The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival has given SLO Review the opportunity to preview some of the narrative and documentary films on the festival’s April 24-29, 2025 program schedule. Follow the links to purchase tickets to see these notable films for yourself.
Storytelling and Civic Courage
“A landfill is where we dump our secrets, where we put our misdeeds and then paper them over and cover them up.” – Rachel Raimist
Punk rock lead man and political activist Jello Biafra once famously proclaimed “Don’t hate the media; become the media.” That is just what the students at Middletown High School in upstate New York did in the early ‘90s.
They embarked on an inspiring and ambitious project that became a real investigative journalism case and the subject of a new documentary, Middletown, by directors Amanda McBaine (Boys State) and Jesse Moss (The Overnighters), who also wrote the screenplay.
What begins as an intriguing class assignment becomes a gripping exposé of criminal toxic waste dumping that poisons the land and groundwater of a sleepy rural community, and reveals a secret collaboration of local governments and the Mafia.
Middletown is a documentary about making a documentary, seamlessly intertextual with Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed, a film produced by the students. It serves as a lesson about the power of combining education, community activism, and grass roots investigative journalism with the most basic of equipment and the support of public grants.
One of the most compelling aspects of the film is the cast of real-life characters and misfits at the heart of the multi-leveled story.
The adventure begins with law school dropout and visionary high school English teacher Fred Isseks. When he decides he wants to do something beyond just teaching literature and composition, he writes a grant and creates a new class called Electronic English. The $300 grant pays for cameras and a studio with recording, editing, and mixing equipment, which the students learn to use. An elective class, it attracts students who seem to have nowhere else to go and who dream of more than the typical high school coursework.
The students have only two guidelines: Be respectful and courteous, and speak the truth.”
It’s fascinating learning the personal circumstances of the four students who become the primary focus of the film: Rachel Raimist, an apolitical “cripplingly shy” punk rocker; Jeff Dutemple, a self-proclaimed poser who hangs out with both jocks and stoners; Mike Regan, an ROTC kid with a Marine stepfather; and David Birmingham, with no clique to call his own and a desire to “blow up every corporate headquarters.” They narrate the film as adults looking back on the exploits of their younger selves with nostalgic contemplation.
We watch as they tell their story about a group of outsiders held together by a common goal and a teacher-become-father-figure doing what local news outlets and governments failed to accomplish. It seems an impossible and endless task, and that is exactly what makes this story extraordinary.
Along with the non-pretentiously avant garde Isseks, two others are key to breaking the case: Mr. B, a police officer and aspiring actor with a dramatic New York accent, and Dieter, who looks like a David Spade character from a Saturday Night Live sketch. They are joined by a state animal pathologist, Ward Stone, and an activist state assemblyman, Maurice Hinchy.
With great determination and the leadership of Isseks and his buddy, an eccentric farmer, they break a case that has all the trappings of a traditional episode of Scooby-Doo: meddling kids uncover a horrible years-long illegal dumping and polluting scheme, with the perpetrators being allied government officials and members of the Mangelli crime family. The end goal? Re-zoning and developing real estate for steep profits on cheap investments.
‘Middletown’ demonstrates that revolutionary thought and action can be everyday common sense.”
The film will certainly appeal to those interested in investigative journalism, educators at all levels, and people interested and brave enough to look beneath the pasteboard masks of daily life and face the dark truths that hide just beneath the surface of the world around them.
There are moments of brilliant intensity in this film, like watching the students interview the local newspaper editor and former town supervisors and council members. Adults come off as deceitful and self-interested as they grow annoyed at the pointed questions. The students have only two guidelines: Be respectful and courteous, and speak the truth.
The film provides inspiration for the idea that with the right direction and mindset, determination and persistence, and a diverse team of personalities and skills, much more can be accomplished to effect significant change than by one individual alone.
Middletown demonstrates that revolutionary thought and action can be everyday common sense. It does not have to stem from complex philosophy or lofty ideas. It is natural, and well within most people’s reach.
We currently live in a time of political upheaval and social uncertainty. Now more than ever, questioning traditional authorities becomes so important that our lives and freedoms depend on our engagement within our democracy.
Middletown shows us that having civic courage and “acting as if you live in a real democracy” (as the older Jeff Dutemple says) gives us the power to change our world for the good of all.
Editor’s Note: Screenings of Middletown (USA, run time 110 minutes, rated PG-13, in English) at the SLO International Film Festival are sponsored by Covelop, Inc.