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 final session on July 6th we will be showing the following:
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN - History of the Texas Communist Party, ANGELA DAVIS & GUS HALL 1984 25min
Home made video documenting third party candidates for 1984 Presidential election
Gus Hall was an American political organizer who was the general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA; 1959–2000) and a four-time candidate for U.S. president (1972, 1976, 1980, 1984).
Hall’s parents were members of the militant Industrial Workers of the World, and in 1927 he was recruited by his father to join the CPUSA. From 1931 to 1933 he studied at the V.I. Lenin Institute (renamed the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute) in Moscow, and after returning to the United States, he engaged in union-organizing activities, occasionally getting arrested. In 1949 he was one of 11 party leaders convicted of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government by force and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Free on bail during an appeal, Hall and three others fled to Mexico when the appeal was rejected in 1951. They were recaptured, however, and Hall’s sentence was extended; he was incarcerated until 1957.
Elected to the CPUSA’s leadership position in 1959, Hall ran for U.S. president as the party’s candidate in four elections and earned his best result in 1976, when he received nearly 60,000 votes.
Angela Y. Davis is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author; she is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She was active in movements such as the Occupy movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. During the 1980s, Davis was twice the Communist Party's candidate for vice president
JESSE JACKSON FOR PRESIDENT - JESSE JACKSON
Speech by Jackson at 1988 Convention during his run for President
The 1988 Jesse Jackson presidential campaign was Jesse Jackson's second campaign for President of the United States. This time, his successes in the past made him a more credible candidate and he was both better financed and better organized. Although most people did not seem to believe he had a serious chance at winning, Jackson once again exceeded expectations as he more than doubled his previous results, prompting R. W. Apple, Jr. of The New York Times to call 1988 "the Year of Jackson"
COVER UP — BEHIND THE IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR - Barbara Trent 1988 1hr. 12 min
Cover Up — Behind The Iran-Contra Affair is a thorough investigation into information suppressed during the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 where it was found that senior officials in the United States government secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran. The film reveals a shadow government of former CIA operatives, drug smugglers, top US military personnel and others, revealing evidence of the history of CIA involvement in drug running from the Vietnam heroin era to the Central American cocaine epidemic — raising serious questions about the so-called “war on drugs” and other government movements since the 1980s.
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