Bert Schultz

by Pete Mazzaccaro

There was a time in which Bert Shultz’s footage of student anti-war activists at Fordham University, where he was a student, was quite literally underground. That footage would become the basis for his short documentary, “Fordham SDS,” for which he’s been invited to an international film festival in Oaxaca next month.

Schultz was a student at Fordham in 1969. He was a camera enthusiast who happened to bring a 16-millimeter movie camera and a bunch of black and white film along when a group he belonged to, Fordham SDS (Students for Democratic Society), took over the school’s administration building for an evening. The group was arrested, and charges were brought.

“So our lawyer told us, you know, the film was dangerous to us,” Shultz said. “So it was like, literally underground, buried in a cardboard box in a green plastic garbage bag. That was until the case was settled.”

The film survived being underground, a stay at Shultz’s parents farmhouse basement in upstate New York and a Bronx apartment until finally coming to Shultz’s Chestnut Hill home, where he’s lived with his wife, Shoshana Bricklin, for almost 25 years.

Shultz has worked his whole adult life a s a technical writer, mostly in pharmaceuticals. A technical writing job brought him to Philadelphia. He also spent time organizing and teaching courses at a Marxist school in the city. He remained active in left wing politics and labor union activity.

Meanwhile, he was interested in doing something with the film footage he had of that protest on Nov. 12, 1969. So over the years he collected interviews of other members of the Fordham SDS at the time and began cutting the film together until he ended up with a 37-minute documentary that intertwines those interviews with Schultz’s footage in an effort to make sense of what was a turbulent period in the United States, particularly on college campuses. For Shultz and his fellow SDS members, the world right outside the walls of Fordham was violent and unjust.

“A lot of SDS students including our chapter, were just like, you know, working class kids, first generation college kids, who really were revolted by the war and by Vietnam,” Shultz said. “So people were really affected by having moved basically, from the inner ring suburbs, in the 60s, when everything was nice, and the economy was going up, and then, ‘boom,’ to seeing the realities of living in the Bronx. So that affected a lot of us. So the reason I made the movie is to show that side of SDS – a lot of SDS was just people opposed to Vietnam, and becoming opposed to the economic system by this exposure to what it meant for people that [we] didn't even know existed.”

Shultz said a particular aspect of SDS he hopes to portray was that it fell squarely between the sort of pacifist ideals nostalgically associated with the 60s and The Weatherman, a violent student organization that endorsed bombing and other acts of terrorism.

Shultz and his SDS companions took over an administration building, injured a guard and got in a skirmish outside the building after the takeover stopped, but that was the extent of the group’s willingness to engage in violent activity. SDS members were arrested. Shultz spent an evening in a jail cell but, like many of his friends, took a plea deal to avoid jail time. They were, after all, white suburban kids without prior criminal histories.

Shultz and Bricklin will head to Oaxaca, Mexico for the international film festival on Oct. 10. The film already earned Shultz an honor for Best Director at the 2015 Granite State Film Festival in New Hampshire. He’s hoping to get the film some further exposure by organizing an academic panel or conference at Fordham on the 50th anniversary of the demonstration.

“Columbia had a conference on their demonstrations,” he said.” Harvard had a conference. Dartmouth had a conference, and I just got invited to show the screen at the film on the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco State demonstration.”

He said hasn’t yet had luck making headway with professors and administrators he’s contacted at the school.

Anyone interested in viewing the film can find it at FordhamSDS.org, where it can be purchased for$11.99 or rented for $1.49. Pete Mazzaccaro can be reached at pete@chestnuthilllocal.com or 215-248-8802.