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<P>Michael Moore, it ain't: US right hits back with its own film festival</P>
<P>Andrew Gumbel finds slim pickings at the Dallas American Film Renaissance</P>
<P>19 September 2004</P>
<P></P>
<P>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=563392</P>
<P>The Republican Party has a problem. They can spin the news media their way
like jugglers at a circus but when it comes to making political films - one of
the signature features of the 2004 presidential campaign season - it seems they
just don't know how to attract critical respect and a mass audience.</P>
<P>Consider the evidence. On the left, we've had Michael Moore's
box-office-record-breaking documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, the lightning rod for
all right-minded Bush supporters who spit at the very sound of Mr Moore's name.
We've had The Fog of War, Errol Morris's prize-winning portrait of Robert
McNamara and his misguided leadership of the US military adventure in Vietnam.
And we've had The Manchurian Candidate, Jonathan Demme's updating of the Cold
War paranoia classic with a Halliburton-like corporation standing in for the
Commies as the true new enemy of America.</P>
<P>Just out this weekend is John Sayles's biting satire, Silver City, about a
tongue-tied, corruption-tinged heir to a political dynasty running for high
office (sound familiar?). Still to come before election day are a documentary
about Iraq by David O Russell, who made the Gulf War movie Three Kings, and the
animated war-on-terror spoof Team America: World Police, from the creators of
South Park.</P>
<P>The conservatives, meanwhile, can boast only the slim pickings of this
month's American Film Renaissance in Dallas, billed as the "first and only"
right-wing film festival in the country. A big Hollywood production this was
not. Apparently the organisers wanted to invite Mel Gibson but had no idea how
to contact him. Instead, they rolled out a series of low-profile, highly
ideological documentaries and television reruns, most of which had received a
critical drubbing if they had been seen at all.</P>
<P>Thus the Dallas crowd was treated to the world premiere of Confronting Iraq,
which gave a resounding thumbs-up to the US invasion and purported to give the
"real" reasons behind it (subtext: the non-existent weapons of mass destruction
were only ever the tip of the iceberg). Anti-Clinton sentiment was alive and
well in the shape of Mega Fix, which blamed the 9/11 attacks on the overweening
ambition of the Clinton White House. The cringingly bad television docudrama DC
9/11, which portrayed President Bush as a no-nonsense hero after the attacks,
was given another spin. The right-wing ranter Ann Coulter, who once suggested
America should invade the Islamic world, kill their leaders and convert the rest
to Christianity, was the subject of an adoring fly-on-the-wall book tour
documentary.</P>
<P>Elsewhere, fearless documentaries exposed how environmentalists are corrupt,
self-interested money-grubbers, and how gun control is the root of all evil,
leading directly to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the Rwandan genocide. Michael
Moore, meanwhile, was the subject of two direct attacks, Michael and Me and
Michael Moore Hates America.</P>
<P>Don't expect any of these to hit a multiplex near you. The problem is not one
of politics so much as film-making prowess: the conservatives may hate Mr Moore,
but they can't deny he has a knack. </P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>