Film
Seitz, Micheal H.
FILM Michael H. Seitz A Disarming Documentary In Our Hands is a feature-length documentary about the massive rally for nuclear disarmament held in New York City on June 12, 1982. Though it stands...
...The making of the film is itself an inspiring example of cooperation in a common cause...
...Meanwhile, it is being screened in several cities in benefit showings for an-tinuclear activities...
...Kit Carson, have imaginatively reworked material familiar to every cinephile...
...I took part in the rally and so was pleased to find that the filmmakers did not attempt—as have some documentarists of anti-Vietnam war protests—to endow the demonstration and its participants with a spurious aura of "respectability...
...Though it does not equal the original—Valerie Kaprisky, in the role of the siren, reveals more flesh but less enigmatic femininity than did Jean Se-berg—it does feature the most electrifying performance to date by Richard Gere...
...Eddie Murphy is funny as the streetwise pauper who becomes a prince, but most of the fun is exhausted half way through the film...
...speeches and interviews from Randall Forsberg, Representative Edward Markey, Helen Caldi-cott, Cleveland Robinson, and Benjamin Spock (who addresses a throng of children), and brief interviews with atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as with some of the ordinary people who came to the rally from all over the country and world...
...Organizations interested in showing In Our Hands should write Richter Productions at 330 West 42nd Street, Floor 24, New York, NY 10036, or phone (212) 947-1395...
...This is a movie buffs' movie, but it will appeal to others as well...
...Wave after wave of people representing varied interests are seen flowing down New York's avenues: unionists, Grey Panthers, suburbanites from Long Island, feminists, members of professional and ethnic organizations, stolid Vermonters, street-theater actors, Korean Christians, and lots more...
...others followed segments of the march...
...War Games After electronically entering his high school's computer, a computer jock accidentally taps into the Defense Department's Combat Operations Center—and sets off a global thermonuclear war...
...In all, more than 350 individuals and organizations contributed to the realization of this work...
...In light of the frailty of real-life weapons systems, this is scary stuff...
...Some of the teams followed demonstrators from their homes to the assembly in Manhattan...
...The setting is expressive, and Godard's successors in this venture, directors Jim McBride and L.M...
...The film's title, incidentally, comes from something Jonathan Schell wrote: "The fate of the earth is in our hands...
...More than forty volunteer camera/recording teams, constituting a Who's Who of independent filmmaking, donated their services, equipment, and, in some cases, their film and tape stock...
...More than sixty hours of footage were accumulated, and an editorial team directed by Warnow spent months shaping the material into a ninety-minute film...
...three teams covered the Central Park stage...
...Hits and Misses Trading Places A toothless social comedy that offers a simple-minded demonstration of the fact that poverty, not imperfect genes, can drive a person to craziness and crime...
...Though it stands as a record and celebration of the largest peace demonstration in American history, the film is more than an exercise in reminiscence or self-congratulation...
...In Our Hands entertains, inspires, and, above all, seeks to promote greater awareness of the issues behind the rally...
...Under the artful, well-paced direction of Philip Noyce (Newsfront), Judy Davis (My Brilliant Career, Winter of Our Dreams) delivers a striking performance...
...In Our Hands successfully conveys the spirit, ambiance, and colorful diversity of the demonstrators...
...The movie gently mocks the callousness of the rich, but it also celebrates the joys and privileges of wealth—a thoroughly unthreaten-ing film even in the age of Reagan...
...Heat Wave Hard-hitting social drama about corruption in the real estate industry in Sydney, Australia...
...Long shots of the crowd are punctuated with performances by Pete Seeger, James Taylor, Holly Near, Rita Marley, and the House of the Lord Choir...
...one, led by Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, USA), worked backstage, and another provided impressive helicopter shots...
...In Our Hands is being considered for release by a major distributor and for broadcast on public television...
...It is a thrilling spectacle, and the filmmakers reproduce that sense through the use of dynamic montage, building up to a crescendo as one group after another joins the vast lines of march...
...But despite the alarm that it sounds, War Games is not really an antiwar film: It takes simplistic Cold War assumptions for granted, espouses the notion of nuclear deterrence, and willfully ignores the obvious moral—that weapons threaten us much more than they protect us...
...Under the production supervision of Robert Richter (Gods of Metal) and Stanley War-now (editor of Woodstock and Hair), they attempted to capture every aspect of the demonstration, from preparations to follow-up activities...
...Breathless The classic New Wave film of Jean-Luc Godard, A Bout de Souffle (1959), is updated and transposed to Los Angeles...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
