Mr. Smith goes to Paris and London and brings home awards from both places!

I just got back from screening Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? at the Oxdox International Film Festival in London/Oxford/Milton Keynes and the International Human Rights Film Festival in Paris. I was very worried about how European audiences would react to the film....would the Brits laugh at our jokes...will the French translation capture the essence of the movie....will anyone in Europe care about an American Congressional election....

As it turns out they love the film in the UK and in France. CAN MR. SMITH GET TO WASHINGTON ANYMORE? took the Audience Award at Oxdox and at the International Human Rights Film Festival of Paris, it brought back a Special Jury Prize.

If the Paris fest had given an award for most screenings of a single film, we would have won that one hands down. In addition to three regularly scheduled screenings in the fest itself, we had a pre-screening at one of the public universities. MR. SMITH also opened the festival when it screened before a sold-out house at the opening night ceremony (attended by the Deputy Mayor of Paris among other dignitaries).

One of the reasons we got such high profile treatment in Paris is that the French are weeks away from the first round of elections for picking their next president. So politics is very much on everyone's minds.

But discussions after each screening were fascinating because they showed some of the differences between the two systems, the most prominent being gerrymandering. The whole notion of a seat in the house of representatives being determined in primaries where districts are drawn either Democratic or Republican was positively mind-blowing to the Europeans. One woman at a screening in the UK presumed that those responsible for re-districting house seats in the Congress would go to prison (hello Tom Delay). Eyes rose when I explained how gerrymandering is legal in our political system.

Some of the more memorable questions included: "Do we have the moral authority to try and spread democracy around the world when this film shows how it is broken in your country?" "Are young people elsewhere in the U.S. as active as they appear in this film?" "Jeff Smith speaks with eloquence, passion and intelligence. Why can't George Bush seem to be able to speak at all?"

All in all the audiences were very engaged and asked some very difficult questions about the film and American democracy. I wish more Americans were asking the same questions of themselves.

Frank