Posted by Dallas VideoFest

The film is based on the infamous 1969 trial of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy and more, arising from the countercultural protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The trial transfixed the nation and sparked a conversation about mayhem intended to undermine the U.S. government. Gordon Quinn | Kartemquin Films Gordon Quinn is Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films and a 2007 recipient of the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Gordon Quinn has been making documentaries for over 45 years and has produced or directed over 30 films. Nancy Kurshan is an American activist, and best known for being a founder of the Youth International Party (whose members were popularly known as Yippies). She was a participant in the civil rights and peace movements as far back as high school. During her college years in Madison, Wisconsin, she was a member of Friends of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and CORE, and participated in the first demonstration against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC in April 1965. Kurshan initiated a guerrilla theater women's group called W.I.T.C.H. (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) along with Robin Morgan, Sharon Krebs, and Roz Payne.[1] When Rubin appeared in front of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) dressed as an international guerrilla, she joined him, appearing as a witch to put a hex on HUAC. At the conclusion of the "Chicago Conspiracy Trial", when all the defendants were initially found guilty, Kurshan and Anita Hoffman burned judges' robes during a press conference as a denunciation of the guilty verdict (which was later reversed on appeal). . She has also authored a popular analysis called "Women And Imprisonment in the United States", and in 2013, the Freedom Archives published Out of Control, her book about the battle to end control unit prisons. Along the way, Kurshan got a master's degree in social work and worked for 20 years as a social worker in the Chicago Public Schools.