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The Sixth Annual Cinefest film festival held on February 24-26, 2005 in Madison, WI.:

Wexler's “Medium Cool” used documentary footage captured at the protests around the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago interspersed with a fictional story. “At that time it was very difficult to get a documentary seen,” said Wexler. “I had worked as an assistant on newsreels, so I knew that newsreels were phony, that they were subsidized by the government, partly for propaganda purposes outside of this country. I had made a few small documentaries, and I knew that sometimes people can gain more meaningful information through a character than they can through what we call facts. Those are some of the reasons we made 'Medium Cool.'”

“I feel I need to remind today's audiences of what is not immediately clear in the film. What you won't see in the film is what was in the air at that time - the fear that people had, the questioning of people's patriotism and of who we are as Americans. Also, the courage of those people who were in the streets. At that time people were saying, 'Make love, not war,' and I think it's hard for people today to understand what a terrifying, challenging statement that was at the time. Even today, we see militarism being equated with patriotism at events like the Super Bowl. We have to understand what's being said to us in order to question it.”

“Films can rob us of our history,” said Wexler. “It's our job as communicators to be sure our values are human, positive, community-based values. Only then can we make films that communicate effectively and make a positive impact. We have to learn to talk to the people with whom we disagree. We have to learn how to talk and think and listen to people who have views which we may even consider stupid. And if we don't learn how to do that, we're not doing our jobs as citizens or filmmakers.”


In a 1986 Cineaste interview about Latino,
Wexler said, " ...the film is not addressed to Cubans or Nicaraguans; it is addressed to Americans. We are not asking people to evaluate the policies of the Sandinistas; we are asking people to evaluate the policies of the United States government....Are we so unsure of our ideas that we have to literally stamp out with military force any country with ideas that differ from ours?" Wexler went on to say, "I look upon Latino as a pamphlet film. If I can dignify it this way, I think of Latino as something Tom Paine would have liked to have worked on. The film does not correspond with all the esthetic nuances associated with good cinema, but it does say with some urgency that humans are being killed and we are responsible. I think that sometimes urgency has to be put into balance as a positive factor when evaluating Latino as a work of art."

Media and Culture
"As a cameraman," Wexler said, "I am interested in images and truth. Today people are conditioned to accept lies if they are commercial lies. What we don't see anymore is ethics. Media and [many commercial] films are devoid of content and ethics. We are conditioned for faster cuts to counteract any boredom. The daily politics are stock reports, score cards of business, etc. When the Dow goes up, we cheer even though those numbers only benefit 1-2% of the population. The American people learn our history from the media; so, in essence, the media has robbed us of our history."

Wexler agrees with Noam Chomsky that the media manufactures consent. "Television isolates people," he said. "Television doesn't want people to interact. And the media is getting worse. It works on us to find enemies, which misdirects the public."