The Sundance Channel, in association with Docurama, has recently released The First Amendment Project, a collection of documentary films presented by the organization of the same name.
The film takes viewers through three half-hour, political vignettes: Fox vs. Franken, Some Assembly Required and Poetic License, all of which examine the existence (or lack thereof) of our civil liberties, as they hinge, sometimes loosely, upon the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Fox vs. Franklin centers around political comedian Al Franken’s highly publicized legal battle with Fox News over what amounted to a laughable trademark infringement. Filmmakers Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob follow Franken as he recalls his public fight with Fox news personality Bill O’Reilly, as well as Franken’s satiric use of the term “Fair and Balanced,” a Fox trademark, in his bestselling book title.
As Franken himself put it, to a mixture of applause and laughter, “satire is protected speech, even when the object of that satire doesn’t get it.”
Mario Van Peeble’s Poetic License looks at former New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka’s controversial poem about 9/11, “Someone Blew up America.” The poem erupted a nationwide controversy and ultimately got Baraka, as well as the Poet Laureate post of New Jersey altogether, removed.
“A democracy is a living, working, breathing thing,” said Peebles. “And it’s often when people say things that we object to, that the First Amendment has to kick in the most.” This utilization of the First Amendment seems to be true for all sides, because just as Baraka uses his right to free expression as, he puts it, “an exhaust for all the passions built up in a society,” the Anti Defamation League use their right to strike back against Baraka’s comments. The ADL would ultimately call on the governor of New Jersey to ask Baraka to resign from his post for Baraka’s statements about Israel in his poem.
In Some Assembly Required, John Walter illustrates how our right to protest is sometimes in ideological disagreement with our need for national security. Walter follows four New Yorkers and uses the 2004 Republican National Convention, and the bevy of large protests that surrounded it, as his potentially explosive backdrop.
“I wanted to make a movie that showed exactly what happened when people exercised their First Amendment rights,” said Walter. “The thing is, everyone likes law and order, but the First Amendment [also] guarantees certain freedoms that don’t look very orderly.”
Produced for the Sundance Channel and Court TV, The First Amendment Project brings life and engagement to subjects that can sometimes come off like a boring lesson in civics.
Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the ACLU, seems to underline one of the many threads that runs through all these vignettes when she says, “I think that criticizing ones government is a form of patriotism…it’s essential that we have members of our community speaking out against government actions, because we’re a democracy.”
For more info on the First Amendment Project, go to docurama.com.
