Arts/Review MISSISSIPPI BURNING. With Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Frances Mc- Dormand. Directed by Alan Parker. At Cineplex Odeon theatres. Dateline, Mississippi, 1964: A tip by a paid informant leads to the grisly discovery of the bodies of three young civil rights workers in an earthen dam. Killings, mutila- tions and arson are the Ku Klux Klan’s retaliation to the Freedom Riders who are challenging the system of apartheid that has existed in the southern United States for decades, Despite that savagery, the cry of freedom is in the air, and the south will never be the same. Dateline, Miami, 1989: The killing of a black motorcyclist by white police in the community of Overtown sparks mass out- rage and violence. More police are called, and the violence escalates. Meanwhile, a special news report shows systematic racism against blacks by white cops in a California community. The young Miami black was killed during anniversary celebrations of the birthday of the charismatic black leader of the southern civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. Young audiences today have the oppor- tunity to make the connection between cur- rent events and history. Those who weren’t even born when the marches and killings in Birmingham, Jackson and other centres were in the headlines and on television sets daily, can get a glimpse of history through British director Alan Parker’s new film, Mississippi Burning. Possibly they'll wonder if much has changed. What Parker has given us is a fictional- ized account of the events surrounding the disappearance of Andrew Goodman, James Films Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner. Goodman and Schwerner, two white civil rights workers from the north, and Chaney, a local black, were arrested for speeding in Philadelphia, Miss., one night in 1964. They were released shortly after, and nothing further was known of their fate until the unearthing of the bodies some months later. In Mississippi Burning, agents from.the Federal Bureau of Investigation set up shop in the town of Shiloh, Miss., to investigate the disappearance. From the start, they know the task will be difficult. The town is run bya racist mayor, anda redneck sheriff and his deputy, all of whom display outright contempt and hostility to the agents: Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe), the straight-laced, by-the-book chief of operations, and his sidekick, the worldy-wise and wisecracking Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman). The presence of the agents in the fiction- alized Jessup-County (it was Neshoba County in real life) only incites the active racists to more violence. A seemingly end- less series of church burnings, castrations and lynchings follow to effectively terrify the local blacks into maintaining silence. Ward’s response is to increase the heat. He calls in dozens of agents, sets up a full- scale operation in a vacant movie house, and has Navy servicemen combing the swamps and ponds for signs of the bodies, after the Freedom Riders’ burned-out car is discovered. Anderson’s method is in total contrast to his superior’s. A former Mississippi sheriff himself, he uses local-boy charm combined with ruthlessness in face-to-face encounters with the local whites. In the end, after many confrontations with Ward, Anderson wins out. His unorthocox methods of combining terrorism and deceit pays off with convic- tions of several Klansmen. 10 « Pacific Tribune, January 30, 1989 Excellent performances and steady pac- ing make Mississippi Burning a first rate, action-oriented formula drama. Dafoe and Hackman bring their roles to life by remain- ing consistently in character. Realistic sup- porting actors give the film a true-life period feel, and Parker succeeds in re-creating the relentless sense of dread and horror through which participants and viewers of the day saw the segregated U.S. south. But Mississippi Burning has left consid- erable controversy in its wake. The fire comes not from the Ku Klux Klan.and its racist ilk, or from southerners today. The sources are people like Vernon Jarrett, the sole black member of the Chicago Sun- Times editorial board, who charged: “The film treats some of the most heroic people in black history as mere props in a morality play.” Ben Chaney, the younger brother of the murdered James, states: “The movie makes the FBI too good to be true. It is a dangerous movie becuase it could lead to complacency. Things haven’t changed that much.” Time magazine, the U.S. news weekly, reports these statements in a major feature on the movie that includes a revealing arti- cle by reporter Jack E. White. Calling Mis- sissippi Burning ‘a cinematic lynching of the truth,” White points out that the FBI’s director, (and notorious anti-Communist) J. Edgar Hoover, actually hated blacks and considered Martin Luther King Jr. a com- munist dupe, and that under Hoover’s orders the FBI attempted to drive King to suicide by exposing his apparent extramari- tal affairs. White notes that civil rights leaders were rebuffed in attempts to get the bureau and the U.S. Justice Department to protect Freedom Riders, including on the night Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman were murdered. The FBI was so convinced King was a threat to America that they did not alert him to death threats, White reports. That inaction certainly bore fruit, with King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968. A recent series on the media aired on U.S. public television showed that the FBI stepped up investigations in the Mississippi murders only after the media, with techno- logically innovative worldwide hookups, brought the news into everyone’s living rooms and helped foster national and inter- national outrage. We’ve seen several recent films on social topics in which FBI agents are good guys in the fight for racial justice and civil liberties, including Costa Gavras’ Betrayed, and The House on Carroll Street. Mississippi Burn- ing follows this trend, despite the evidence to the contrary. It has been charged, and accurately so, that Parker’s drama puts whites into the forefront and relegates blacks, who histori- cally led their own battles for civil rights, to the background. A much better depiction of the early Sixties marches can be found ina viewing of the excellent 1974 television movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which is, ironically, a complete fiction. It is still shown, and is available on video cassette. So we need much better dramatizations of the civil rights period, long ignored by mainstream U.S. filmmakers. The Vietnam War era has engendered some fairly telling stories criticizing U.S. militarism. Let’s cross our fingers that a new genre of Free- dom Rider movies in on the way. — Dan Keeton Mississippi Burning is ‘dangerous fiction’ Funeral scene in Mississippi Burning ... real civil rights heroes ignored. Africa film festival runs January - March r & fn 4 s 4 , 4 e At the Tribune, we’re not big fans of privatized art, whereby wealthy art patrons amass masterpieces for private viewing. But on the assumption that some great art works might have been headed for the trashbin without the intervention of private collectors, we'll acknowledge the service done to Cana- dian art by an unnamed couple in Toronto who have lent their 90-piece col- lection for a special showing at the Van- couver Art Gallery. Collector’s Canada is the name of the exhibition that features pre- and post- Confederation paintings up to the early 20th Century and runs Jan. 20-March 6 at the gallery in the former courthouse at Robson Square. Featured are the works of 44 artists, including members of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr. * * * The cinema of Africa is featured Jan- uary through March in Vancouver by IDERA Films, with a series running each Saturday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. The place is Pacific Cinematheque, 1131 Howe St., but membership is not required for these films. The films and their schedules are: Jan. 28, 7 p.m., BOPHA! and After the Hunger and Drought; 9 p.m., Allan Boesak: Choosing for Justice and The Cry of Reason. Feb. 11, 7 p.m., Water for Tonoumasse, Angola is Our Country and Reassemb- lage; 9 p.m., Chain of Tears and Corridors of Freedom. Feb. 25, 7 p.m., Girls Apart and The Cry of Reason; 9 p.m., Mozambique: The Struggle for Survival and Chopi Music of Mozambique. March 11, 7 p.m., Camera D’ Afrique: Twenty Years of African Cinema; 9 p.m., Freedom Square and Back of the Moon and BOPHA! Tickets are $3 for one showing, $5 for the double bill, with the exception of Jan. 28. For more information phone 732-1496. * K Willis Shaparla, a veteran of the On- to-Ottawa Trek and a performer in the travelling show that recalls the trek, will give his thoughts on the great unem- ployed struggle of the Thirties in a series of interviews on Rogers Cable 4 public access station. The first half-hour of the interview, on the program, Contact, runs Jan. 30, 9 p.m., Feb. 3, 4 p.m., and Feb. 5, 11 a.m. The second segment runs Feb. 6, 9 p.m., Feb. 10, 4 p.m., and Feb. 12, 11 a.m.