Dear Editor

...While we welcome the cooperation of these groups in making procedural suggestions and facilitating our obtaining films from particular companies, the program of the Festival is under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of its organizers...

...As I concluded in my review, it is the easy notoriety of these two films which appears to commend them to Vogel's attention...

...After summarizing the frustration-filled life of the young assassin, he then concludes, "American society had given Oswald no legitimate way of satisfying his thirst for distinction...

...I wasn't aware that these weak links in an otherwise impressive series of films indicated a "scandal...

...She states that the New York Film Festival's endorsement by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Independent Film Importers and Distributors of America, "insures the right of each to act in an advisory capacity in the selection of films...

...Washington, D. C. Lorna Hahn Senior Research Associate Operations ana Policy Research, Inc...

...Available evidence suggests just as strongly, for example, that Oswald's relationship with his mother alone may have had a far more disastrous effect upon him than his dealings with 190 million other Americans...

...It goes without saying that whatever influence it gains will be exercised in its own behalf...

...Overlooked too is the fact that Oswald's brother, raised in similar circumstances within the same society, has apparently grown into a well-adjusted, respectable citizen...

...however, I cannot be responsible for honoring such distinctions...

...The trouble is that when one is served such a gargantuan course of mixed vegetables, the "treats" are, for the moment anyway, watered down...

...Just how can Meyer, or the many persons who have voiced similar beliefs, be so certain that American society, as such, was to blame for Oswald and his actions...

...But I suspect that a reviewer who really cared for films would choose to spend her time discussing the several real treats of the Festival rather than carrying on, like Miss Brightman, about that particular, and not very interesting, scandal...

...Obviously the industry could play no role in the selection of The Brig or The Last Clean Shirt...

...Or shall we assume that the Festival's selection of Jonas Mekas' The Brig, based on its Living Theatre production, is a result of a joint MPAA-IFTDA conspiracy to bring this work to the attention of wider American audiences...

...This is false...

...Does he really believe that a self-styled outcast from society, who had difficulty obtaining or holding a semi-skilled job, would ever obtain a position anywhere near the "trigger...

...and which was rejected in its efforts to provide psychiatric help for the boy Oswald— really so devoid of "legitimate" ways of achieving prominence...

...it need only be reported that her views are not always shared by other reviewers...

...But when it comes to facts rather than opinion, it was her responsibility to ascertain rather than to fabricate...

...New York City James Stoller Editor, "Moviegoer" As a critic, Carol Brightman is, of course, entitled to her negative reaction to three of the four American entries at the recent New York Film Festival...

...Stoller's complaint that "a reviewer who really cared" would discuss "the real treats," is well taken...

...It would seem, rather, that it was Oswald's "thirst for distinction," marked by his "repeated attempt to identify himself with power," that was not "legitimate...

...history was his last chance for a reprieve...

...DEAR EDITOR OSWALD A few sentences in Karl E. Meyer's otherwise excellent article, "The Triumph of Caliban," (NL, October 12) express some familiar thoughts which, I feel should not remain unchallenged...

...Furthermore, is American society—which also produced such persons as Helen Keller, Harry Golden and Martin Luther King Jr...

...Both President Kennedy and Oswald, says Meyer, "were products of a society which is often sick and compulsive in its pursuit, at all costs, of celebrity, wealth and power...

...Finally, Meyer closes with the peroration, "God save us from an Oswald with access to that nuclear trigger...

...In an official press release dispatched by him some months before the Festival to announce the sponsorship of the MPAA and the iFfDA, he stated: "The two new sponsoring groups will serve in an advisory capacity regarding policy and procedures for the international festival...

...Scandals are a dime a dozen...

...Perhaps the most unique aspect of the tragedy at Dallas was the fact that one lone individual—as opposed to the organizations which support complots throughout most of the world—was able to conceive and execute the deed in what constituted, in effect, a ghastly perversion of American individualism...

...Granting that American society does indeed have its many and obvious flaws, is it as unique in its iniquities as Meyer suggests...

...FILM FESTIVAL Carol Brightman's account of the New York Film Festival ("On Screen," NL, September 28) gives an infuriatingly wrong impression...

...Perhaps the release was a "fabrication": It might have been directed primarily toward an industry audience (Variety...

...Miss Brightman's amusing reference to an on-going, energetic industry campaign for "control" over the Festival is on a similar level of competence as a possible suggestion that Leonard Bernstein's Philharmonic Society concerts are in danger of being programmed by the record companies...

...rather, simply an unfortunate vulnerability on the part of the organizers which I suggested might be significant as a portent of a more serious collapse of integrity...

...Of course, the inclusion of films like Lilith and Fail-Safe was scandalous (to The Brig and The Last Clean Shirt I am somewhat, but not much, more sympathetic than she...

...New York City Amos Vogel Director New York Film Festival Carol Brightman replies: I am amused to find Vogel almost quoting himself...