Medium Cool

Medium Cool (1969) is an American political drama to watch online on iFILM, directed by Haskell Wexler — one of the great Hollywood cinematographers of the era, shooting his first feature directly into the 1968 Chicago protests at the Democratic National Convention. Cast and crew worked alongside real demonstrators; the crowd scenes are not staged.

Robert Forster plays John, a TV news cameraman who has turned detachment into a professional skill. He records violence and grief without flinching, and he's good at it. What begins to crack that composure is a young Appalachian mother (Verna Bloom) searching for her missing son in the middle of the street chaos. Then John discovers his network has been routing raw footage to the FBI as a surveillance tool.

Wexler collapsed the line between fiction and newsreel before that move had a name, and the result still feels urgent. A film about what the camera does to the person holding it — and what it does to the events it records. Watch Medium Cool (1969) online on iFILM.