| Chicago 10 | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster | |
| Directed by | Brett Morgen |
| Written by | Brett Morgen |
| Produced by | Graydon Carter Brett Morgen |
| Starring | Hank Azaria Dylan Baker Nick Nolte Mark Ruffalo Roy Scheider Liev Schreiber James Urbaniak Jeffrey Wright |
| Edited by | Stuart Levy |
| Music by | Jeff Danna |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Roadside Attractions |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $177,490 |
Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace is a 2007 Americananimated documentary written and directed byBrett Morgen that tells the story of theChicago Eight. The Chicago Eight were charged by the United States federal government with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite ariot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War andcountercultural protests inChicago,Illinois during the1968 Democratic National Convention.
The film features the voices ofHank Azaria,Dylan Baker,Nick Nolte,Mark Ruffalo,Roy Scheider,Liev Schreiber,James Urbaniak, andJeffrey Wright in an animated reenactment of the trial based on transcripts and rediscovered audio recordings. It also contains archival footage ofAbbie Hoffman,David Dellinger,William Kunstler,Jerry Rubin,Bobby Seale,Tom Hayden, andLeonard Weinglass, and of the protest and riot itself.
At the1968 Democratic Convention, protesters, denied permits for public demonstrations, repeatedly clashed with the Chicago Police Department, and these clashes were witnessed live by a television audience of over 50 million. The events had a polarizing effect on the country.
Needing to find ascapegoat for the disturbances, theNixon Administration charged eight of the most vocal activists withconspiracy,inciting to riot, and other charges and brought them to trial a year later. The defendants represented a broad cross-section of the anti-war movement, from counter-culture iconsAbbie Hoffman andJerry Rubin, to renowned pacifistDavid Dellinger.
Seven of the defendants were represented byLeonard Weinglass and famed liberal attorneyWilliam Kunstler, who went head-to-head with prosecution attorneyTom Foran. The eighth defendant,Bobby Seale, co-chair of the Black Panther Party, insisted on defending himself and was bound, gagged and handcuffed to his chair, on the order of JudgeJulius Hoffman.
The title of the film is drawn from a quote byJerry Rubin, who said, "Anyone who calls us the Chicago Seven is a racist. Because you're discreditingBobby Seale. You can call us the Chicago Eight, but really we're the Chicago Ten, because our two lawyers went down with us."[1][2] The animated courtroom sequences were also informed by Rubin's description of the trial as a "cartoon show".[3]
Morgen tellsIONCINEMA, "We took events that happened forty years ago and ultimately wrote a film about today. I wasn’t born then so I couldn’t do it any other way," and "That’s why whenAllen Ginsberg goes to the witness stand and says: ‘Politics is theater and magic, is the manipulation by the media of imagery that hypnotizes the country into believing in a war that didn’t exist’, he’s not speaking about the Vietnam war, he's referring toColin Powell testimony in front ofUnited Nations. That was my interpretation of it."[4] Traditional music was not used in the film because according to Morgen, it "became a cliché, something anachronistic."[4] Morgen explained toChicago Magazine that the inclusion of music by artists such asBlack Sabbath,Rage Against the Machine, theBeastie Boys, andEminem is because "I don’t think of this as a movie about 1968 at all. I think this is a movie about 2007 and 2008."[1]
The film premiered January 18, 2007 at the2007 Sundance Film Festival. It later premiered atSilverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. The film opened in the United States on February 29, 2008; with alimited release, peaking at just 14 theatres, it earned $177,490 at the box office.[5] It was aired nationally on thePBS programIndependent Lens[6] on October 29, 2008.[7][8]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 80% of 85 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Brett Morgan's half-animated, half-documentary film is an arresting, sometimes visionary portrait of the historic and chaotic trial."[9]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[10]
Jim Emerson ofRogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, and wrote:
Through the kaleidoscopic prism of Brett Morgen's uproariousChicago 10, a zippy mixture of documentary footage and motion-capture animation, we see how the confrontations between police and protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention played out as political theater...[d]uring the trial, the defendants turned JudgeJulius Hoffman's kangaroo courtroom into the stage for a wild farce, complete with kisses, costumes and paper airplanes.... Through the prism of this movie we can see how[Abbie] Hoffman's satirical brand of 'political theater,' a concept he did not invent but adeptly exploited, may have seemed both cynical and naive at the time, but was keenly perceptive, even prescient.[11]
The film was the winner of the Silver Hugo for Best Documentary at theChicago International Film Festival in 2008.[12] The film was nominated in 2009 forBest Documentary Screenplay from theWriters Guild of America[13] and nominated for a News & DocumentaryEmmy Award in 2009 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Graphic Design and Art Direction.[14]
