Free. Open to the Public.
Reservations are recommended and can be made via email or phone at 312.422.5580. When registering via email, please specify "Forest for the Trees" in the subject line.
The Forest for the Trees is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the amazing story of the fight to clear Earth First! activist Judi Bari‘s name after her car was bombed and she was arrested as a terrorist in 1990. Bari was one of the first to place as much importance on the legacy and future of the trees as she did on the lives of timber workers’ and their families.
Civil rights attorney Dennis Cunningham, who began his career representing the Black panthers and the Weatherman, takes the case. Filmmaker Bernadine Mellis, the daughter of Bari’s attorney, is there at strategy meetings, at breakfast, driving to and from the court, to document her morally-driven, very tired dad.
The Forest for the Trees offers access into a unique father-daughter relationship, the painfully short yet extraordinary life of Judi Bari, and a piece of history that everyday grows increasingly resonant as once again the lines between dissent and terrorism are being intentionally blurred.
Following the 58 minute screening, there will be a conversation with the filmmaker and other panelists.
"A powerful and elegant document, beautifully done. It brings Judi Bari and the movement to life, and does a superb job on the trial itself…" –Howard Zinn, historian
This screening and discussion are part of the Public Square at the IHC’s Civic Cinema program, a series of films, forums, and conversations that uses the most exceptionally creative and engaging documentary films of our times as a springboard for talking about some of the most pressing and challenging social issues facing us. Many of the films screened in this series are funded in part by the Illinois Humanities Council.
The event is co-sponsored by the Columbia College Television Department, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, African American Studies Department-University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Children and Family Justice Center-Northwestern University School of Law, Legal Clinic.
For more information, please call 312.422.5580.