Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives vol06 (Page 19)

THE VOLUNTEER, WINTER 1997-98 19

ver fifteen years ago the film
of a summer peace walk in

Vermont won a prize in a
Japanese film festival. This
inspired us in Vermont to have a
peace film festival of our own,
which has now become The
Vermont International Film
Festival, devoted to cinemato-
graphic depiction and considera-
tion of the crucial interrelated
issues of our times: peace, jus-
tice. human rights and preserva-
tion of the environment.

Our eighth such festival, held in

Burlington last October, featured 54
films shown over four days. Among
the films were documentaries on
George Seldes, the American journal-
ist, and jazz in Harlem. Ken Loach's
controversial Land and Freedom
shared a program with Judith
Montell's inspiring documentary of
the 1996 Homenaje in Spain, You Are
History,You Are Legend.

Following the showing of the

Loach and Montell films, an audience
of over 100 crowded a lecture hall to
hear commentaries from Lincoln vet-
eran Len Levenson and Murray
Bookchin, author of The Spanish
Anarchists. Len opened the discussion
with a tribute to Montell's film as an
inspirational record of the IB sur-
vivors' return to Spain. He then out-
lined VALB's collective criticism of
Land and Freedom, as history turned
upside down with its praise of the
POUM Barcelona revolt in 1937.*

Levenson related how Loach, in a

1995 meeting with the VALB staff,
sought help in finding a U.S. actor for
the part of the American volunteer, a
character portrayed negatively in the
film. Accompanying Loach was the
scriptwriter James Allen, who, we
later learned, wrote a play quickly
driven off the boards in London
because of its thesis that the Zionist
movement co-operated with the Nazis
in the Holocaust.

Murray Bookchin followed Len.

Ranting at a discomforting decibel
level he avowed "undying admiration"
for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade but

then extolled Loach's glorification of
the POUM's role in the Barcelona
revolt of April 1937. A tirade about
"the millions murdered by Stalin" (not
a word on Franco's massacres) ended

his presentation..

Much bestirred by Book-

chin's "take-no-prisoners" de-
meanor, a lively question-and-
answer period followed. It ended
when a young woman in the
audience cut through the hyste-
ria, affirming that "You Are
History, You Are Legend and
Land and Freedom ought not to
be compared because, in no way
did Loach depict the reality of
the fight against fascism and the
dedication of the International

Brigades to that cause."

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The Eighth

Vermont

Film

Festival

by George and Sonia Cullinen

George Cullinen, Lincoln

Brigade Veteran, and his wife Sonia
were founders of the Vermont
International Film Festival.

*Readers of The Volunteer may

receive the VALB critique of Land
and Freedom by writing or calling
the New York office, 799 Broadway,
New York NY 10003; 212/674-5552.

Lincoln-Washington Battalion machine gun officers. Standing are (L-R) Milt Woolf, Mike
Pappas and Zip Kachinski.This photograph is from the

Aura of the Cause exhibit.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/Brandeis University Library

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives - vol06 (Page 19)