Pog Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Thursday, October 23, 1969 Poqe Twc THE MICHIGAN DAILY cinema WKNR presents SMONand GARNL Those not-so-pleasant 'High School days %HILLEL FRIDAY, OCT. 24 TGIF 4-5:30 P.M. By RON LANDSMAN Managing Editor Paul Goodman called it com- pulsory miseducation. I think anti-education would have been more accurate. Goodman, the incessant rad- ical critic of American public education, was talking about the deadening, alienating process conducted by every American public school against the stu- dents forced to enter them. What Goodman and Herbert Kohl wrote about, Frederick Wiseman (Who also made Titi- cut Follies, a damaging film expose of a state mental institu- tion,) turned into a film. It is called, simply e n o u g h, high School. It is cinema ver- ite - no actors, no plot, no staging - the real thing. The film which was shown by the Tutorial Project last Tuesday, was made at Northeastern High in Philadelphia, a very typical white middle-class s c h o o 1 -- not working class, not overly suburban. That is what gives the film its power. Northeastern is not a bad ghetto school; it does not lack money or a physical plant. What it lacks money will not buy. The crisis and power of the film is that this is a typical American high school that does everything wrong, not inten- tionally, but because it wants to do the wrong things. The major object of Wise- man's film is the school ad- ministration's and faculty's ob- session with rules and regula- Lions - what another reviewer called the "law and order of high schools" - rather than education. Wiseman's axamples are stun- ning. An assistant principal for discipline orders a student to show up dressed for a gym class despite a doctor's note excus- ing him - "I'm sick and tired of you talking . .. We'll deter- mine whether you take exercise or not." Another student is suspended for arguing with a teacher who gave him a detention for un- justifiable reasons. "We're out to establish that you're a man and can take an order. It's a question of how we follow rules and regulations," the be- wildered student is told. An old English teacher reads horrendously a horrendous poem, "Casey at the Bat." Ano- ther teacher preaches platitudes about family structure to a group of unipterested boys. A third teacher tells his class of Michael Harrington's The Other America with no sensitivity or understanding. And on, and on. Not that there aren't attempts to awaken the students. O n e young, fresh-out-of-college Eng- lish teacher tries to use Simon and Garfunkel's "Dangling Conversation" to show her class what poetry can be. She fails to arouse them at all, and the viewer can't help but feel that in twenty years she, too, will read her class "Casey at the Bat." Wiseman is no dead observer, though. From the "Dangling Conversation" scene, with the music still playing, he m o v e s out to view the school, letting the irony play itself out. Wiseman is an artist in other ways as well. Rather than just tell the viewer the high schoo' is oppressive, he subtley op- presses the viewer - with the starkness of the school, with the dry, understated dialogue, with the discomfiture of everyone in school. It is a dangerous technique that can destroy a film, but Wiseman doesn't let it get away. The viewer leaves not just disturbed with the school, but is reached emotionally as well by the quieter effects of the movie. In fact, it is Wiseman's ar- tistic and dramatic skills that most discredit the movie as a documentary. The reaction of professional educators to the movie is to charge that it isn't representative, that it shows on- ly the more bizarre side of high school life. Perhaps. Most of us can re- member a good teacher in high school who did excite us, who did interest us, who wanted to teach us and knew how. Wiseman does' not give those few good teachers a showing. But we probably also remember that those good teachers were few, that they were the oases in an educational desert. There Wiseman is on solid ground. But educators also have an- other, much more disturbing reaction to High School. They see nothing wrong. The school is functioning the way it should, keeping the students in line, maintaining quiet, establishing law and order. What this all means is that the school does not care about educating each student, about developing each student to his g r e a t e s t personal potential, about challenging him to be the best and most perceptive person he can be. There is, of course, a danger in these platitudes, which Wise- man also warns of. The few times he does show atempts at good teaching, instructors draw no reactions from their students. Teaching is a two-way pro- position, and while much of the blame for student apathy must lie with the educational system, it is still true that teaching may be the most demanding and sensitive profession, one that no society can ever hope to do well on a mass basis. The viewer today also cannot ignore the changes that have taken over many high schools, the "better" high schools, since this film was made over a year ago, and certainly since today's upperclassmen in college were in high school. Largely as a reaction to the liberalization and, liberation of college students, high schools students have also asserted themselves and won release from many odious practices-strict regulation of all activities, dress regulations and such. Indeed, the horizon is brighter STUDENT STRUGGLE for Soviet Jewry SIT IN- Silent Vigil THURSDAY 4-5 CALL SCHWARTZ, 769-1074 now than it was three or four years ago, but it is still far from good. A few Northeastern students' own condemnations of their school are still too accurate. In a "human relations" class for the bead-wearing students, one protested: "I think in its attitude toward education, its relations with the world today, this school is miser- able. It's cloistered. It's secluded. It's completely sheltered from everything that's going on in the world." And one of the few black stu- dents in the school adds, that while the academic offerings of the school are fine, "morally, socially, this school is a garbage can." The indictment still stands. Grads and Undergrads Welcome AT THE HOUSE 1429 HILL ST. FRI., OCT. 31-8:30 P.M. COBO ARENA Tickets: $6.50, $5.50, $4.50, $3 50 Tickets available at COBO Box Office and all J.L. Hudson stores. MAIL ORDERS: send check or money order with self- addressed, stamped envelope to COBO ARENA Box Office, De- troit, Michigan 48226. Produced in association with AUDIO ARTS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY MICHAEL COONEY 1421 Hill St. Leadbelly, seashanties, cowboy children's songs, Ragtime and songs, street songs, dances, and sayings. sonas, novelty snaopy FOLK LEGACY Recording Artist Guitar, Banjo, 12-string, Kazoo, perry whistle, flagelette, frettless banjo, mouth harp, jaw harp, and concertina. I lopoI imiuuiuumui ai A i -J I I1 II i0 LI T 2 r I , ' i 1 < Phone 764-0558 Order Youi Daily Now- 4 I I'll. PAUL NEWMAN AS HARPER "Good, but not as good as How I Won the War."-Stanley Kauffmann. OCTOBER 24-25 Fri.-Sat.-7:00-9:15-Aud. A-75c (cheap) OLIVIER'S HAMLET SENATOR GEORGE McGovern Ow on A look insi OOK RSde NothietInamil OCTOBER 25 Saturday 2:00 Only AUD. A-75c By DAVID DUBOFF Newsreel is a national or- ganization of revolutionary filmmakers and distributors. It was started two years ago in New York by a small group of radical independent filmmakers, and has grown to include bases in 10 cities and Puerto R ic o , with fraternal relations to sim- ilar groups in the Third World and Europe. In a recent interview Robert Kramer, a founding member of Newsreel, said that the organi- zation has been distributing Vietnam and Cuban films in the United States as one as- pect of their work to counteract what they regard as the "sys- tymatic lies and distortions of the power structure media." K r a m e r' s films Vietnam North, made in Vietnam this summer will be screened tomor- row night as part of the News- reel Festival of Revolution Films, in Aud. A and B, tonight at 8:00 p.m. "In general, there were no re- strictions on either where we could go, or what we c o u l d film," Kramer reports. "T h e only restriction had to do with the continued military precau- tions. The Vietnamese maintain a constant state of readiness, thinking it not unlikely that the Americans will start bombing again." Kramer says that the treat- ment accorded American pri- soners of war, whom the Viet- namese call "pirates" since "America has never officially declared war on North Vietnam." was "correct." "All the fliers we spoke with (six) said the U.S. military propaganda had pre- pared them to expect the worst." But they found, their wounds were dressed and they were con- veyed through the country side with no harm done to them. In an interview with Pham- Von Dong, the premier of the North Vietnam, Kramer reports that Von Dong explained that his government feels that Nixon is "intent on escalation and that the troop withdrawals are no more than an attempt to pla- cate American public opinion." "Group troops, in Pham Von Dong's opinion," Kramer says, "are no longer necessar'y to fight the war inrthe South since the war is being turned into one of total destruction from t h e air . Vietnam North, which origi- NATIONAL 9ENERAL COR~PORATION FOX EAST RN TEATRES FOX VILLBGE 375 No. MAPLE PD.-.7ro1300 HURRY-ENDS SOON Mon. -Fri.--7 :20-9:30 Sat. & Sun.-1:00-3:05-5:10-7:20-9:30 nated when Kramer was asked to accompany the anti-war de- legation to pick up three cap- tured U.S. fliers is an attempt to portray the "humanitarian policy" of the North Vietnam- esa towards the downed Ameri- can soldiers. Thurs.-Fri., Oct. 23 & 24 L'ATLANTE dir. JEAN VIGO (1934) 0 Vigo made a film in 1933 called "Zero for Conduct" about kids tak- ing over their school and if "L'ATLANTE" is as good, then we've got a hot one. "Don't believe everything you read."- Ernie Banks 7 &9 ARCHITECTURE 662-8871 AUDITORIUM And the Nixon Administration PRESENTS DOC WATSON (a-yup-yup!) The most earth-shaking finger-picker alive FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY October 24-26 Doors open at 8, Ears at 9 at the coffee house that dares to be indifferent . . Sunday, October 26-2 P.M. HILL AUDITORIUM TICKETS: $1.25 On Sale in Fishbowl, Union and League ANN ARBOR FESTIVAL OF MOVEMENT FILMS From October 21st thru 23rd, Ann Arbor Resistance is sponsoring the Ann Arbor Festival of Movement Films . . . the largest collection of revolutionary films ever shown in Michigan. Nearly all of the more than 35 films produced by NEWSREEL in the last two years, and more than a score of foreign films im- ported from fraternal organizations are being shown. These films are being screened in thematic groups and each group is being accompanied by a workshop. TONIGHT ANGELL--AUDITORIUM A-B "Go see 'Putney Swope.' A pacesetter with outrageous wit, courageous creativity, guts and intelligence. Tells it like its never been told before." -Judith Crist, N.B.C. 'It is funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unin- tellible and relevant. If anybody tries to. improve it, he should be sen- f'enced.,, -N.Y. Times 8-12 ADMISSION $1.50 I 1 "EXQUISITE DELICIOUS COMEDY!" -Detroit News "LIKE CHAMPAGNE BUBBLES!" -Ann Arbor News TONIGHT AT 8:00 "'Putney Swope' is a string, zinging, swinging sock-it-to-them doozey. It is going to take off and be one of the most talked about flicks in recent times. By all means I suggest, hell, I damn well insist you see 'Putney Swope' and be prepared for the nuttiest, wildest, grooviest shock treat- ment. Will leave you helpless with laughter." -Westinghouse Radio "'Putney Swope' is attracting crowds day and night in New York that are exceeded only by the fans of 'I Am Curious (Yellow).' But Downey's trump card isn't sex, it's his refusal to honor the taboos that Hollywood . ; . ; >{ a r OCTOBER 14-26 BRIAN BEDFORD fastidiously obeys." -Newsweek TAMMY GRIMES NOEL COWARD'S "It's all, as 'Mad Comics' would have it, 'humor in the jugular vein.' It has the raucous truth of a cry from the balcony or the bleachers. There's vigor in this vulgarity. 'Putney Swope' is a kind of 'Laugh-In' for adults." -Richard Schnickel, Life Magazine Lp MaJison Ave AUDITORIUM A WHITE NIGGERS White youth and students are working their way out of the sterile tensions and alienation of life in the cor- porate society. They have been experimenting with more freely cohesive, self-defining social forms, and undertaking collective self-expression and self-defense. This aroup of films, based on community action on the Lower East Side of New York, and Son Francisco's Haiaht-Ashburv. covers the drop-out, hip life-style movement in some depth, as well as police and army pressures anai national actions. FILMS PIG POWER--students take to streets and police "preserve dis- order." LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN--formation of hip poliicol community-Krassner-Hoffmann. HAIGHT-"children of love" forced to defend their culture. HIDE 'N SEEK--fantasv of querrilla struggle in U.S. GARBAGE-garbage dumped in Lincoln Center--a national sym- bol of "cultural eleaance." THE BRIG--Filmed on the Stage of the Living Theatre and th the Qriginal cast, Kenneth Brown's night- marish picture of life inside a Marine Corps ioil has been tightened and condensed by the selective filming of Jonas Mekas-Presented at Festivals in Venice--New York-London. YIPPIEI-Spaced-out view of 1968 Democratic Convention dem- onstrations. PEOPLE'S PARK-history and analysis of confrontation over People's Park in Berkeley. RIOT CONTROL WEAPONS--explanation of government weapons for the cities. -SIMULTANEOUSLY- AUDITORIUM B VIETNAM WAR and NATIONAL ACTION-The entire move- ment-student, youth and working people-sometimes marshals its forces to establish a presence on national issues-in recent years primarily the continuinq, vicious war against the people of Vietnam. This group of films examines movement consciousness and evaluations of its actions, and places these actions in the world context of liberation from U.S. imperialism. FILMS TIME OF THE LOCUST-Film of Vietnam War-prizes at Leip- zig, Mannheim, Florence. ,. 0'A .&rIC fnnrlnn --k ~-- +1- Vann ',.-, 01 1 Q A7 I