LAKE OF FIRE

TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER AT 7:15 PM

Country USA Running Time152 Format film/HD Director/DoP Tony Kaye Screenplay Anne Dudley Producer Yan Lin Kaye, Steve Golin, David Kanter Ed Peter Goddard Website www.anonymouscontent.com

Tony Kaye is one of the world's most acclaimed directors of commercials and music videos. Lake of Fire is his most recent film. Eighteen years in the making it traces the pro and anti-choice movements in the USA - a movement that is a microcosm of American politics and society.
One might ask what relevance a film examining American attitudes would have in Europe. Spanning the Clinton/Bush presidencies, it follows left and right-wing protesters through a gory trail of abortion clinic bombings and murders. Interviews with clinic staff and a fascinating mini-doc on the ÒRoeÓ of Roe vs Wade infamy cap an insightful and intelligent look at America at both its best and worst. This film is however, not a film about abortion alone - it is a deeply spiritual, insightful look at America, and examines how individuals on the extremes of society both left and right make decisions that determine their actions. Interestingly, it is an interview with Noam Chomsky focusing on the grey area in-between that provides the most insight to this debate.
Brilliantly shot by Kaye (who must be considered one of the decades top cinematographers along with Christopher Doyle), this movie is not for the faint-hearted; several grisly scenes made the audience gasp when I saw it - but it is by far the very best documentary on America, I've ever seen. EG

From Hollywood Reporter
Tue Sep 19, 2006 3:20 AM ET

By John DeFore

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - While 2 1/2 hours may sound like a long time for a documentary on one of America's most endlessly rehashed issues, the end credits may roll in "Lake of Fire" before viewers tire of it.

Smart, visually appealing and consistently engaging, it finds fresh ways of addressing a debate that is, thanks to new state laws and changes in the Supreme Court, once again becoming unavoidable. It has the right stuff to rise above the nonfiction pack both in commercial terms and in the public discussion, even if the subject's fatigue factor will keep some potential viewers away.

The film was shot over at least a dozen years, stretching back to 1993 demonstrations marking the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Director-cinematographer Tony Kaye makes a choice in handling video footage from various points in the medium's development -- he presents all of it in black and white -- that not only smartly lends it some uniformity but increases its visual appeal and fits the subject's gravitas. In more recent footage, high-def compositions have a level of artfulness echoed in the film's other production values (ranging from highbrow modern classical music on the soundtrack to credits by typography star Jonathan Barnbrook).

It is not the "definitive work" some have claimed it to be -- as if a single film could cover this territory comprehensively -- but what it does, it does exceptionally well. After initially appearing to be a comprehensive examination of the moral, ethical and political sides of the abortion question, it eventually finds too much material to ignore in one arena -- leaning heavily toward the portraiture of the most extreme factions of the anti-abortion movement, with footage of rallies and accounts of violence against abortion providers.

There's more to the film than that, and "Lake" is most exciting when talking to dispassionate thinkers whose own sympathies are sometimes too complex to attribute one way or another. Noam Chomsky, predictably, offers a nuanced view, acknowledging a set of "conflicting values" in which, as Alan Dershowitz puts it, "everybody is right." Chomsky is one of the left-leaning speakers in the film who is most generous in considering the anti-abortion position, though he also draws a line in the sand, affirming that abolitionists can only be taken seriously when they have a consistency of viewpoint: the "seamless garment," which Nat Hentoff --a liberal atheist who opposes abortion rights -- explains as the application of pro-life thought to war, capital punishment and oppression. Viewers wanting a truly comprehensive investigation will wish for more voices like Hentoff's: rational people who can defend their position in terms that all Americans accept (without, for instance, insisting on America's getting "back to the Bible").

Director-producer: Tony Kaye; Executive producers: Yan Lin Kaye, Steve Golin, David Kanter; Director of photography: Tony Kaye; Music: Anne Dudley; Editor: Peter Goddard.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

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Tony Kaye's LAKE OF FIRE plays extremely well in Toronto!

Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from Toronto is Tony Kaye's LAKE OF FIRE, a documentary that sounds extremely good. Here ya go... AIC Staff,

I have been an avid attendee of the Toronto Film Festival for almost 10 years and I believe I have just watched one of the best films I have ever seen. This past evening I had the opportunity to watch one of the more anticipated documentaries in this years program -- Tony Kaye's "Lake of Fire". For over the past 15 years Kaye has been shooting this film, a documentary that presents both sides of the abortion debate in America, and all of us are better off for it. This film is an intense two and a half hour plus experience that challenges you to look at both sides of the abortion argument and, ultimately, question your thoughts and opinions to date. It would be easy to use a cliche and say everybody needs to see this film etc.... (because they should...) but this film demands a lot from the viewer with heavy emotional scenes, rants from both the pro-choice and pro-life sides and intense graphic images and should not be forced on anyone who is not prepared for it. Kaye leads us by the hand through years of war and argument with leaders and professors from fundamentalist to bio-ethics and instead of taking us safely to the other side, he drops us off in the large grey area of the debate to fend for ourselves. During the Q&A after the film Kaye was asked if his own thoughts had changed while making the film. Kaye admitted that he went back and forth depending on who he was talking to but after this time he was still confused about where he stood. Most of us left the theatre looking like we had been hit by a sledgehammer. People will talk about this film for a long time. It doesn't matter if Lake of Fire wins awards, Oscars whatever, Kaye has produced a definite piece of art for this decade. If you live in Toronto the movie screens again this Monday at 9am (pity that crowd) and Saturday at 4:30pm. Derek A.
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