rebecca Respicio, young participants whose involvement gives the film its human face and grounds the policy argument in lived experience. Muña's approach is research-led, working through the evidence around advertising practices before bringing in interview subjects to speak to the issue. It is a polished but unremarkable production in visual terms, the kind of work where the strength of the argument is intended to carry the film rather than any particular cinematic flair. Whether the film manages to sustain that argument across its full running time is, of course, the question.
A-Z World Movie Tour Guam Was hoping to find an actual film on this journey but Banner Bandits will have to do. Nearly 1hr long and honestly that was far too long here. It's a really informative piece about the alcohol and tobacco advertising practices in Guam and how they're clearly geared towards children and young people. The film maker had clearly spent time analysing, fact finding and presenting this. However... you get the point after about 10 minutes. The rest just repeats. The interviews don't really add a whole lot. Overall, it just feels a bit boring
I'll be honest, for a project like the A-Z World Movie Tour the hope is always to land on something that properly represents a place's storytelling culture, and Guam deserves better representation than a single documentary about advertising regulations. The subject matter here is genuinely worthwhile and the research clearly went into it, but good intentions and solid groundwork don't automatically translate into a film that earns its full hour. Sometimes the short, sharp version of a story is the right version. Onwards to the next stop on the tour.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2025-06-23
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