White Light: Jack Stevenson Programme

Jack Stevenson is a real film collector. And as befits a real film collector, he has his own specialities and curiosities. For instance, he sees the value of films that many others do not regard as films. Propaganda or information films, for instance. And precisely in the field of drugs and cinema, one of his most important fields of collecting, the occasionally crazy or even comic warning films are of great historic importance, or at least entertaining and curious. Stevenson demonstrates examples from the fringes of half a century of American film history. Occasionally hysterical examples, in some cases it is difficult to imagine that they were taken seriously until not very long ago. Fairly innocent drugs acquired diabolical proportions; they were combated just as fanatically as the Communists in the 1950s or the 'terrorists' now. Stevenson shows the original hate propaganda that is referred to in the cheerful and satirical film Reefer Madness (also included in the White Light programme). Some of these films belong to the collective memory of Americans who grew up in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. These films were screened endlessly at schools, in prisons and in barracks. But no one had the idea of preserving them for posterity - you need very special collectors for that. Collectors like Jack Stevenson. (GjZ)

These are the titles of the films (or fragments from those films) as Jack Stevenson will present them. The makers of the films are often anonymous: The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (with Douglas Fairbanks, 1916); That Old Reefer Man (1933); Sweet Marijuana (1934); Marijuana: Weed With Roots in Hell (1936); Pusher (Dwain Esper, 1955); Curfew Breakers (Alex Wells, 1957); Hooks (1972); LSD: Trip to Where (1968); LSD: Case Study (1968); Naked under Leather (Jack Cardiff, 1968); Rockflow (Bob Cowan, 1968); The People Next Door (David Greene, 1970)