Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum / Medium Cool, 1969

Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum | A rich weekend of films inspired by the exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out / From the Marie and Jose Mugrabi Collection.
Artistic Director: Karin Rywkind Segal

The screenings will be accompanied by introductions from the Museum’s curators and guest lecturers.

—

Medium Cool

USA, 1969 | Director: Haskell Wexler | Cast: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz | 111 min., English with Hebrew subtitles

Directed and photographed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966; Bound for Glory, 1976), Medium Cool follows John Cassellis (Robert Forster), a cynical and emotionally detached television news cameraman who discovers that the network employing him has been secretly supplying his footage to the FBI for the surveillance of political suspects. After objecting to the practice, he is dismissed from his job and drawn into a maelstrom of violence, fear, and political unrest during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Wexler seamlessly interweaves staged scenes with documentary footage of the violent clashes that erupted on the streets of Chicago amid protests against the Vietnam War and mounting racial tensions. By placing fictional characters within the unfolding reality of these historic events, he dissolves the boundary between fiction and documentary, transforming Medium Cool into a powerful cinematic record—and a compelling time capsule of one of the most turbulent moments in modern American history.

Like Tom Wesselmann, Wexler draws on the visual images of American culture as the raw material for his work. While Wesselmann draws on imagery from advertising, consumerism, and popular media, Wexler incorporates documentary footage into his film. Both invite viewers to reconsider the ways in which images shape our understanding of the world.

—

The exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out, currently on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, provides the point of departure for a weekend film program devoted to America in the 1960s and 1970s. Wesselmann’s work emerged from a visual culture saturated with images of the body, advertising, and consumerism, at a moment when American society was undergoing profound social and cultural change. The program expands the exhibition’s perspective through a selection of films that capture the spirit of the era: the counterculture; growing skepticism toward institutions and authority; shifting ideas about sexuality, femininity, and gender; the struggle for civil rights; and the social and political critique that defined the years of the Vietnam War.

—

Note: Film introductions will be in Hebrew.
The number of participants is limited | Advance reservations are required for all participants.
—

For more information on “Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum” and the full screening program >

—

Image: © Paramount Pictures