HBO’s Tiger Woods Series by Two White Directors Is a Flashpoint for ‘Decolonizing’ Docs
Authorship, Race, Systemic Issues, Representation
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Authorship, Race, Systemic Issues, Representation
Article
When HBO Sports announced upcoming docuseries “Tiger,” controversy followed. The problem didn’t lie in the sometimes-tabloid story of champion golfer Tiger Woods, but in its telling: The directors are two white men, Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamachek, who previously collaborated on the Oscar-nominated “Cartel Land,” on which Hamachek served as editor. HBO dropped the production’s introductory press release in the middle of a summer marked by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, nationwide protests, and Black Lives Matter. A community of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) documentary filmmakers responded to “Tiger” as one more film in a series that never seems to end: a story of Black people told by white men.