Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived (2008)

September 16, 2008 by omprakash
Filed under Documentary, HOLLYWOOD, Politics & Government

Synopsis:

Investigates one of the most debated “what if” scenarios in the history of U.S. foreign policy: What would President John F. Kennedy have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated in 1963, and had he been re-elected in 1964? Employed is what Harvard historian Niall Ferguson calls “virtual history,” assessing the plausibility of counterfactuals–”what ifs”–and the outcomes they might have produced. Using an array of resources including recently declassified and never-before-seen archival footage, documents, and audio tapes, and testimony from a critical oral history conference, including Kennedy and Johnson administration officials, the question is asked: Does it matter who is president on issues of war and peace?

Theatrical Release
9/17/2008

Director	Credit
Koji Masutani	Director
Production Credits	Credit
James Blight	Producer
Michael Paszt	Co-Producer
Janet M Lang	Producer
Koji Masutani	Producer
David A Welch	Producer
Peter Almond	Producer
Writer	Credit
James Blight	Screenplay
Janet M Lang	Screenplay
Koji Masutani	Screenplay
David A Welch	Screenplay
Film Camera	Credit
Edward Huff	Cinematographer
Koji Masutani	Cinematographer
Curt Worden	Cinematographer

Review & Summary:

First-time filmmaker Koji Masutani and Brown University professor James G. Blight ask: “Can a president make a decisive difference in matters of war and peace… or, are the forces that drive a nation into war a lot more impersonal, out of the control of any single human being, even a president?” In 1963 the US had 16,000 military advisors in Vietnam . By 1968, President Lyndon Johnson had sent 500,000 troops. “Virtual JFK” rethinks Kennedy’s legendary 1,000-day presidency, selecting from more than 250 hours of archival material some of the brightest, funniest moments from his press conferences, as well as some of the scariest ones, when the Cold War threatens to turn hot.The film considers Kennedy’s modus operandi in foreign affairs, looking closely at how he deals with six crises, including a belligerent Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall. Kennedy advisors Robert McNamara, Adlai Stevenson and General Maxwell Taylor appear in the film, as does a particularly telling exchange between JFK and General Curtis LeMay (the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”). The 800-pound gorilla in the room is, of course, George W. Bush, his war in Iraq and the bellicose noises his administration have been making toward Iran What would JFK have done in Vietnam? And what would he do today?

Tags: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived (2008)

Moving Midway (2008)

September 10, 2008 by omprakash
Filed under Documentary, HOLLYWOOD

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Theatrical Release

9/12/2008

Director	Credit
Godfrey Cheshire	Director
Cast	Credit
Godfrey Cheshire	- Cast
Elizabeth Cheshire	- Cast
Robert Hinton	- Cast
Dena Williams Silver	- Cast
Abraham Lincoln Hinton	- Cast
Al Hinton	- Cast
Charles Hinton Silver	- Cast
Production Credits	Credit
Robert Hinton	Associate Producer
Godfrey Cheshire	Producer
R.B. Reeves	Executive Producer
Jay Spain	Producer
Vincent Farrell III	Producer
Production Companies	Credit
Wake Drive Productions	Production Company
Iron Films	Production Company
CG Film	Production Company
Distribution Companies	Credit
First Run Features	Domestic Theatrical Distributor
Writer	Credit
Godfrey Cheshire	Screenplay
Film Camera	Credit
Jay Spain	Cinematographer
Music	Credit
Ahrin Mishan	Music
Algia Mae Hinton	Song Blues Songs
Sound	Credit
Matthew Polis	Sound

Review /summary

Partly a family memoir, partly a historical essay and partly the record of an improbable feat of engineering, Godfrey Cheshire’s documentary “Moving Midway: A Southern Plantation in Transit” tells a fascinating and complicated story of regional identity. Mr. Cheshire, a longtime film critic (and as such an acquaintance of mine), connects his longstanding interest in American popular culture with the lore attached to his ancestral home, a North Carolina plantation called Midway.

Midway, built in 1848 near Raleigh, belongs to the Hintons, ancestors of the Silvers, the family of Mr. Cheshire’s mother, Elizabeth, who appears in his film to offer tart opinions of her ancestors, Yankees and a good deal more. Elizabeth and other members of the family are concerned about the development that is rapidly changing the Southern landscape and encroaching on the gracious old mansion that is so central to who they are. As the strip malls and highways draw nearer, Mr. Cheshire’s cousin Charlie decides to move the house, a project that occupies the middle portion of the movie and turns it momentarily from an ambling first-person rumination into something like Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo.”

Not that madness is what motivates Charlie to hoist an old wooden building onto steel beams and truck it across the backcountry. Like many white Southerners, the current generation of Hintons has a nostalgic, sentimental relationship to the past, and a wary, ambivalent attitude toward modernity. At the heart of “Moving Midway” is the desire to preserve that warm, respectful sense of tradition and continuity while at the same time looking clearly at the less noble realities of history and making some attempt to rectify them.

“Moving Midway” includes an incisive tour of the “moonlight and magnolias” mythology of the Old South manufactured by Hollywood, which provides a useful context for Mr. Cheshire’s inquiries into the annals of Midway. He shares some fond reminiscences of the place, and an intriguing portrait of his great-great-aunt Mary (or Mimi), a dominant figure in the 20th-century history of Midway and a keen collector of Hinton genealogical information.

Some of it, anyway. If the transportation of Midway provides one dramatic crux in Mr. Cheshire’s film, the other arrives with the discovery of an African-American branch of the Hinton family. The two narratives converge at the end, when, in the restored house, far from the rush of traffic and commerce, the descendants of masters and slaves come together for a party.

It is a lovely, touching scene, but to his credit Mr. Cheshire does not oversell it as a moment of reconciliation. Having begun with William Faulkner’s famous observation that “the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past,” he does not rush to forgive his ancestors their transgressions. Nor does he undertake his investigation alone. On his journeys back home, Mr. Cheshire is frequently accompanied by Robert Hinton, a professor of Africana studies at New York University, the film’s chief historian and associate producer as well as a descendant of slaves owned by the director’s family.

The two men are not kin, but they do seem to be kindred spirits, thoughtful and courteous and also aware of the ambiguities of their shared project. “Moving Midway” may not advance any grand new thesis about the South and its history, but it turns an old house into a rich and strange repository of local knowledge.

Tags: Moving Midway (2008)