From Chicago 1968 to Chicago 2024: Medium Cool — a Screening and Discussion

The Democratic Party is in a sticky situation: the incumbent presidential candidate has withdrawn under pressure; an overseas colonial war has rent the center from the left; and issues of racial and economic justice at home are being sidelined by an administration that knows no limits to its military spending abroad. In the tumultuous summer of 1968, the city of Chicago prepared itself, with riot-armored police and columns of tanks lining the streets, to host the Democratic National Convention. Inside the barbed wire-ringed International Amphitheater, delegates would choose the party’s nominee for president—and, in effect, its position on the war in Vietnam; while outside, in Grant Park, ten thousand antiwar protesters gathered to voice their dissent. A masterpiece of cinéma verité, Medium Cool—the first feature film by award-winning cinematographer and documentary filmmaker Haskell Wexler—unfolds its fictional narrative directly in the midst of the violence that erupted that summer in Chicago, its cast and crew shoulder to shoulder with protesters and police. 

What kind of cultural document is Medium Cool? What is the political power of the movie camera? And, with an eerily similar matrix of political and social tensions shadowing this year’s Democratic National Convention, taking place again in Chicago, how might Medium Cool help us clarify and contextualize our own present—of political disunity, threats of political and police violence, and a changed, if no less fraught, relation to the moving image? Join us Friday, August 16th, at BISR Central for a special screening of Medium Cool. After the film, BISR’s Andy Battle, Lauren K. Wolfe, Mark DeLucas, and Rebecca Ariel Porte will sit down with journalist Natasha Lennard and, with Wexler’s film—its making and its place in cinematic and political history—as a starting point, attempt to grapple with these and other pressing questions.  

The event is free to attend, with a suggested $10 donation. Beer, wine, seltzer, and snacks will be served. Doors open at 6:45pm; the screening will begin at 7pm sharp. The post-screening discussion will also stream to the BISR Facebook page (beginning at approximately 9pm). In-person attendees, please RSVP below.

Event Schedule

Friday, 7:00pm ET
August 16, 2024

$0.00

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