Kim Snyder’s new documentary “The librarians” is a shocking look at the organized wave of book bans sweeping the United States. The director joined executive producers Sarah Jessica Parker and Alison Benson, along with librarians Carolyn Foote and Suzette Baker, in the IndieWire Studio at Sundancepresented by Dropbox, to discuss this extraordinary attack on free speech.
“(The film) started with Carolyn actually,” Snyder said. “Over three years ago when this list of 850 books to be banned came out in Texas – mostly focused on books about race and gender.” Foote was one of those who pushed back, speaking out at school board meetings, ultimately drawing extraordinary backlash and threats from the far right, who have worked to label any depiction of LGBT life or gender identity in books for children or teenagers (including even a picture book about a baby penguin raised by two male penguins) as “grooming” or “pornography”.
“It’s very organized,” Baker, who, like Foote, is from Texas, said of the work of groups like Moms for Liberty, which have made book banning their top priority and received major investments from billionaires and national political action committees. “I’ve seen them at commissioner meetings reading scripts that they downloaded from the internet as far as how to go about banning books, what you need to say, how you need to say it, how you need to fill out the forms.”
What began as targeted attacks on librarians in Texas and Florida has now become a national movement with book bans also advocated in states like New Jersey and New York.
“It was like pulling a thread that just kept coming out,” Snyder said. Added executive producer Benson, “We were like, when do you stop shooting? Because you can just go on and on and on.”
Sarah Jessica Parker felt particularly passionate about getting on board “The Librarians” as an EP. The fact that she would travel to Sundance to lend her support to the film flies in the face of the narrative that has developed in recent months of Hollywood figures keeping quiet on political issues in the wake of the 2024 election. Parker, however, does not appear to be advocating for librarians and freedom of literacy as a matter linked to a choice.
“I haven’t paid much attention, peripheral or not, to whether or not Hollywood is quiet,” Parker said. “But for us, in relation to this film specifically, there’s nothing controversial to me about supporting our libraries and our librarians and our public schools and in our public spaces. And I’ve been that way my whole life. I grew up on a library. I’m one of eight kids, and if I didn’t have a library, I don’t know who I’d be today. And it was because every place I went, there was a librarian pointing me in a direction. And I had parents who cared a great deal about how to make my life richer and still be fit. So whatever Hollywood does and how they feel is immaterial to these people, these books, the idea of freedom and information doesn’t really work hand in hand with the consequences of this particular election, more so what will it be moving forward.”
Watch the video of the full interview above.
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