Primary - Liberty Brew & View Screening Tuesday

The next Liberty Brew & View screening is the classic 1960 campaign documentary "Primary." I love this film and I've been wanting to show it for a long time.

Robert Drew’s chronicle of the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary campaign of John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey is widely considered to be the founding film of American cinema verité. It was the first documentary in which the synchronized sound camera moved freely with characters through a breaking story. "At that time I was proposing that we make a new kind of history of the Presidency," recalls Drew, "that we would see and feel all the things that bore on the presidency at a given time -- the expressions on faces, the mood of the country, the tensions in the room, so that future presidents could look back at this and see and learn."

This was long before the 24 hour news cycle and campaign trackers. The documentary film crew was allowed a level of access to both candidates that no camera would have today. It's an entertaining look back at how campaigns have changed, and stayed the same. The free screening is Tuesday, September 18, 7:00pm at Capital City Bar & Grill in Springfield.