Underground

Director: Haskell Wexler, Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson

1976 / 87min / 16mm

Defying attempts by the FBI to subpoena the filmmakers and confiscate their footage, de Antonio, Lampson, and Wexler managed to get their counter-narrative documentary about the notorious Weather Underground in front of eager audiences around the world. Original interviews with on-the-lam members of the insurgent Underground like Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, and Bernardine Dohrm, all filmed with backs to camera as to conceal their identities, are woven into a larger tapestry of committed leftist activism and filmmaking activity, with archival excerpts from the Chris Marker corpus, The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), Jane Fonda’s Indochina Peace Campaign, and de Antonio’s own body of work, making for a panoramic review of the militant counterculture at mid-decade.

Print courtesy of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Part of Fugitive Days