The Duluth model seeks to provide a unified process from the initial police response, the courts, and the social services provided after. Now common policies for response and therapy that began in Duluth include mandatory arrests when injury is involved in a domestic disturbance and therapy based on using the Power and Control wheel to help understand abusive behaviors and provide victims with a proactive response. Thirty years ago Ellen Pence and others established a different response model at the battered women’s shelter in Duluth, Minnesota. Power and Control provides an exploration of domestic violence in relation to the application of the Duluth model. Hearing interviewees speak with marked Minnesota accents as landmarks like the Duluth lift bridge loom in the background serves as a stark reminder that this kind of violence is all around us.Įducational Media Reviews Online (Highly Recommended)īy Barb Bergman, Minnesota State University, Mankato That does little to mute its local impact, however. Visually speaking, Power and Control places substance before style, seldom reaching much beyond talking-head interviews and establishing shots. Cohn even gives some camera time to opponents of the Duluth Model, although their family-values platform doesn’t come off particularly well in the context of the film. Testimonials from survivors, abusers, counselors, and cops make a solid case for the program, as we watch women beginning to claim power for themselves and men struggling to understand their own violent actions. Cohn digs into the history of the Duluth Model, a homegrown strategy that revolutionized domestic violence treatment in the 1980s by addressing the issue as more cultural than personal. Peter Cohn‘s Power and Control should be doubly so for local audiences, set as it is in our own backyard. It goes without saying that a documentary about domestic violence is going to be uncomfortable viewing. There’s a certain gallows humor in scenes with these conservative academics and “men’s rights activists,” who have indeed been given plenty of rope.Įqually a useful primer on aspects of domestic violence and a purely harrowing story (with a walloping twist), “Power and Control” is highly recommended,”’ But the film’s protagonist is Kim Mosher, who, along with her two young daughters, moves to Duluth from Wabasha in order to escape her abusive husband.Īs Mosher and her jittery kids take up residence at the Safe Haven Shelter in Duluth, New York-based director Peter Cohn observes the difficulties of a single-parenting survivor’s quest to find work, housing and peace of mind.Īt the same time, and rather amazingly, Cohn turns the camera on Mosher’s abuser, and includes the views of those who take aim at the Duluth model for allegedly ignoring the needs of male victims. Pence, who was recently diagnosed with terminal breast cancer (and will appear in person at the MSPIFF screening), gives the documentary some of its pathos and nearly all of its historical scope. The Duluth model is also known for having instituted the law of mandatory arrest of abusers at scenes of domestic violence. Subtitled “Domestic Violence in America,” “Power and Control” proves to be a sharply detailed and occasionally heart-wrenching look at what Duluth-based activist Ellen Pence calls an “outgrowth of patriarchal society.”Īs co-founder of the Domestic Violence Intervention Project almost 30 years ago, Pence is one of the key architects of what has come to be known worldwide as the “ Duluth Project” - a once-radical and now simply levelheaded manner of looking at abuse through the overlapping lenses of culture, politics and gender. “Power and Control” would be valuable to all those interested in domestic abuse issues. *** Point to the complexity of the problem and the critical need for national, state,Īnd community-based responses to crimes of abusive behavior. Equally a useful primer on aspects of domestic violence and a purely harrowing story (with a walloping twist), “Power and Control” is highly recommended.Ī stark reminder that this kind of violence is all around us.
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