Midwest Theater Presents "Best of Enemies"

Indie Lens Pop-up, presented by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Nebraska Educational Television (NET), Humanities Nebraska & the Midwest Theater are excited to present this month's screening of "Best of Enemies"

In partnership with NET and the Midwest Theater, the free film screenings of Independent Lens documentaries combined with speakers and open discussion, confront real-life issues while bringing people together for community-driven conversation around films from the award-winning PBS series.
 
“Best of Enemies” starts at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 20. The documentary captures the legendary 1968 presidential debates between two famed intellectuals and ideological opposites: leftist Gore Vidal and neoconservative William F. Buckley.


In the summer of 1968, television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC News hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. Gore Vidal, a Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other’s political ideologies were dangerous for America. Like rounds in a heavyweight battle, they pummeled out policy and personal insult, their explosive exchanges devolving into vitriolic name-calling. Live and unscripted, they kept viewers riveted as Nixon became the Republican nominee in Miami and violence rocked the Democratic convention in Chicago. Ratings for ABC News skyrocketed and a new era in contentious public discourse was born.  Their televised sparring shaped a new era of public discourse in the media, demarcating the moment TV’s political ambition shifted from narrative to spectacle.

Directed by Robert Gordon and Academy Award-winning Sundance Film Festival alum Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet from Stardom), Best of Enemies spotlights the birth of the highbrow blood sport practiced by today’s ever-present pundit television.
 
You’re invited to stay after the screening for discussion, coffee, custom republican and democrat cookies.
 
Moderator: Colin Croft, professor at WNCC