The film examines the rise of white backlash, the turn of American politics towards the right after the civil rights movement, and the role George Wallace played in this history.

The film will be screened at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 28th in the Russell House Theater on the University campus. The panel discussion, along with brief excerpts from the film, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Russell House Theater.

The evening discussion features perspectives by three prominent filmmakers and scholars. Each brings considerable expertise on the subject of making historical images and words into narratives and arguments about the culture and politics of race and class in America.

GEORGE WALLACE: SETTIN' THE WOODS ON FIRE was selected by the Writers Guild of America for best documentary of the year 2,000. The film, which was based on Dan Carter's "Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics" was produced by Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler and broadcast by WGBH's THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE for PBS in April 2000.

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Paul Stekler was producer, director and writer for Settin' the Woods on Fire. Head of the Radio-TV-Film production program at the University of Texas at Austin, Stekler's previous work includes Vote for Me: Politics in America (1996), Last Stand at Little Big Horn (1992), Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics (1992), Among Brothers: Politics in New Orleans (1987) and Hands that Picked Cotton: The Story of Black Politics in Today's Rural South (1985). He is currently producing Class in America, scheduled for broadcast on PBS later this year.

Dan T. Carter has written several books on American politics, including The Politics of Rage (1995, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize), and From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution (1996). The documentary film Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (2000) is based principally on Carter's book of the same name -- and has just been nominated for an Academy Award. The first Educational Foundation Professor of History at USC, he is now finishing a book on Asa Carter, a one-time far right-wing speech writer for George Wallace who turned himself into 'Forrest Carter,' author of The Education of Little Tree, a best-selling memoir of a Cherokee Indian boyhood in the 1930s.

Charles Burnett has directed more than a dozen motion pictures -- features, shorts, documentaries, experimental video, and television miniseries. His recent work addresses material particularly relevant to tonight's discussion. His documentary Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland (1998) profiles the civil rights activist who rose from poverty to become a playwright and UCLA professor. In Selma, Lord, Selma (1999) he dramatized the story of a young Alabama girl inspired to participate in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march. Burnett is now working on Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, a forthcoming documentary examining the slave rebellion of 1831 as both an historical event and a subject of historical memory.