Rebel Citizen

The late Haskell Wexler (1922-2015) was one of America's great cinematographers, an Oscar winner for 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? who went on to lens films such as In the Heat of the Night, American Graffiti, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Days of Heaven. Filmmaker Pamela Yates's profile mentions Wexler's mainstream movies, but the focus is on the politically-charged documentaries that Wexler made over the years, including: The Bus (1965), shot while Wexler accompanied civil rights activists to the March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech; Underground (1976), featuring secretly-filmed interviews with fugitive members of the radical Weather Underground; and Four Days in Chicago (2013), centering on the Occupy movement's protests against the 2012 NATO summit. Serious attention is also paid to the making of the landmark Medium Cool (1969), an ultra-realistic “hybrid” film about a detached cameraman that Wexler shot (and directed) against the backdrop of the actual violence occurring at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Discussion of these and Wexler's other activist works are part of a lengthy interview that Yates conducts with nonagenarian Wexler, who argues vigorously that his criticisms of the U.S. government represent a truly patriotic stance. Wexler also voices anger over the fact that ISIS's 2014 beheading of journalist James Foley, whom Wexler had met while filming Four Days in Chicago, was being used as justification for increased military action in the Middle East—a disservice, he says, to the dead man's memory. Serving up a worthy tribute to a talented artist who had strong political beliefs that drove a significant amount of his work, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)