Medium Cool
With Robert Forster, Verna Bloom,Peter Bonerz.
US, 1969, 35mm, color, 111 min.
Print source: HFA
The directorial debut of veteran cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Medium Cool is an ambitious independent production that makes canny use of documentary material in constructing its fiction. Set in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the narrative focuses on a television cameraman (Forster) who becomes involved with the people and stories he covers, including a black taxi driver, a single mother from Appalachia, and several of the protesters who clash with the police outside the convention hall.
PRECEDED BY
-
A Movie
Directed by Bruce Conner.
US, 1958, 16mm, black & white, 12 min.
The first film by the innovative West Coast artist Bruce Conner, A Movie is an editing tour-de-force, made entirely of scraps of B-movie condensations, newsreels, novelty shorts, and film leader collaged into a powerful portrait of our culture’s fascination with catastrophe and conquest.
