“Our Nixon” Showing at Hampshire College and Amherst Cinema
Hampshire College is pleased to announce a showing of the film Our Nixon and a question-and-answer session with the film’s creators Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye. The film will be screened on the Hampshire Campus in the Brand Screening Room of the Liebling Center on Friday, November 22nd at 1:00 PM. The question-and-answer session will take place in the same room on Monday, November 25th at 3:00 PM. Both events are free and open to the public. There will also be a showing of the film with a Q&A with the filmmakers moderated by Hampshire alum and filmmaker Brendan Toller at Amherst Cinema at 7:00 PM on Monday, November 25th.
Our Nixon is made entirely of archived home movies shot inside the white house during the Nixon administration(s), news footage, and material from audiovisual archives. The filmmakers are both former Hampshire faculty. Hampshire College professor Bill Brand aided the filmmakers in their quest for the archival footage that comprises the film. This film promises to be an exciting use of archival audiovisual materials to illuminate the inner workings of a troubled presidential administration.
From the Our Nixon website:
“OUR NIXON is an all-archival documentary presenting those home movies for the first time, along with other rare footage, creating an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency as never seen before.
Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin filmed over 500 reels of home movies from 1969 to 1973, capturing the prosaic and the profound. They filmed big events: the Apollo moon landing, historic anti-war protests, the Republican National Convention, Tricia Nixon’s White House wedding and Nixon’s world-changing trip to China. They filmed world leaders and celebrities: Nicolae Ceausescu, Chou En-lai, Barbara Walters.
But they also filmed each other and everyday life: Ehrlichman eating dinner off a tray on Air Force One, Chapin’s wife and kids meeting the Easter Bunny on the White House lawn, Haldeman riding a bicycle at Camp David. Ehrlichman was especially fond of filming hummingbirds.”