Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place

By: Ashlee Dell’Arciprete

Hot out of the 20th Tribeca Festival is the documentary Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place which closed out the festival in its vaccine-mandatory World Premiere on June 19^th, 2021 at Radio City Music Hall. The film brought insight and uplifted the difficult year that ensued after 2020 and the murder of George Floyd. Chappelle was fueled by the murder of George Floyd, but since we were in lockdown for much of the year and unable to perform around the country, he saw a much-needed opportunity and took it. Economic to comedic relief, the world needed it all and Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place came to answer.

This Time This Place is more than a powerful documentary. It explores the weight of the comedian having his shows in Yellow Springs, his small rural hometown, with Black Lives Matter protests in the backdrop of Yellow Springs. The powerful documentary sees another side of Chappelle that many may not have known. It showcases the challenges facing the area where he grew up early on in the pandemic and how Chappelle tries coping with it through his comedy shows. There was even one socially distanced outdoor comedy show that he staged in his neighbor’s cornfield. What also makes this documentary great; however, was the ability to have celebrities like David Letterman, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Hart, Chelsea Handler and Trevor Noah set in between and help bring humor to the pain people were facing.

The Chappelle documentary was directed by Julie Reichert and Steve Bognar who are actually Chappelle’s Oscar award-winning neighbors for American Factory. Reichert and Bogner did a beautiful job captivating the loneliness that many of us felt during the last year. Reichert and Bognar were also great in their ability to interview several local small business owners about the financial hardships they’ve faced. And, even better, according to the title card at the end of the film the Yellow Springs shows brought in nine million dollars in revenue and zero COVID cases.