LAST PARTY 2000
Rebecca Chaiklin & Donnovan Leith, USA, 2001
Saturday 2 November 2002 7.10pm-8.20pm; rpt Tuesday 5 November 8.50pm-10pm
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman checks the pulse of American politics in the run-up to the last election, attending conventions and interviewing well-known figures of every political hue.
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Commissioner's
Comment Nick Fraser
Storyville Series Editor
Philip Seymour Hoffman will be recognisible to cinemagoers from such films as Happiness and The Talented Mr Ripley. In Last Party 2000 he shows considerable skills as a reporter. His brief is to understand what has gone wrong with the prowess of American politics - why so few people bothered to vote, and how it is that politics are dominated by well-financed lobbies.
To this end he goes to the Republican convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic one in Los Angeles. He hangs out with demonstrators as they are brushed aside by police. And he chats with a number of witnesses, including Willie Nelson and Professor Noam Chomsky. This is a sharp film that does in the end shed some light on the tedium and irrelevance of electoral politics.
It will be good to see a similarly disabused look at our own scene.
