Media in the Movies: a journalism series presented by VTIFF and Seven Days in celebration of Seven Days’ 30th anniversary

Introduced by Cathy Resmer, Seven Days deputy publisher

It’s 1968 and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. Medium Cool, his debut feature, plunges us into the moment.

With its mix of fictional storytelling and documentary technique (cinema vérité), this depiction of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

With his background in documentaries, Wexler was perfectly suited to the moment. And as a two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer who photographed such films as In the Heat of the Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Matewan, he clearly knows how to take a picture.

An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.