USA / England,
2004, 89 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Robert Stone
- prod
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Robert Stone
- cam
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Howard Shack, Robert Stone, Richard Neill
- editor
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Don Kleszy
- mus
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Gary Lionelli
- source
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Robert Stone Productions, 758 Queens Hwy., Accord, NY 12404. FAX: 845-818-4018. EMAIL: rsproductions@mac.com.
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FILM POSTER
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COMMENTS
Robert Stone in person.
OTHER
Their catchphrase was “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people,” and they called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army. Thirty years ago, in the midst of a bloody war in Vietnam and nationwide campus protests, news media and government forces lavished frenzied attention upon this handful of mainly middle-class terrorists, most notorious for the kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst in San Francisco. With masterful juxtaposition of contemporary interviews, archival news footage, period television and film, filmmaker Robert Stone reflects on and brings us into the mood of the Bay Area in the early 1970s. We meet SLA founder Russ Little alongside clips from his childhood television diet of Robin Hood and Zorro—heroic fighters against oppression. We watch bombs drop on Vietnam as Mike Bortin, who joined the SLA much later, explains his desperation and loss of hope. “We (the U.S.) were being Hitler. And you saw it (on TV) every night.” Neverland chronicles SLA actions and declarations, the endless media rehash of the number one story, and the government responses. Much of the archival footage has not been seen since it was originally aired. In the midst of new war and anti-terror campaigns, Neverland illustrates how not to change the world.
—Kathleen Denny
FACTOID #65
The combined running time for all the films in the Festival is approximately 310,000 minutes. Or to put it another way, 5,167 hours. That’s about 215 days of viewing, 24 hours a day, with no breaks.
