Event: Two films will be shown: “Medium Cool,” and “Regret to Inform” during Illinois Wesleyan’s May Term 2003 titled “Citizens of the World: Rights and Obligations”
Dates: May 21, 2003 (Wednesday), “Medium Cool” (Rated R)
May 22 (Thursday), “Regret to Inform”
Time: Both shows are at 7 p.m.
Location: The Beckman Auditorium of The Ames Library,
1 Ames Plaza, Bloomington
Admission: Free and open to the public
Background: “Medium Cool,” which was featured at the recent Roger Ebert Film Festival in Champaign-Urbana, is a politically conscious documentary-like film by Haskell Wexler.
The film, which was released in 1969, is said by film critic Jeremy Heilman to represent “a pioneering slice of cinematic history.” The film mixes fiction with reality and is set in Chicago the week before the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It covers the actual convention and the riots that erupted in its wake.
“Regret to Inform,” which won a 2000 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, is about filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn’s journey to Vietnam 20 years after an enemy mortar killed her husband. The film shares the views of both sides of the war, with women speaking of their loss, grief and confusion. It shows how the Vietnamese women were dealing with the same emotions as the American women were, but that they were also dealing with the war in their own villages. Sonneborn captures on film the mutual losses of the women, and ultimately the shared understanding between them.
Both films are being shown in relation to Illinois Wesleyan’s May Term course, “The Vietnam Wars.” The course examines the origins, expansion, and repercussions of the Vietnam War, and analyzes support for and resistance to war in Vietnam and America.
May Term at Illinois Wesleyan lasts a little over three weeks, allowing faculty and students to focus on a single topic with three hours of daily class sessions, often followed by intense, interactive research.
Contact: For additional information, contact Thomas Lutze, associate professor of history at (309) 556-3818 or e-mail Lutze at tlutze@titan.iwu.edu.
