49 Up!

Screening at the library on February 6th @ 7 p.m.!

How do people change over the years? Can the adult already be found in the child of seven? What account would you give that child of the life you have lived since? These are the questions that have been explored, with mounting tension and surprise over four decades, in one of cinema's most remarkable enterprises, the Up series. Inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," England's Granada Television began in 1964 what would become a unique record of English life and Western culture at the end of the 20th century.

In 1964, Granada's "World in Action" team, including a young Michael Apted (Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorky Park, Gorillas in the Mist), interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-olds from across England, asking them to describe their lives and hopes. The original "7 Up" was a beguilingly unselfconscious social self-portrait from a time when cinema was still young and television an infant — in fact, "7 Up" was television's first experiment in recording real people living their real lives.

Over the years, as Apted has tenaciously pursued the Up series, revisiting the children every seven years as they have grown up, navigating the divides between childhood dreams and adult reality, not all have participated in each succeeding film. Some have reacted against the series' intrusiveness. Others have embraced their roles. As "49 Up" revisits questions of love, marriage, career, class and prejudice — deftly inter-cutting footage from earlier films with contemporary interviews — it discovers surprising ruminations about the Up film series itself as well as unexpected turns in individual lives.

Apted has come a long way from his beginnings as a researcher at Granada Television to directing major award-winning feature films in both England and the United States. But he has never flagged in his dedication to the Up filmsand the pure documentary impulse they represent. In "49 Up," Apted, of course, rounds up the usual suspects. In fact, he manages to round up more of them than for any of the earlier sequels. The last time the series saw John, for example, he was a new barrister just graduated from Oxford. Married to Claire, he decided to stop taking part in the films. In "49 Up," John reveals why he has come back to the series and tells the tale of his life from then until now.

More familiar to the series' fans will be Tony, who, as a seven-year-old, wanted to be a jockey. He became a cabbie instead. Still, it was a good life for an "Eastender." In "42 Up," Tony showed viewers around the solid middle-class home he shared with his wife, Debbie, and their three children. But he never quite gave up dreams of glamour — embracing his role in the series and even trying to break into show business. "49 Up" reveals how Tony and Debbie, now grandparents, saved their marriage from infidelity and just what has become of Tony's acting ambitions.

In "7 Up," upper-class public schoolboy Bruce wanted to be a missionary in Africa to "teach people who are not civilized to be, more or less, good." The series followed Bruce from Oxford to teaching in Bangladesh. At "35 Up," returned from foreign missionary work, he was unmarried and lonely. By "42 Up," Bruce had met a fellow teacher, Penny, while working in London's East End, and the pair had tied the knot. Has the couple managed to have the family they dreamed of?

Sue, Jackie and Lynn began the series as girlhood friends, voicing the half-realistic, half-dreamy hopes of working-class girls for good husbands and decent jobs. The Up series subsequently saw Sue marry at 24 and divorce by 35. In "42 Up," she was a struggling, single mother with a son and daughter from her marriage. But she had met a new man. "49 Up" asks if Sue has finally found a stable life with Glen.

The series similarly followed Jackie through marriage in her 20s and divorce by age 35. In "35 Up," she had a son from a brief relationship after her divorce. By "42 Up," she'd had two more sons from passing encounters, and she was living with all three boys in a council flat near Glasgow. "49 Up" finds Jackie and sons in Scotland. Surviving on benefits and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, she says wistfully that Scotland reminds her of the close-knit world of London's East End when she was growing up.

In "7 Up," Lynn's ambition was to work in Woolworth's. Instead, she went to work in a library and by "42 Up" was still there, a rock of stability among the three friends. But "49 Up" finds Lynn devastated by news that her job as a children's librarian might be abolished. The mother of two wrestles with her anger over losing her life's work and with her fears over how it will change her family's life.

The young Suzy had had a difficult upbringing and dreamed of raising her own children in a more stable environment. By "42 Up," however, Suzy was having problems getting along with her own children. Has she managed to break the cycle of miscommunication between generations?

The series saw Paul, who lived in a children's home as a seven-year-old, emigrate to Australia in his early teens. Now, in "49 Up," he has a wife and children, and talks proudly of his daughter, the first member of his family to go to university. But there are clouds in Paul's sky — a change in career by his wife bodes ill for his own hopes.

Symon lived in the same children's home as Paul in "7 Up." By "42 Up," Symon had a new wife and son — and children from a first marriage who refused to see him. In "49 Up," he is back with a touching update.

In "7 Up," farmer's son Nick said he wanted to learn about the moon but firmly refused to answer any questions about girls. In "14 Up," the shy teenager stuck to his guns. By "21 Up," Nick had met Jackie, and in "35 Up" they were married and living in America. By "42 Up," the couple had a son, but Jackie was missing home. Both the marriage and Nick's career were at stake.

The series also catches up with the fortunate Andrew. In "42 Up," he had been happily married to Jane for over 15 years and was a partner at a law firm. The eldest of his two sons was planning to go to the same boarding school he attended. How fortunate has Andrew remained?

And what's happened to Neil? A happy child in "7 Up," he was, by age 28, wandering lonely and homeless in the Highlands. He surprised viewers when, in "42 Up," he was rediscovered working as a Liberal Democrat councillor in Hackney. The once-homeless man hoped to win a seat in parliament. Has he succeeded? Has he still got a roof over his head?

"49 Up" is a marvelous jewel box of stories as individual as they are entwined. It is a reminder of just how real cinema can be.

"The Up films had a modest beginning," says director Michael Apted. "The first was just an episode in the groundbreaking, in-your-face 'World in Action' series. It had a sly, ingenuous surface, the charming and amusing thoughts of a group of seven-year-olds ruminating on sex, money, school, race, love, mum and dad, the future and each other. It's a cruel trick to confront people with the cold reality of the past. Despite that, some enjoy being in the film and claim it as a thing to treasure; others take part under sufferance, persuaded that the films are unique and we should finish what we started. I thank them all for their generosity and courage in making these films possible. For me, the Up films are a priceless gift."

Screening of "The Camden 28"

Ephrata Public Library to Host
Screening of “The Camden 28”

Monday, January 21
7 p.m.

Early Sunday morning, August 22, 1971, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell announced that 20 antiwar activists had been arrested the previous night attempting to break in and vandalize a Camden, N.J., draft board office. Five days later, eight more plotters were indicted. Charged with conspiracy to remove and destroy files from draft, FBI and Army Intelligence offices, destruction of government property and interfering with the Selective Service system, members of the “Camden 28” faced up to 47 years in federal prison. Who were these dangerous radicals that America’s premier law enforcement agency so proudly took down? They included four Catholic priests, a Lutheran minister and 23 members of the “Catholic Left.”

The Camden 28 were a far cry from bomb-planting Weathermen or even fist-waving militants. But the very difference of these “Catholic Left” conspirators — their religious motives — as shown in the new documentary The Camden 28 may well have made them more dangerous opponents in the eyes of the Nixon Administration. A growing Catholic and religious opposition to the war could not be dismissed as extremist to mainstream America, so they had to be brought down.

The Camden 28 reveals just how far the government was prepared to go in the cloak-and-dagger story leading up to the arrests, including the participation of a 29th man who was wonderfully adept at solving practical problems that otherwise baffled the well-meaning but un-handy activists. But “the best-laid plan of mice and men often go awry,” as Nixon, Mitchell, Hoover and the nation would learn from the ensuing trial.

Participants in the religious antiwar movement shared the belief that killing, even in war, was morally indefensible. Led by the charismatic Berrigan brothers, the “Catholic Left,” though it included many non-Catholic religious and lay people, had conducted over 30 draft board raids, destroying close to a million Selective Service documents by 1971. But they were hardly a centralized or even structured movement. Actions were carried out by independent groups of activists, angered by the war’s mounting toll and its collateral effects on poor cities like Camden.

This was the case with the Camden 28. The group’s earnest dedication to stopping the war was hindered by a lack of resources, practical capabilities and the temperament to carry out a covert operation, but that didn’t stop them.

And their aspirations likely would have remained more fantasy than reality if Mike Giocondo, a former Franciscan brother, hadn’t brought a good friend, Bob Hardy, also an active Catholic lay person, into the plot. Hardy — the 29th person — was a professional handyman who had the practical skills and tools to turn the group’s ideas into action. Some members had been involved in other draft board raids and had perfected the skill of “casing” a target. But they needed to know how to get into the building. By going in with Camden 28 member Gene Dixon, Hardy managed to secure building plans, including those for security. Under Hardy’s direction, the group assembled a plausible plan of action. Even now, over 35 years later, members of the group, including Giocondo, can’t help but express the empowerment they felt as Hardy lent them the skills to throw a wrench into the gears of an “immoral and unjust war.”

Of course, after hearing what Giocondo and the others, including his parish priest, Father Michael Doyle, had in mind, Hardy had gone straight to the FBI — in the very building that housed the targeted draft office. He offered himself as an informer, and the FBI promptly accepted. The Camden 28 were allowed to get inside the building and destroy files for over two hours under FBI surveillance before the FBI moved in to catch them red-handed.

One of the fascinating aspects of The Camden 28 is hearing from so many of the participants, then and now, especially as they gather for a 2002 reunion in the very Camden courtroom where the government brought them to trial. Giocondo still can’t quite get over his excitement at taking action, and his sense of betrayal at Hardy’s double-cross. Doyle recounts his “conversion” to activism, and how weeks after the break-in and arrest, despite everything, he performed the funeral rites for Hardy’s son after the boy’s tragic death. Navy veteran John Swinglish remembers facing the stiffest penalty.

Even Bob Hardy, still unapologetic, explains why he was bound to uphold the law — which, for many of the 28 does not really explain why he volunteered for such an active role in exposing — some would say entrapping — his friends. He had been expected to be the government’s star witness. Instead, he wrote an affidavit for the activists in which he maintained that the FBI had helped carry out the action by enlisting him as an agent provocateur.
What happened in the courtroom after the arrests, however, may be the most astounding thing recounted by the film. In a trial that lasted 63 days, the plotters proclaimed their guilt. “I ripped up those [draft] files with my hands,” declared the Rev. Peter D. Fordi, adding, “They were the instruments of destruction.” In the best tradition of civil disobedience, and fully expecting to pay for their stand, the Camden activists asked the jury to “nullify the laws” against breaking and entering in this case, and to acquit them because citizens had a right to stop an “illegal and immoral” war. They also asked the jury to acquit them on the grounds that the raid would not have taken place without the help of an admitted FBI double-agent.

After three days of deliberations, a jury of seven women and five men returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges. According to The New York Times, “the defendants . . . and 200 supporters . . . burst into cheers, wept, hugged one another and sang a chorus of ‘Amazing Grace’,” a moment reenacted with gusto at the reunion.

The acquittals represented the first legal victory for the antiwar movement in five years of such draft board actions and prosecutions. The jury’s verdict moved Supreme Court Justice William Brennan to call the proceeding “one of the great trials of the 20th century.”

"The inspiration to make the Camden 28 was born 11 years ago," says director Giacchino, who grew up 15 miles north of Camden and whose parents attend mass at Father Doyle’s Sacred Heart Church. "Dave Dougherty, the movie's cinematographer, and I had been looking for a local historical subject that would make an interesting film. A family friend encouraged me to talk to his priest, the Rev. Michael Doyle of the Church of the Sacred Heart, about his role in the Camden 28.

“What I heard made me understand how a war halfway around the world can impact a city like Camden, and that there are important lessons to be learned today from the group’s actions — and the government’s ensuing reactions.”