Seeing Red

Friday, July 3 - Saturday, July 4, 2026

Friday, July 3 at 4:50: screening introduced by Clay Risen, author of Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America

More than a million Americans joined the Communist Party between the Great Depression and the Cold War and then became disillusioned in the 1950s when Stalin’s crimes came to light. This Oscar-nominated film, which resonates in today’s political environment, lets those idealists (including Pete Seeger) tell their own stories of elation and disappointment. Reichert and Klein were founding members of cooperative New Day Films. As Pat Aufderheide wrote in Film Quarterly, “Their work was part of a documentary trend in the 1970s–1980s that pioneered feminist, left-wing, oral-history documentary.” Their heart was with the workers, an approach some historians criticized, but they preferred giving voice to them in lieu of academic narrators. That humanism characterized all the films Reichert made with Klein (and those she later made with Steve Bognar). SEEING RED was restored in 4K by IndieCollect in time for the 2019 traveling exhibition, “Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film.” .

4K Restoration by IndieCollect

Screening as part of our series Declaration of Independents!

See more and save! Get an Independents Pack ($30 for IFC Center members and $45 for non-members). Ticket packs are good for any three screenings in the series.

  • Country USA
  • Year 1983
  • Running Time 100 minutes
  • Format DCP
  • Distributor IndieCollect
  • Director Jim Klein, Julia Reichert
  • Cast Bill Bailey, Dorothy Healey, Howard "Stretch" Johnson
  • Accessibility Assistive Listening, T-Coil

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.