he 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago will go down in history as one of America's most controversial events. Leftists argue that the police overstepped the bounds of their authority as they unleashed the might of their batons upon the huge crowd of protestors, while Righties point to the extreme rhetoric of many of the dissidents as a justification for the use of extreme force. Right or wrong, the convention marked a turning point in the role of the media in the coverage of world events. As Yippie after Yippie yielded to police truncheons, the news media were there capturing it live, and America watched in shock. Haskell Wexler's film Medium Cool goes all po-mo on you by incorporating live footage he shot at the convention into his plot of a hardened television journalist shocked into action by the events of the day and placing his actors in the middle of the melee.
Fri., April 25, 8 p.m., 2008
