Jerry Rubin Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Director Brett Morgen doesn't make conventional, talking-head, "impartial" non-fiction films; he himself notes "I'm certainly more interested in creating modern-day mythologies than historical documentaries." After co-directing On the Ropes and The Kid Stays in the Picture, he next, ambitiously, decided to use state-of-the-art techniques to bring a 40-year old event to life in Chicago 10. Combining computer-animated footage and dramatic interpretations of court transcripts with footage and audio from 1968 -- some of it previously undiscovered -- Morgen's film audaciously animates and recreates the trial of activists Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale and others that followed in the wake of the protests they organized outside the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. Speaking with Cinematical from New York, Morgen talked about the level of digging required to unearth the unseen archival material he found, the differences he encountered between his actors who had done animation before and those who hadn't, what he learned about the '60s from making the films and much more: "This is a timeless story, that I think is relevant at any time -- and more relevant during wartime."


This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



For Cinematical's reviews of Chicago 10, you can find Christopher Campbell's take here and my review from Sundance 2007 here.

The opening night film for Sundance 2007 is a curiosity - a mix of high-tech motion capture animation and nearly 40-year-old archival footage, real-life events and surreally-depicted flights of fancy. Chicago 10's an uneasy, oil-and-water mix -- and one leads to a movie that's woundingly set against itself. Director Brett Morgen's last Sundance film (which he actually co-directed with Nanette Burstein) was The Kid Stays in the Picture, from 2002; much like that film, Chicago 10 tries to be a fantasia based on reality -- or a depiction of the real through the fantastic.

In 1968, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was beset by protests in the streets. The Vietnam War had the nation divided, and several youth leaders -- including Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and other activists/dirty goddamn hippies (depending on which side of the argument you were on) -- organized public protests against the war, against capitalism, against what they saw as America's failings. 8 of the leaders -- some of whom, like Hoffman and Rubin, were central organizers, and some of whom, like Black Panther Bobby Seale, were not -- were charged with inciting to riot and brought to trial in Chicago. Morgen's film incorporates you-are-there newsreel and found footage; more strikingly -- and, bluntly, less successfully -- it also uses motion-capture based computer generated animation to recreate scenes from the trial, with various name actors recreating court testimony.