Fifty Years Later: The Afterlives of Medium Cool
In the introduction to the anthology May '68 and Its Afterlives, Kristin Ross clarifies that her use of the term 'afterlife' should not be taken to refer to the cascade…
The Woman in the Yellow Dress: Medium Cool and the gendered historiography of New Hollywood
Around three-quarters of the way through Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969), Eileen (Verna Bloom) searches for her missing son, Harold (Harold Blankenship), in their Chicago apartment.[1] The scene is filmed…
The Uptown Hortons: Perceptions of Urban White Poverty in a Radical Chicago
Chicago's Uptown neighbourhood has no lack of film history. In the first decades of the 20th century, silent film pioneers Essanay Studios called Uptown home, with stages that hosted the…
Medium Cool: A Statement to Cinematographers
Among the many innovative films of the Hollywood Renaissance, Medium Cool is widely remembered for its radical politics and its documentary footage of the calamitous 1968 Democratic Convention and police…
“We Have a Visitor”: Boundary Crossings and White Allyship in Haskell Wexler’s The Bus and Medium Cool
In an early scene from Medium Cool (1969) a television cameraman, John (Robert Forster), and his sound recordist, Gus (Peter Bonerz), visit Resurrection City, a temporary shantytown erected on the…