It's liberals vs. conservatives in 'American Feud'
Originally published October 17, 2008
By Ron Cassie and Lauren LaRocca
News-Post Staff
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Director Richard Hall, right,
interviews professor Noam
Chomsky in his MIT office for
the documentary, “American Feud.” |
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A conservative Republican administration calls for partial nationalization of major banks. Liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill agree to bail out Wall Street.So what do political labels mean anymore? And what about CNN's ever-present electoral map divided ominously into red and blue states? How did we as a country get to where everything is color coded? Montgomery County filmmakers Richard Hall and Simone Fary set out four years ago to find answers to these questions and the result is "American Feud: A History of Conservatives and Liberals." The 90-minute film is billed as the first documentary to trace the history of liberalism and conservatism in the United States. Or, if you prefer, "Liberalism and Conservatism 101," for people frustrated with the current state of affairs. The film will be screened Saturday at the Blue Elephant Art Center in downtown Frederick , followed by a Q&A session with the husband-and-wife filmmaking team. Marie-Jo Binet, a local artist and associate professor of French at Gettysburg College, where she also teaches film, arranged the screening. She met the filmmakers several years ago in Silver Spring, before moving to Frederick . The film coincides with the upcoming election, Binet said, and because of its creative angle, she saw the Blue Elephant as an ideal venue for a screening in Frederick County. "Documentaries can be creative," Binet said. "It's very informative but entertaining and accessible." She hopes the film will be the first in a series of cinematic offerings at the Fifth Street arts collective. Hall, a video journalist for CSPAN's Book TV since its inception in 1998, and Fary, a stay-at-home mother of three who graduated with honors from Penn State University Film School, financed and distributed the film themselves. It is available from their website and from amazon.com. Hall hopes many people will see the film. "I think it helps explain how we got to where we are in this country," he said. "If this country is in crisis, and it seems that way, this can be viewed as a snapshot of where we are. Hopefully then we can figure where we're going next. I think it's timely." Social policy scholar and social worker David Stoesz in the film describes current political discourse in the U.S. as "one foot stuck in a bucket of cement, which is conservatism, and one foot stuck in a bucket of cement, which is liberalism -- and it impedes our progress." Linguist and philosophy professor Noam Chomsky said, "The terms have been so corrupted, they are almost unusable." "American Feud" is dominated by interviews with diverse political figures, such as radio talk show host and Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy, former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, authors Howard Zinn and Thomas Frank, libertarian scholar David Boaz, Goldwater campaign aide and scholar Lee Edwards, and former 1960s leftist and Georgetown history professor Michael Kazin. The filmmakers aim to trace the developments that shaped what are today considered liberal or conservative positions on various issues. Kazin was one of several interviewees, Hall said, who surprised him with what he said during the filming. "He basically said that the left was fighting the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment in the 1960s and that it was a mistake," Hall said. "Kazin said they never imagined the conservatives would take power, but that's what happened." Graphs, electronic maps, photographs and archival footage of speeches by everyone from FDR to George W. Bush are designed to inform and break down the stereotypes behind political labels. The idea, Fary said, is to encourage people to keep an open mind about problems and solutions, and avoid knee-jerk responses. "You have to question your own motivations each time and look at your own biases," she said. "It's interesting how convoluted things have become and also how tribal our thinking can become because we tend to surround ourselves with friends, in part because they already think like we do." Fary's previous work includes researching, producing and directing "Cheng Se Tseo In His Own Words" (2002), which screened on two PBS affiliates in Pennsylvania and at 2004 Waves Asian film festival. Hall's past films include the short "Southwest," which screened at the 1992 New York Film Festival, and "The Fall of the Elephant: 1992 Republican National Convention," which screened at the 1993 New York Independent Film & Video Festival and the Brussels, Belgium International Film & Video Festival. Both Hall and Fary said putting together a 90-minute film was so challenging that they will likely work on smaller projects in the foreseeable future. "The great thing is that technology in the last 10 years has made it possible for anyone to make a film," Hall said. "But that means that it's also harder to make your voice heard."
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