Guild Cinema to Screen Documentary on Summer of McGovern

Albuquerque's Guild Cinema will screen ONE BRIGHT SHINING MOMENT: THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER OF GEORGE MCGOVERN on August 28 - 31, 2006 (Monday thru Thursday) at 3:00, 5:30 and 8:00 PM. The documentary was directed by Stephen Vittoria and narrated by Amy Goodman. It features interviews with the candidate himself, supporters and activists like Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Warren Beatty, Howard Zinn, and music from Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Donovan, and Elvis Costello. Here's a review by John Anderson of Variety:

"Too decent to be president" was the label stuck to former senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern, the self-effacing subject of Stephen Vittoria's new documentary. If "decent" means "polite," then this ferocious movie makes no effort to emulate its subject. Narrated with heat by Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!", ONE BRIGHT SHINING MOMENT is both biography and political analysis, ranging from McGovern's prairie roots and Depression boyhood to his place in the vanguard of the Vietnam era's antiwar movement.

Without overplaying the obvious parallels with contemporary Washington, the film is clearly intended as an elegy for decency and true democracy in American politics - the "bright shining moment" of the 1972 Democratic convention - and as a sad comparison with today's administration. One of the aspects to the McGovern legacy the filmmakers seek to redress is the man's poster-boy status for political failure, even while noting that his loss to Richard Nixon in the '72 election was the "mother of all landslides."

What the film aims to show - and does well, through a variety of well-informed talking heads, and well-tailored archival footage of elections past - is that McGovern's grassroots, anti-establishment tactics and ultimate victory at the Democratic convention was, and remains, an example of what U.S. politics strive, and generally fail, to achieve.

Guild Cinema
3405 Central Ave. NE (two blocks west of Carlisle in Nob Hill)
Albuquerque, NM 87106
(505)255-1848