Saving Lincoln free screenings!

[Salvador Litvak]

Greetings from New York City! This has been a hectic week indeed, and I have been looking forward to a quiet moment when I could share an update with our friends here on LDS. It has been deeply moving to experience Saving Lincoln with audiences. At the Lincoln Presidential Library last Monday, I was told we'd be facing our toughest crowd; we played to several hundred Lincoln experts and enthusiasts in conjunction with the ALA Annual Symposium. Having seen the film a thousand times over the course of making it, I expected to make sure it was running correctly and then leave the room. I was pegged to my seat, however, as I experienced it through the eyes of those assembled. Suddenly, it was new again for me, and I openly wept for Mary as she lost Willie. Other moments hit me equally hard though I'd seen them so many times.

It was, of course, the mood of the room that made it fresh for me. When the film ended, and the audience spontaneously erupted into an extended standing ovation, I had one of the pinnacle moments of my life. Here were the people whose hearts I most wanted to touch, and their hearts were touched.

At the Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, the connection with our audience grew and deepened. I was most gratified to hear from guests of our cast and crew, people who came unprepared and unschooled in Lincoln lore, that they were touched by Mr. Lincoln, and felt that they'd been transported to another time and place through our CineCollage style. Over and over, they described a new kind of film experience, in which their empathy for the characters combined with the actual historic locations to create something utterly authentic and original.

Friday we opened in numerous cities, and we heard reports that entire audiences had sat through every bit of the end credits at screenings in FL and AZ, as if they did not want the Saving Lincoln experience to end.

Everything has gone so amazingly well with our audiences. And yet, you've heard by now that some members of the mainstream media have not just critiqued our unique and stylized look, but actually thrashed it. One in particular, at the Village Voice, gave us a 0 out of 100. In other words, he says, Saving Lincoln has no intrinsic value whatsoever . Presumably, in this man's eyes, anyone who enjoys it is a fool. It's as if we lovingly restored a vintage roadster, and now stand accused of foisting a used car on the oh-so-naive people!

Alas, because of such reviews, whole segments of America will probably never see a film that might have touched them, and brought them into Mr. Lincoln's unique legacy.

On the other hand, Harold Holzer called it "brilliant and entirely factual." This morning he wrote that Saving Lincoln is a "brave, tough, and incisive film--and some of the scenes--Lincoln and McClellan posing at Antietam, the encounter in the contraband camp--I found particularly haunting."

Another comment that touched me came from Mark Goldish, the projectionist at NY's Quad Cinema, a theater renown for showing high quality art, foreign and Oscar nominated films. He said, "I am the most jaded filmgoer in America. I never watch whole films anymore. I get them up and running, and if they're really good I catch a few minutes here and there. But Saving Lincoln grabbed me. It's beautiful and moving and I loved it."

So what the heck is going on here? Am I deluded? Is the history community deluded? Or does Saving Lincoln simply not fit into one of the established boxes?

We dared to make an epic historical drama on a very limited budget by inventing a new cinematic language that moves people, and we are being mocked for it. If these critics are correct, then epic stories may only be told by studios with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend.

I take solace in the reception Matisse and Maimonides received when they shifted the paradigm in their fields. And I ask you, my friends, to support Saving Lincoln. Send a message that we the people know better than these critics what is or is not art, what is or is not entertaining, what is or is not moving.

See the film this week if it's playing near you, or sign up for our email list at SavingLincoln.com to hear the news as soon as it breaks: we are partnering with Tugg, an innovative form of distribution that will soon allow you to bring Saving Lincoln to major theater chains in your area. (see http://www.tugg.com/howtuggworks to learn how the model works).

Luckily, there are incisive critics out there, and I leave you with Gene Santoro's final words from his piece on HistoryNet.com: "Well-acted, charming and gripping, Saving Lincoln is a small, shining gem."