October 24, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:  Leslie Unger - (310) 247-3090
                          lunger@oscars.org

Dramatic Campaign Battles
Tapped for Academy/UCLA
Documentary Screening

Beverly Hills, CA — “Street Fight,” which earned an Academy Award® nomination in the Documentary Feature category, and “The Last Campaign” will be screened on November 15 at 7 p.m. as the next installment in the 25th annual Contemporary Documentaries series, presented by the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Free and open to the public, the screening will take place at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.

The 2002 Newark mayoral race between the incumbent, Sharpe James, and upstart city councilman Cory Booker is the focus of “Street Fight.” Highlighting the intimidation and manhandling that invariably trampled on citizens’ democratic rights, the Oscar®-nominated film is a fascinating look at the battle between a seasoned old-school politician and an outsider who was variously accused of being “Jewish,” “gay” and “not black enough.” “Street Fight” was directed and produced by Marshall Curry.

In “The Last Campaign,” director-producer Wayne Ewing attempts to unravel the numerous covert and shadowy twists that marked the 2004 re-election campaign of veteran West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. Smear tactics used against the judge, funded indirectly by a coal company executive, as well as anti-McGraw ads possibly backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a “secret war” against judges are examined as part of what was dubbed the “nastiest” judicial race of that year.

Admission to all screenings in the Academy/UCLA Contemporary Documentaries series is free. Doors open at 6 p.m. All seating is unreserved. The Linwood Dunn Theater is located at the Academy’s Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, 1313 North Vine Street, in Hollywood, at the northwest corner of Fountain Avenue and Vine Street. Parking is available behind the building through the entrance on Homewood Avenue, one block north of Fountain. For more information, call (310) 247-3600 or (310) 206-FILM.

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