October 1989 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001675YPM?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/making-of-underground-1989.html
Film footage courtesy of Turin Film Corp.: http://www.youtube.com/user/TurinFilmCorp
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization (abbreviated WUO), was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters.
With a charismatic and articulate leadership whose revolutionary positions were characterized by anti-imperialist, feminist, and Black liberationist rhetoric, the group conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970s, including aiding the jailbreak and escape of Timothy Leary. The "Days of Rage," their first public demonstration on October 8, 1969, was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, under the name "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO). The bombing attacks mostly targeted government buildings, along with several banks. Most were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with communiqués identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. For the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, they issued a communiqué saying it was "in protest of the US invasion of Laos." For the bombing of the Pentagon on May 19, 1972, they stated it was "in retaliation for the US bombing raid in Hanoi." For the January 29, 1975 bombing of the United States Department of State Building, they stated it was "in response to escalation in Vietnam."
The Weathermen grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of SDS. It took its name from the lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows was the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical movements to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism."
The Weathermen largely disintegrated shortly after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973, which saw the general decline of the New Left.
The situation of the Weather Underground as wanted fugitives of the FBI necessitated the filmmakers to employ an unconventional style in conducting their interviews. The footage was filmed in only three days, and Wexler shot the Weathermen from behind or through a screen in order to conceal their individual identities. The film is unique in that the viewer is able to see the filmmakers but not the subjects themselves. The interactions between the Weathermen and filmmakers raise many questions about the role of documentary film and the contrived nature of its set-ups. This is apparent at several points in the film where the Weathermen express concern over the filmmakers catching their faces on camera, or complain about the artificiality of the overall conversation taking place. In fact, de Antonio describes going out and burning a pile of possible incriminating film negatives following the filming (Rosenthal 1978). The collective nature of the group led the filmmakers to use group interviews, and allow individuals to talk at length about their thoughts on the American social and political climate, as well as their role in this situation and bringing about change. Unlike many documentaries that actively probe interviewees, the directors of Underground instead sit back and allow the Weathermen to speak. While they do interrupt at times, and do provoke the group with probing questions, there is a recognition of the unstable position of the people they are working with, which, in the end, results in their stepping back and letting the group express itself on its own terms. This film uses the voices of the Weathermen as narration, while employing mainly archival footage to create juxtapositions that illustrate the words. As in his other films, de Antonio purchased the rights to use images from a number of other prominent radical documentaries including Gray and Alks The Murder of Fred Hamption, Chris Markers film on the Armies of the Night Pentagon demonstrations, Cinda Firestones Attica, Wexler-Fonda-Haydens Introduction to the Enemy, and his own In the Year of the Pig (Waugh 1976).
Loading...
Many thanks for sharing such a fascinating interview with Emile de Antonio about the making of "Underground". The fact that the film alone generated 10,000 FBI files is just astounding and as always the question becomes, who are the real terror-ists, the people who destroy buildings or the people who destroy lives...
jackamo23 2 months ago
4:20 (heheh) is something else
fodderstompf78 9 months ago
Incredible
mrscreenwriter 1 year ago