A Time to Stir

• by Thom Powers, September 17, 2008

I returned to New York City on Wednesday night after 10 weeks in Toronto. I must say it’s good to be home, even if home is the epicenter of financial crisis. Dining at an Upper East Side restaurant, I overheard a distinguished-looking gentleman on his cell phone saying that “today was the scariest day in my 30 years on Wall Street. I’ve never seen the system so close to collapse.”

Never a dull moment in New York. Another thrill to my homecoming is Scott Foundas’ review of A TIME TO STIR (pictured) in the new issue of the Village Voice. I programmed this four-hour epic documentary (still a work-in-progress) about the 1968 Columbia University student strike for the last day of the Toronto International Film Festival. Foundas writes that it was “the most vital movie I ended up seeing” at the festival. He wasn’t the only one. Time Out Chicago critic Ben Kenigsberg calls it one of “the more compelling documentaries” at TIFF.

The film is directed by Paul Cronin whose name may be familiar to STF loyalists from FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART shown in our Winter 08 season. Cronin is now based full time in New York, having returned to graduate school at Columbia. We hope to see him in the STF audience this season.

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