Haskell Wexler

This is the story of one of the most extraordinary men in history, who ignited the American Revolution, defined the French and championed the use of Reason, all with his pen.

In the video John Hanlon, producer/recording engineer says: "Neil just captures the moment, he gives it his all, he goes for the throat. If he is not feeling it, he ain't gonna pick up the guitar. If he's feeling music, then he is recording, he's playing and I am recording it because that's what art is, capturing the movement, all the human imperfections, that is what it is about always. He is the commensurate artist, we get first takes on everything, that's the idea, cuz that's often times the best stuff. If you have to think about it that's not creating, that's thinking, then it doesn't work, it doesn't have that passion."

Oscar-winning filmmaker Haskell Wexler returns to his hometown of Chicago to document the Occupy Movement's demonstrations against the 2012 NATO Summit.

Haskell Wexler revisits the themes of his previous work "Medium Cool" on the occasion of the Occupy demonstrations in Chicago in 2012.

Marvel at the all-star musical cast of Jackson Browne, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Sarah Lee Guthrie, many other musicians as well as an audience of one-thousand longshore workers. Bridges was an immigrant working stiff who loved Karl Marx and Jack London, and who fought government persecution for 21 years to become an American citizen. He had a profound effect on the American labor movement, at the same time counting Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Paul Robeson among his friends, He was revered by some, hated by others --a hero or the devil incarnate--but he faced it all with a twinkle in his eye. As Harry Bridges, Ian Ruskin takes you on a captivating journey through some of America's most exciting and turbulent years.

A documentary that highlights the deadly combination of sleep deprivation and long days of work, focusing on the American film industry.

A 1998 editorial in Time magazine made the claim that the city of Los Angeles "might just have the most inept public-transport system on the planet earth. . . . The neglected bus system, which still handles 91% of all transit riders,is now roughly as efficient as travel by burro." Academy Award–winning cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, Latino) has now fashioned a new documentary tracing three years in the life of a group of bus-rider activists passionately engaged in the struggle to bring affordable, safe, and adequate mass transit back to their city. What might at first sound like a well-intentioned but rather parochial subject for a film has resulted in a truly inspiring lesson in how working-class, predominantly minority citizens forge an effective social movement and how, like Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycotters of the 1950s, a group of committed individuals can successfully challenge the powers that seek to control their lives.

The fighting between the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the Contra rebels backed by U.S. money and expertise is the focus of this pro-Sandinista film by Haskell Wexler. On a secret mission to help the U.S. Special Forces train Contra rebels in the jungles of Nicaragua, American soldier Eddie Guerrero begins to question the morality of the task at hand and consider how his actions may influence the fate of a nation.

Filmed account of the five MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy) concerts at Madison Square Garden and an outdoor rally at Battery Park in New York protesting the dangers of nuclear power. Performers include Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Carly Simon, and the Doobie Brothers.

Paul Newman joins ordinary people in the US and the USSR in taking on the military-industrial complex and campaigning for nuclear-war prevention.

A documentary about the Weathermen, founded as a militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960s and 1970s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests of the time. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen.

This film documents the journey of actress Jane Fonda and her husband – future California state senator Tom Hayden – through North and South Viet Nam in 1974. They travel from villages to towns talking with ordinary Vietnamese about their lives and the effects of the war on their lives, families, and communities.

The filmmakers spoke to ex-political prisoners who had been tortured by the military government who were at that point supported by the US government.

John Cassellis is the toughest TV news reporter around. After extensively reporting about violence and racial tensions in poor communities, he discovers that his network is helping the FBI by granting them access to his footage to find suspects.

The struggle for civil rights has been one of the most important issues of American life for the last fifty years. In August of 1963, groups from all over the country journeyed to Washington D.C. for a massive demonstration, and this film is a fascinating document of this event. Celebrated filmmaker Haskell Wexler ("Medium Cool") traveled with the San Francisco delegation, photographing and conversing candidly with the participants. He has succeeded admirably in capturing the significance and drama of this historic trip.

This short explores the early planning innovations and the subsequent mistakes that resulted in developing urban sprawl, suburbia, and gentrification in modern day US cities as well as the effects it had on its populace and industry.