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In Person
"The Weather Underground" plays on April 14 as part of the IFP/Chicago Facets film series.
Details from Facets.
Small Screen
Catch it on the small screen April 26th on PBS' Independent Lens series.
Full details from Independent Lens.
On DVD
The DVD for "Weather Underground" will be released in late May.
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"One thing that's happened around this movie is it's been an occasion for the elites and the corporate media to try to rewrite the history, to trivialize, ridicule, and demonize not only those movements back then, but even more, the movements of today.
The energy they put into doing that is one strong piece of evidence that people's resistance was and is a force to be reckoned with."
– Weather Underground member Naomi Jaffe, in an essay about the film
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When Chicagoan Bill Siegel picked up a Best Documentary nomination for his work with creative partner Sam Green in directing "The Weather Underground" at this year's Academy Awards, few people in the city seemed to notice.
The film is an engrossing, in-depth look at the Weathermen, one of the most radical and explosively violent activist groups in contemporary American history. Perhaps best known for widely publicized images of pipe-wielding young adults wearing football helmets, the group started as a confrontational outgrowth of Students for a Democratic Society bent on ending the Vietnam War. They eventually evolved into "The Weather Underground," a highly effective and highly destructive underground organization committing what essentially amounted to terrorism on American soil.
Along the way, they freed LSD pioneer Timothy Leary from prison, battled Chicago police officers, blew up several key government buildings (as well as a few of their own members) and raised awareness about a wide range of progressive social issues through tersely worded audio communiques.
Siegel and Green tackle the group's history with a refreshing candor, spending far more time examining both the rationale for radicalism and the lessons learned than resorting to simple condemnation. Love it or hate it, the film boldly and defiantly raises some important issues about militant politics at a time (and in a city) where the issue is as taboo as a starburst nipple shield.
A few weeks after the Oscars, we talked with Siegel about "The Weather Underground," radical dissent and being one of the Chicago filmmaking community's most accomplished unknowns.
First off, congratulations on the Academy Award nomination. How was the ceremony?
The Academy Awards were thrilling. They really were. Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers came with us and Bernadine said, "I don't care how jaded or cynical a person you are – it would be difficult not to have a good time," which I have to second. It was kind of easy once things got going, despite the sort of Beatlemania style hysteria going on around us on the red carpet. It got to be this almost white noise drone which would go up or down an octave when someone like Johnny Depp or Charlize Theron came in. We ended up sitting next to Faye Dunaway and down the row from Ted Turner. It was great.
In a New City article, you mentioned how excited you were about being nominated alongside Errol Morris...
Yeah. We met him first at the Director's Guild Awards I didn't realize before
then that he’s also a University of Wisconsin History graduate. At the time,
I hadn't yet seen "The Fog of War," (featured
in Issue 001) which he dedicated to two of the university's sort of legendary
History professors. Sam and I both went up to him independently of each other
and said, "Man, we're really rooting for you."
He was surprised, but we were both saying, "yeah, listen, this is your night." To be honored alongside him was honor enough.
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004: Bill Siegel
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