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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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"Hello, I'm going to read a declaration of a state of war...within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol or institution of American injustice."
- Bernardine Dohrn, in a Weather Underground audio communique
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(Continued from Page One)
How did you get involved with "The Weather Underground?"
I got involved in documentary filmmaking 15 years ago, when I met Sam on a documentary series about Muhammad Ali. We were both hired on as researchers and through that we realized we shared a mutual interest in radical politics, the history of dissent in this country and in storytelling. Years later, when Sam was working on his first project "John 3:16," he approached me about doing this project on the Weather Underground.
In terms of my own relationship with the subject, it goes back to my childhood in the 60's and early 70's, being very aware of all of the tumult and turbulence going on around me and all of the vicious fighting between my older sister and my parents, giving me a sense of how important politics are to life. Ever since, I think I've been wanting to find my own way to be political, to participate. It sounds childish, but I'd like to try to make the world a better place.
You are credited for working with Kartemquin Films on "Hoop Dreams." What did you do on that project?
I hooked up with Kartemquin (featured in Issue 003) as a volunteer at the tail end of "Hoop Dreams." They had shot massive amounts of footage and I watched these nine-hour assemblages and met with Steve and Fred both individually and in groups to kind of weigh in as to where I thought the story was going. It was obvious even then that they had something really remarkable.
Kartemquin have been heroic people to me, both in the films they make and their commitment to righteous doc filmmaking. I think they're an important and to some extent unsung part of the Chicago film community.
This film discusses radical politics, but a large part of what the Weathermen did was essentially terrorism...
I think one of the questions this film asks is "What is terrorism?" It's a complicated term, like "patriotism." Like "dissent." These days dissent and disloyalty are getting really confused in a painful and I think tragic way.
This country was founded on dissent. The idea of figuring out a responsible and effective way of dissenting I think is central to the film. Obviously, yes, the Weathermen made grave mistakes in terms of some of their tactics, but how to respond to a government that's not listening to the majority will of the people is something I think we're confronted with today.
This film is entitled "The Weather Underground," which implies that these people should by nature be inherently challenging to access. How difficult was it to reach out to the group and land the interviews you needed?
Very difficult. We made a lot of mistakes – doing things like looking up somebody's contact information on Google and cold calling them and getting hung up on. We also missed some great opportunities along the way. We interviewed Tom Hayden, for example, and when we got the footage back there was some sort of technical flaw that made the footage unusable, but we couldn't afford to redo it. That sucks.
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004: Bill Siegel
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