Utitlising humour, fantasy, animation, poetry and theatrics, Hochman and her crew challenge the male establishment for ignoring the first meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus and Shirley Chisholm's bid for US vice-president.
American Revolution 2 begins with footage of the political demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention and the forceful reaction of the Chicago Police Department and the National Guard. Investigating the lack of an African American presence at the protests, the filmmakers follow members of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party as they search for common ground with a variety of white activist groups. In one scene, Panther Bobby Lee and members of the Young Patriots, a community of white Appalachian activists living in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, organize to protest police brutality. The seemingly disparate groups find shared social and political objectives that overcome racial differences – police violence, poverty, lack of employment, and poor living conditions. This potential for a cross-racial and interethnic political movement is the movie’s beautiful but unrealized dream.
Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occuring.
