Medium Cool

Shot on location in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Medium Cool examines the use and abuse of journalism in an era when widespread popular protests were increasingly subject to police violence and, more disturbingly, government-sanctioned subversion. Wexler, an Academy Award–winning cinematographer, blurs the borders between documentary and fiction in this multilayered masterpiece that simultaneously “encapsulates the divisive issues of race and poverty that remain as urgent today as they did in 1968 [and] makes us think about the way the media shape our lives and are used to deflect public attention from sustained political action”