The University held a showing and discussion of the Academy award-nominated documentary “Street Fight” in the Law school on Oct 1. Following the screening, the director of the film, Marshall Curry, answered questions from students.

“Street Fight” is a documentary film, showing the street level politics and tactics during the 2002 mayoral race in Newark.

Immediately following the film was a question and answer with Curry and award winning investigative journalist of WNYC Bob Hennelly, who discussed the deeper socio-political issues concerning race, ethics and campaigning in modern urban politics.

Curry said modern media covers politics by making both sides look equally corrupt to avoid seeming biased, when they should solely call out only the party involved in the wrongdoing.

“One the of the things that really frustrated me during the campaign and frankly about the way the media covers campaigns in general is the way they always try to make both sides be equivalent,” he said.

“It actually gives you a distorted view because it would be extraordinary if in every debate the Democrats and Republicans exaggerated or lied the same amount of times.”

Senior Mike Biacchi said he felt the movie and Q&A discussion were informative and exposed the reality of both politics and media.

“The movie was really good. It showed a lot of things that happen in everyday politics,” he said. “I guess you would say the darker side of politics.”

“It shows the power of incumbency that we have, that if someone has been in office for a very long time you just get used to them.”

Curry said the film was not only an insightful way for him to start his filmmaking career, but that the race was also a historical part of American history.

“I thought it was a very interesting time in African-American contemporary history where for the first time you have lots of young black people running for office who were born after the civil rights movement take on incumbency.”