The Center for International Exhibition and Performance since 1987
In the lead up to this year’s Democratic convention being held in Chicago this August, HotHouse is presenting its second election- themed film series, UNCONVENTIONAL. In our fourth session on June 29 we will be showing the following:
HARVEY MILK - INTERVIEW AT CASTRO CAMERA, March 1978 16 min.
Harvey Milk was a visionary civil and human rights leader who became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk’s unprecedented loud and unapologetic proclamation of his authenticity as an openly gay candidate for public office, and his subsequent election gave never before experienced hope to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people everywhere at a time when the community was encountering widespread hostility and discrimination. His remarkable career was tragically cut short when he was assassinated nearly a year after taking office.
Media collective Optic Nerve interviews San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk at Castro Camera, a camera shop operated by Milk since he opened it in 1972 and center of the neighborhood gay community.
NIXON, I AM NOT A CROOK 37 sec.
As the Watergate scandal gathered force, President Richard Nixon told newspaper editors who were attending their annual convention at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, that he was “not a crook.”
It was a sound bite and a headline that would reverberate widely. Less than nine months later, Nixon would find himself deeply embroiled in a political scandal with criminal overtones that would doom his presidency.
THE PARALLAX VIEW - Alan Pakula 1974 1hr. 42 min
After a presidential candidate is assassinated, political reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) begins to suspect that the mysterious Parallax Corporation may be involved. As he investigates, others who share his suspicions start turning up dead, including his editor, Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn). Eventually, Frady uncovers a conspiracy bigger than anyone expected and must race to prevent the corporation's next big hit as this political thriller plays out in an explosive game of cat and mouse.
COMMUNISTS ON CAMPUS - Sidney Fields 1970 40 min
“Let the revolutionaries themselves tell it like it is”
Part of the industry of “Red Scare Films” this “anti-woke” American propaganda documentary created "to inform and impress on American citizens the true nature and the true magnitude of those forces that are working within our nation for its overthrow ... and the destruction of our educational system." Film covers the July 1969 California Revolutionary Conference and other demonstrations, warning against the activities of Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, student protestors and Vietnam War demonstrators as they promote a "socialist/communist overthrow of the U.S. government," taking as their mentor Chairman Mao Tse-Tung”.
Free on CAN TV Channel 21, click here to stream.
About the UNCONVENTIONAL film series:
Replete with odds and ends commenting on the ‘democratic process”, curators Marguerite Horberg and Peter Kuttner have put together a series looking at the excluded, the corrupt, the righteous, the activists, and the paranoid. This is a fun mix-tape of sarcastic oddities to give light to often dark material as well as arc- bending moments from the recent past . Film maker Kuttner and HotHouse’s Executive Director, Horberg enjoy virtual “crate digging” and coming up with lists of rarely seen films, documentaries and guerilla camera work from street sources, and dustbins of history. In this program, the films have mostly been unearthed from public domain files and all are presented here free for CAN TV Channel 21 as well as via online links for “watch at your leisure”. UNCONVENTIONAL is as a cultural companion to the summer circus wherein the next candidate for US President will be chosen from the Democratic caucus.
With recent campus sit ins reminiscent of the 1960’s
The series will be introduced by award-winning and best selling author RICK PERLSTEIN. His books ( The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan; Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus) cover some of the history that parallels our series and we are honored to have him frame the series with his remarks.
His essays and book reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Village Voice, and Slate, among others. A contributing editor and board member of In These Times magazine, he lives in Chicago.
HotHouse’s commitment to presenting film and video as a regular part of its multi-arts programming launched with PATCHWERX- the directors -of- color series curated by Russell Watson in our space on Balbo. Since the 2010 instigation “From the Lions Point of View, An African Jubillee” (which celebrated the 50th anniversary of liberation for 19 countries in Africa) we we have presented some 75 screen gems for free as part of the quest to include elevate documentary work along with less known commercial films.
UNCONVENTIONAL
SATURDAYS JUNE 8 THROUGH JULY 6 at 7pm
FREE ON CABLE ACCESS TV CHANNEL 21