Today is the start of the festival! They did something new: at “our” venue—right by where we’re staying—- in the afternoon they screened a very long new documentary film: “Watergate—-Or How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President.” It was 260 minutes long!! But amazingly we were all captivated. It wove together excerpts from the hearings, interviews at the time, current interviews such as with Woodward & Bernstein and some re-exactions of some key conversations from the Watwergate tapes. The parallels with Washington’s corruption today were powerful and chilling. This film will be on the History channel in November, so watching it in several smaller pieces will be easier for most viewers. After our screening, there was a panel with the filmmaker, a congresswoman from that era, and Lesley Stahl, who you’ll recognize in the photo (if I can add it ok).
The second film we saw today was “Trial by Fire,” based on a real case. Chilling. Cameron Todd Willingham was on death row in Texas for the arson murder of his 3 children. From all evidence, he actually was innocent. Laura Dern played a woman who took on his cause to appeal the conviction. Chilling, but well done.
So we started the film festival with 2 real American tales.
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