(star)(star)(star) 1/2
Helen Garvy’s engaging new documentary “Rebels With a Cause” traces the history of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the student-driven political action group that grew, thrived and self-destructed in the 1960s — and what is most remarkable about the film are those elements Garvy chooses not to include. She doesn’t load “Rebels” down with a lot of familiar documentary footage. She doesn’t rely on a bevy of historians to interpret what happened back then and why. And she doesn’t fall prey to the 1960s nostalgia that often diminishes the credibility of films about that time — like “Steal This Movie,” last year’s bio-pic about Abbie Hoffman.
What Garvy does do is gather together a dozen or so former members to reminisce about their days in SDS. Through their recollections, we learn how the organization was founded in 1960; came into its own two years later with the drafting of the self-defining Port Huron Statement and eventually shifted its primary focus from the civil rights movement to the war in Vietnam; how it grew in strength and numbers as national support for the war diminished; and how its frustrations with the escalating war, fueled by the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, led to the creation of the group’s radical Weathermen wing (named after a line from a Bob Dylan song), which sounded the death knell for the organization.
Rarely has what is basically a talking-heads documentary worked so well. That it is largely because so many of the participants — they include local product Bernardine Dohrn and Chicago Seven member Tom Hayden — are educated, insightful and articulate. Whether you see it as a well-structured refresher course or an eye-opening historical survey, “Rebels With A Cause” does a terrific job.
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“Rebels With a Cause” plays at 6 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Thursday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. There will be a panel discussion with the filmmakers after the Saturday and Sunday screenings. Running time: 1:50. No MPAA rating. Newsreel footage of violence.
