Rodeo ( Carroll Ballard, 1969)

Shot in four days during the 1968 National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City, this lyrical documentary was initially conceived as a USIA (a former USian cultural propaganda agency) project before being picked up by Marlboro, who asked that the film focus on the previous year s champion, Larry Mahan. Despite essentially being a propaganda documentary, Rodeouses unusualone could say experimentalcinematic and sound choices, such as slow motion and a deconstructed rendition ofAmazing Grace, to create a strikingly haunting portrait of this quintessentially American spectacle of violent domination.