Director's Statement

In the Fall of 1969, I picked up an old Bell+Howell 16mm fixed focus movie camera from the 1930s and all the Kodak 7276 B&W reversal film that I could afford. I shot the takeover and occupation of the Fordham University president’s office on the Bronx campus, on November 12, 1969 by the student antiwar organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

The physical film itself has been through an odyssey. For years, while charges were still pending against those of us who participated in the building take-over, the large 35mm canister containing the film was buried under a farm field in upstate New York, wrapped in duct taped in black garbage bags. We had assured our defense attorney that it was burned. For a while in the 70s, it was in the basement of my parent’s farm house in Ballston Spa, NY. I gave strict instructions to my mother to plead ignorance if the FBI came looking for it. She recently told me she decided that the best policy would be to hand it over to the feds if they showed up at the farm.  Fortunately, when the FBI did come, they didn’t ask about the film.

The film canister survived the 40 year journey from apartment to apartment in the Bronx, on Staten Island and eventually in a row house in Philadelphia. The movie, as opposed to the raw footage, was never far from my mind.

Over the years, there were various cuts of the footage exhibited to small audiences in South Bronx apartments, in shabby Brooklyn storefronts and Atlantic City squats, as well as in classrooms in New York, Philadelphia and New Hampshire.  My only print picked up a lot of neat dirt and scratches in the process.

I could say that I spent 50 years making this current cut. In a way, the movie spent 50 years making me. Preserving the footage and making this movie demanded patience and fortitude. My life, as well as the lives of many of the Fordham students appearing in the movie, were transformed that day in November when desperation to end the war in Vietnam propelled us to militancy.

I could go on making this movie for the next 50 years, but I edited the final cut in Final Cut Pro 7, and Apple doesn't let that software version function anymore.  (Although in 2019 I did add enhanced Spanish subtitles using Premiere Pro in the HD version destined for the Oaxaca FilmFest in Mexico.  I guess I am still at it.)

Bios

Director

Bert Schultz, BA, Fordham College, Fordham University 1970

Bert Schultz is a Philadelphia media activist who has produced and distributed progressive media since the 1960s.

·         Filmmaker, Fordham SDS, 1967-1970, 2006-2014

While a student at Fordham University (Rose Hill campus in The Bronx) and a member of SDS, he filmed, edited and produced a 16mm documentary of an administration building takeover versions of which have been screened over the last 50 years at various venues.

In 2006, Bert produced and directed the initial version of the Fordham SDS documentary at Scribe Video (Philadelphia, PA). A collective of former members of Fordham SDS have also contributed to the documentary.

In 2009, he received a PIVFA (Philadelphia Independent Video and Film Association) grant to edit a rough cut which was screened at the Flickering Image Film Festival In Philadelphia and the Brecht Forum in New York City.

Named Scribe Video’s Featured Artists in 2009.

The current version of Bert's Fordham SDS was completed in 2014 and screened at Granite State Film Festival in 2015 and the Oaxaca Filmfest in 2019.

·         Organizer of The Philadelphia Marxist School 1984-1991

Organized and lead The Philadelphia Marxist School, a radical, non-sectarian school attended by over 1,000 Philadelphians and 165 presenters and teachers. PMS offered course in Spanish For Activists, history and philosophy.

·         Publisher of Multimedia Capital, 1998

Produced a CD-ROM containing a multimedia version of Karl Marx’s Capital. The CD, that was distributed by Monthly Review Press. It used music and art to explain Marx’s critique of the capitalist system. Thanks to Microsoft, the underlying software doesn't work anymore.

·         Co-Chair, National Writers Union. UAW – Philadelphia Chapter 1998 – 2008

Served as the co-chair of the National Writers Union Philadelphia chapter. Worked with area writers to advance the interests of writers and the labor movement in Philadelphia.

Was awarded a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Richmond College, City University of New York in 1976.

Producer

Terry M. Dugan, BA, Thomas Moore College, Fordham University 1969

Terry M. Dugan was pelted with tomatoes and eggs at the first antiwar demonstration she attended, organized by the Berrigan brothers, in the fall of 1965 at Fordham University in the Bronx. She was married to Charles Dugan, the genial pipe smoking leader of Fordham SDS and was tear gassed, chased, threatened and carried out by police at many demonstrations in the 60s.

Terry became a writer and medical researcher working at Bellevue Hospital Pediatric AIDS clinic at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University School of Physicians and Surgeons. She appeared in the documentary, Women, Children and AIDS: A Test for the Nation and lectured on AIDS and Human Rights in Africa at Oxford University and on sex research methodology for the Social Service Research Council and the Ford Foundation. She trained hundreds of HIV/AIDS and sex researchers from the United States, Brazil and South Africa.

She holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Manhattanville College. She has won numerous awards for her poetry, fiction and essays. She was invited to read at many venues, including the United Nations, the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the Bowery Poetry Club. Fordham SDS is her first production effort.

Production Notes

So, the course is AGAINST urban violence?

The footage from 1969 was shot as a class project for a course I and Janet Foley, the ax-wielding starlet of Fordham SDS, were taking at Fordham. The name of the course was “Urban Violence.” It looked good in the catalog, but I don’t think we fully understood when we signed up that the point of view of the course was AGAINST urban violence. For Janet and me to get a grade I had to show the footage of the November 12 demonstration to the professor, but at the time there were charges against 22 of us that could have landed us in jail for 8 years, or whenever our student loans expired. The footage would have nailed us. Our lawyer had advised burning the footage, but that would have guaranteed an F for the course. So I snuck on campus, and set up a projector in a seldom visited classroom in Keating Hall where SDS often met. I had an SDS member visit the Jesuit professor in his office, and tell him that he would escort him to a secret location, and that he had to leave for the screening immediately, without letting anyone know where he was heading. The fellow SDSer brought the Jesuit, Fr. Ray Schroth, to the classroom. I screened the footage and politely asked Schroth to stay seated until the film left the building. He was not happy with the arrangement, but as I scowled at him, he stayed in his chair. Another SDSer then took the footage off campus to a South Bronx safe house. I think he gave us a C for the effort.

Busted during the shoot

I put together a cut of the movie in November of 1969, right after the big building takeover, to show in various clandestine locations. This was a silent cut, so I needed title footage. I snuck on campus (there were still 2 felony and 3 misdemeanor charge against me) with the camera, loaded with film, and a poster with Nov 12 written on it. I and another SDSers, who was not wanted by the cops, put up the poster of the Administration Building door, and shot the cut you seen in the current movie. A campus cop was not pleased by this boldness, and came charging after me. I flipped the camera to my SDS comrade and lead the campus cop off campus and on a chase through the South Bronx. Unfortunately, we soon came upon a real cop, with handcuffs, and it was off to the holding cell in the 48th precinct for me. Coincidentally arrested on the same day, my SDS comrade Louie ended up in an adjacent precinct cell, where we mournfully whistled the Internationale together. 

Photos