WATCH NOW: FIRE presents new free speech movie from Oscar-winning director

Oct. 1, 1964 — The United States faces several political and moral conflicts after the escalation of the Vietnam War, racial unrest, and political assassinations. In response to the growing tensions, the University of California, Berkeley, bans all political speech on campus.

A former UC Berkeley student, Jack Weinberg, openly defies the university’s new regulation and is quickly thrown into a police car. Hundreds of students gather to prevent the car from leaving campus. A student named Mario Savio approaches the police to ask if he can stand on the vehicle and address the crowd. The cop says it’s okay, but only if he removes his shoes. So Savio — a Brooklyn native and civil rights activist — climbs onto the squad car in his socks and declares that even on campus college students are American citizens with the First Amendment right to free speech.

This is the opening scene to “Bodies Upon The Gears,” a new documentary short presented by FIRE, written and directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Wagner, and narrated by FIRE Senior Fellow and former national president of the ACLU Nadine Strossen. The film explores the dramatic birth of the Free Speech Movement, historically noted as the turning point in recognizing college students’ First Amendment rights on campuses. It premiered at the University of Virginia last week at an event commemorating the 60th anniversary of the movement.

You can watch it now, exclusively on FIRE’s website. 

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While Berkeley’s role in shaping public discourse in the 60s is oft-touted in history books and the civil liberties world, few know what led to such a dramatic affirmation of campus free speech. For Wagner, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia, our current moment is the perfect time to explore this episode in American history. What he found surprised him.

“When I started reading about it and saw the images, I was blown away,” said Wagner. “It was an incredibly dramatic story with fascinating characters. And it played out the core political and cultural themes with striking clarity: here was the Free Speech on Campus Creation Story.”

At a moment when generations and ideologies clashed over race, war, and politics, the Free Speech Movement affirmed that students had a voice. Even more importantly, the film notes that the creation of the movement, and its initial success at Berkeley, were not partisan. In fact, it was proudly the opposite.

Although most of the energy behind the movement came from the political left, Wagner notes that Berkeley students embraced “a very pure, non-ideologically-inflected concept” of free speech. This empowered other students from across the political spectrum to join, from the partisan (Students for Goldwater, Young Republicans) to the ideological (Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, Young Socialists Alliance). 

In short, the students participating in the Free Speech Movement practiced what they preached.

Wagner hopes the film will inform and inspire audiences “to embrace free speech, properly understood, as a key to unlock effective and responsible political expression.” 

He also believes FIRE is the ideal partner to help reach that goal, explaining that FIRE “was true to their name: they fully supported the production of the film, even as they guaranteed our creative freedom in making it. What more can any artist ask of a patron?”

“Bodies Upon the Gears” is now playing exclusively on FIRE’s website.