During the 1950s, McCarthy’s red scare closed down avenues of dissent for a decade. Americans were pitted against one another. Political opinions became ammunition. Since 9/11, the First Amendment has again been under attack. Liz Garbus’s Shouting Fire, a riveting exploration of the current state of free speech in America, is crucially relevant.Interweaving historical cases—The New York Times’s fight to publish the Pentagon Papers and the Nazis’ insistence on marching in Skokie, among them—with contemporary free-speech infringements, the film documents the way both the Right and the Left have lashed out in fear. In the stories of a left-wing professor fired for provocative remarks about 9/11, an Arab American principal made to resign after discussing the word “intifada,” and Christian schoolkids suspended for wearing Bible-quoting T-shirts, there’s an ironic pattern. When threatened by an outside enemy, perceived or real, we often demonize each other, undermining the very freedom we seek to protect. We think of First Amendment rights as inviolable; in fact, they’re profoundly vulnerable. Mixing vibrant pacing with an elegant journalistic style, Garbus orchestrates this urgent matter like a rallying cry for action. As her father, legendary attorney Martin Garbus, wisely warns, if we don’t fight for our freedoms every day, we will lose them.
Liz Garbus, Director
Filmmaker Liz Garbus is one of America’s most accomplished and prolific documentarians. She debuted at Sundance with her 1998 film The Farm: Angola, USA, which won the Grand Jury Prize and went on to earn an Oscar nomination, two Emmy Awards, and the National Film Critics Award. Garbus returned to Sundance in 2002 with the HBO film The Execution of Wanda Jean. Other directorial credits include Girlhood, The Nazi Officer’s Wife, and Coma; she also acted as executive producer of Street Fight, which was nominated for a 2005 Academy Award.