Ackland Film Forum: “Election” (Alexander Payne, 1999)
About the Film:
Alexander Payne directed this adaptation of Tom Perotta’s 1998 novel on dirty politics in a high school election, which was inspired in part by the 1992 presidential race where George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot vied for the U.S. presidency. Sabotage, vandalism, ballot irregularities–all feature in this disturbing and hilarious portrait of Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), who will do anything to become student government president at Carver High School in Omaha, Nebraska, and Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), the social studies teacher determined to stop her.
The film will be introduced by Jonathan Albrite, English and Comparative Literature Department.
About the Series:
Join the Ackland Film Forum every Tuesday evening in October for Politics on Film, a timely series featuring five American films that explore the rise to political fame and power. The series will include A Face in the Crowd (Kazan, 1957), Medium Cool (Wexler, 1969), Being There (Ashby, 1979), Election (Payne, 1999), and Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed (Lynch, 2004).
All films will be screened at 7:30 p.m. at the Varsity Theatre (123 E. Franklin Street). Tickets are free, but must be reserved on the Ackland’s website. UNC-Chapel Hill students can receive CLE credit for attending by scanning the QR code at the event.
The Fall 2024 Ackland Film Forum series Politics on Film is co-organized by the Ackland Art Museum and UNC Film Studies, housed in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature.