The Weather Underground
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Weather Underground | |
|---|---|
 U.S. DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Sam Green, Bill Siegel |
| Starring | Bill Ayers Bernadine Dohrn Mark Rudd Brian Flanagan Naomi Jaffe Laura Whitehorn David Gilbert Kathleen Neal Cleaver Todd Gitlin |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization The Weathermen. The group's goal was to "bring the (Vietnam) War home" through acts of domestic terrorism.
The film, directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004.
Contents |
[edit] Story
In 1969, a small group of college student left radicals announced their intentions to overthrow the U.S. government in opposition to the Vietnam War. This documentary explores the rise and fall of this radical movement as former members speak candidly about the passion that drove them at the time. The film also explores the group in the context of other social movements of the time, featuring interviews with former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party. The documentary also examines the U.S. government's suppression of dissent during this turbulent era. Using archival footage from the 1960s and 1970s, the film also intersperses recent interviews with high profile ex-Weathermen like Bernardine Dohrn, David Gilbert, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd and Brian Flanagan, who talk about their involvement in the organisation, their experiences, and the trajectory that led them to be placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list.
[edit] Quotes
- "We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence." -Naomi Jaffe
- "Once Richard Nixon was elected president and inaugurated in January 1969, we were targeted, bam, bam, bam, by a very sophisticated, advanced, counterintelligence program; At the same time, by very crude and violent police." -Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Black Panther Party
- "This pattern of harassment is going on against the Black Panther Party across the country. On Friday, the Watts office of the Black Panther Party was bombed and demolished. Last week the Des Moines office was bombed. They can't stop anything we're doing as a legitimate political organization so they come in and shoot us and shoot tear gas at us like they've lost they minds." -Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Black Panther Party
- "There's no way to be committed to non-violence in one of the most violent societies that history has ever created. I'm not committed to non-violence in any way." Bernardine Dohrn, The Weather Underground
- "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks." Bernardine Dohrn, The Weather Underground
