75'2017USAdirector: Pacho Velez, Sierra Pettengillediting: Francisco Bello, Daniel Garber, David Barkerproduction: CNN Documentary Films
The Reagan Show is a film about the spectacle of high-level international diplomacy with life-or-death stakes for humankind. A spectacle for television—we are talking about the 1980s—and about what was happening behind the scenes. In this masterpiece of found footage, Pacho Velez and Sierra Pettengill show us Ronald Reagan in the role of his life, using only television footage and videos shot by the presidential administration, including rehearsals, outtakes and other snippets. With irony, humor and a certain nostalgia for the good old days of television, they talk about Reagan's great media duel with Gorbachev and about the president-performer whose made-for-TV politics turned out to be a harbinger of a new era. But The Reagan Show is also a story about how, at least for now, we have managed to avoid the disaster of nuclear war.
Maciej Nowicki
