'Chicago 10' leads the 'Independent Lens' 27

AUDIO: My interview with filmmaker Brett Morgen is here.

Set your TiVos, VCRs or -- in some cases -- alarm clocks, because television's best documentary showcase is back for another season.

Into the highly charged atmosphere of this 2008 campaign, the PBS series "Independent Lens" boldly kicks off its lineup of 27 films with "Chicago 10," Brett Morgen's audacious and unapologetically political sendup of the kangaroo trial that followed the melee outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Airing at 8 p.m. Wednesday on KCPT and KTWU, "Chicago 10's" imaginative collage of animation, news footage, court transcripts and rock 'n' roll brings to life one of those moments in history that seemed frozen in history, completely irrelevant -- until, suddenly, it didn't.

“Chicago 10” (the term “Chicago 7” leaves out Bobby Seale, the Black Panther who was removed and tried separately after he mouthed off in court, as well as the group's two lawyers, who were jailed for contempt of court) is at its heart nostalgic. Made by a guy too young to remember 1968, it romanticizes a time when people regularly channeled their outrage into outrageous acts. Say what you want about the Yippies, but they had an uncanny sense of theater and of tactics, and masterfully goaded the Establishment, Chicago Division, into showing the world its ugly side.

Next week, “Independent Lens” settles into its weekly Tuesday-night time slot (usually 10 p.m. on KCPT, though some longer films will start earlier) with another political film, "Dinner with the President." In 2005 the Pakistani journalist Sabiha Sumar asks for, and got, a dinner invitation from the country's then-president Pervez Musharraf … and his mother. There, on camera, they debated the country's future direction.

I first saw "Dinner" in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Already events were changing the film's narrative -- Musharraf's political rival, Benazir Bhutto, had just been killed, and later a coalition government took power, marking the end of Musharraf's rule. I feared that by the time this film finally aired, it would be drained of any usefulness. Not so. Sumar's film is only partially about her dialogue with Musharraf, though that is still fascinating.

But Sumar talks with lots of people here: tribal leaders in a backwater town where bin Laden could probably run for mayor; young Pakistanis who party on the beach, well aware that they are the lucky few who benefit from Musharraf's liberalism; a truck driver who takes Sumar over the Khyber Pass and tells her he yearns for the day when "our children, brothers and sisters (can) be educated"; and a woman who declares she'd rather have a secular dictator running Pakistan than a democrat who lets the mullahs do as they please.

It's a wide-ranging, fast-paced intellectual tour of this remarkable nation that has its laundry mixed up with Afghanistan's. If you read The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns, then "Dinner for the President" is a must-see, with its compelling reminders that Khaled Hosseini didn't pull his stories out of thin air.

Here are other films upcoming in the "Independent Lens" series on KCPT. Viewers of KTWU will need either a good alarm or auto-record feature, because that station plans to skip most "Independent Lens" airings in prime time. Instead, it will show the films at midnight or later as part of the PBS overnight schedule (check listings; some films are delayed).

• "Knee Deep" (Nov. 6). Working a dairy farm is not good, clean fun. But if Mom and Dad have promised it to you upon their deaths, it might be worth all the muck and yuck and toil. Now let's say Dad dies and Mom decides she's not going to give you the farm after all. What would you do? Would you be desperate enough to kill Mom?

• "Lioness" (Nov. 13). Women aren't supposed to fight in war. Well, try telling that to the cooks, clerks and mechanics who went to Iraq and found themselves in the middle of combat. Jessica Lynch's story may have been mythical, but not those of the brave gals featured here.

• "The Atom Smashers" (Nov. 25). Liberty native Clayton Brown made this film about a group of scientists who use the Fermilab accelerator, located outside Chicago, to try to locate the Higgs boson, aka "god particle," a hitherto invisible subatomic sprite that could explain the universe's origins like nothing before. Even better for Brown, there's drama as the Fermilab group races to find Higgs before a more powerful particle accelerator goes online in Europe.

  In 2009, "Independent Lens" will also be the place to see films about such topics as the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the world's most popular typeface, our out-of-control national debt, as well as two of the greatest documentaries I've been privileged to see: "The Order of Myths," an intimate account of a city that holds segregated Mardi Gras celebrations; and "Recycle," a day-in-the-life chronicle of a former Afghan "freedom fighter" as he scrapes by in a Jordanian city known as a cradle for Islamic extremism.

Go to TV Barn and hear an interview between Aaron Barnhart and “Chicago 10” director Brett Morgen. “Chicago 10” is also out on DVD from Paramount.