USA,
2004, 62 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
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Erin McEnery
- prod
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Erin McEnery, Josh Holmes, John McEnery
- scr
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Erin McEnery, Thomas Andrew
- cam
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Cary Cremidas, Boris Zubov
- editor
-
Boris Zubov
- mus
-
Andrew Jackson, Rick Cuevas
- source
-
Impulse Films, P.O. Box 68, San Jose, CA 95113. EMAIL: erinmac2413@hotmail.com.
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COMMENTS
Erin McEnery in person.
OTHER
In 1987 the city of San Jose, California, commissioned a bronze statue of Captain Thomas Fallon to commemorate both his raising of the American flag for the first time in San Jose as well as California’s entry into the Union. But city leaders, planning what they thought would be a mundane civic activity, instead opened up a can of worms. A vocal minority of protesters, armed with allegations against Fallon reflecting their deeply held frustrations about urban redevelopment in particular and minority disenfranchisement in general, created a headline-grabbing controversy that delayed the statue’s unveiling for over a decade. Erin McEnery’s documentary is a personal journey into the origins of the fracas, now mostly forgotten only a couple of years after the statue finally found its home. Through interviews with her father—the mayor at the time—and some of the statue’s supporters and detractors, it becomes clear that emotions and political agendas have fueled the furor throughout, rather than a levelheaded search for historical accuracy or even equal treatment of cultures. McEnery’s lighthearted and self-deprecating approach serves as an antidote to the unyielding political agendas she encounters.
—Stefan Gruenwedel
FACTOID #232
Our first seminar at the Festival was entitled Censorship and the Actor’s Art: A Symposium, featuring panelists Michael Mayer and Lou Greenspan at Grace Cathedral, October 24, 1966.
