THE WEATHER
UNDERGROUND
A film by Sam Green &
Bill Siegel
Year: 2002
Running Time: 92 minutes
Language: English
Country: USA
The U.S. Capitol was spared a
violent attack on September 11, 2001.
But if you’ve forgotten, it was bombed 30 years
earlier. In the middle of the night on February
28, 1971, a blast tore apart a ground-floor
bathroom. The bomb harmed no one, but it struck
fear in Washington and around the country,
triggering calls for tighter security and a swift
crackdown on anti-war radicals.
Coming Up 3The Capitol bombers belonged to the
Weather Underground, who at the time enjoyed a
certain mystique for their bravado and their
willingness to test the limits of revolutionary
ideology. They proudly proclaimed that its
members could be found wherever “kids are making
love, smoking dope and loading guns” --surely
beating a dispatch from Al Qaeda.
Taking its name from the lyric in Bob Dylan's
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" ("You don't need a
weatherman, To know which way the wind blows"),
they were a small militant organization of mostly
middle-class youth who split off from the
Students for a Democratic Society, their methods
placing them somewhere between pranksters and
terrorists.
Youth, exuberance, sex, drugs; THEY WANTED
ACTION.
Coming Up 3In October 1969, hundreds of young
people, clad in football helmets and wielding
pipes, marched through an upscale Chicago
shopping district, pummelling parked cars and
smashing shop windows in their path.
This was the first demonstration of the Weather
Underground's "Days of Rage”. Outraged by the
Vietnam War and racism in America, they waged a
low-level war against the U.S. government through
much of the 1970s, bombing the Capitol building,
breaking Timothy Leary out of prison, and evading
one of the largest FBI manhunts in history.
Although numerically tiny, the members were
charismatic, provocative, articulate, and
intelligent. They commanded news media attention
with their brash rhetoric, violent actions, and,
in the eyes of many, romantic allure.
The exploits of the Weathermen—and the former
members’ reflections on those exploits now some
30 years later—is at the centre of the film.
Directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, THE
WEATHER UNDERGROUND traces the life and death of
the organization. Full of fascinating vintage
footage and interviews with former members, the
documentary manages to convey the reasons for
that mystique as it recognizes how 9/11 has made
their crusade even less appealing than it was at
the time.
Technical Specifications:
• Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This
DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other
countries. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Format: Color
• Audio Encoding: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: New Video Group
• DVD Release Date: May 25, 2004
• Run Time: 92
DVD Features:
• Available subtitles: Spanish
• Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo)
• Commentary by director Sam Green
• Commentary by former Weathermen Bernardine
Dohrn and Bill Ayers
• Original Weathermen audio communiques
• Bonus film on former Weatherman David Gilbert:
A Lifetime of Struggle
• Excerpt from the Emile de Antonio film
Underground
• Filmmaker biographies
• Filmmaker statement
