join our e-mail list

Sign up to receive tickets, video highlights of our celebrity guests, event photographs, and updates on our Film Festival and Conversations.







The annual Forum Film Festival offers you the unique opportunity to watch and discuss movies dealing with legal themes, with a box of popcorn in hand and surrounded by a large audience, most of whom are not lawyers, so you don’t need to know any legalese. Featuring an exciting mix of current blockbusters, classic favorites, documentaries, and independent movies over six nights, the Film Festival illuminates the legal system with all of its triumphs, failures, moral dilemmas, and dramatic moments.

Each movie is followed by a post-screening discussion with renowned artists, writers, public intellectuals, and members of the legal profession who have a particular connection to the film. Explore how the themes of justice and injustice continue to inspire the artistic imagination. Hear interesting stories and anecdotes. Get answers to your questions. And share your own ideas and viewpoints.

Events / Film Festival Schedule / 2008

2008 Film Festival

A month before the historic 2008 presidential election, the Forum Film Festival kicked off with a screening of HBO Film's Recount. It continued with a mix of classics and box office hits—and its signature post-screening discussions where audiences gained exclusive insights into the films and the issues raised from screenwriters and actors, public intellectuals and legal experts.

flv

  • HBO FILM'S RECOUNT

    • Ron Klain – Chief of Staff to Vice President Joseph Biden; Former General Counsel, Gore Recount Committee
    • Benjamin Ginsberg – Partner and Lobbyist, Patton Boggs LLP; Former National Counsel, Bush-Cheney Presidential Campaign
    • Abner S. Greene – Professor, Fordham Law School
    • A powerful depiction––starring Kevin Spacey, Ed Begley Jr., Laura Dern, and Denis Leary––of the immediate aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, the legal and political maneuverings and intrigues of Bush v. Gore, and the recount that never was. Our guests included attorneys Benjamin Ginsberg and Ron Klain, who was portrayed in the HBO film.

  • LENNY

    • Floyd Abrams – Noted First Amendment Attorney; Member, Cahill Gordon & Reindel's Executive Committee and Litigation Practice Group
    • Nadine Strossen – Former President, American Civil Liberties Union; Professor, New York Law School
    • Dustin Hoffman stars in this powerful film about Lenny Bruce, who influenced a generation of stand-up comedians––such as George Carlin and Howard Stern––and whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style of social commentary was often deemed obscene by courtroom judges and caretakers of moral standards of decency.

  • THE PAPER CHASE

    • John Jay Osborn Jr. – Novelist; Author, The Paper Chase; Professor, University of San Francisco Law School
    • Paul Bergman – Co-author, Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies; Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA Law School
    • William Michael Treanor – Dean, Fordham Law School
    • When a first-year student at Harvard Law School finally begins to gain confidence in the classroom, things quickly go awry when he discovers that he has been dating the daughter of Professor Kingsfield, the law school's most fearsome professor, portrayed by John Houseman.

  • THE CONFESSION

    • David Black – Award-winning Journalist, Novelist, Screenwriter & Producer; Screenwriter, The Confession
    • A high-powered New York litigator (Alec Baldwin) defends a man (Ben Kingsley) accused of killing three emergency room medical personnel who refused to provide treatment for his son.

  • PHILADELPHIA

    • Mark Harris – Award-winning Author, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies as the Birth of the New Hollywood; Contributor, Entertainment Weekly, Slate and The New York Times
    • Alisa Solomon – Director, Arts & Culture Master of Arts Program, Columbia University's Journalism School; Award-winning Journalist, The Village Voice
    • Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington star in this groundbreaking film that depicts the plight of a young, gay lawyer who loses his job because he is infected with HIV.

  • ADAM'S RIB

    • Molly Haskell – Noted Critic; Long-time Staff Writer, The Village Voice, New York, and Vogue; Author, Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: Gone with the Wind Revisited
    • Daniel M. Kimmel – Film Reviewer; Past President, Boston Society of Film Critics; Former Attorney
    • Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn star in this classic courtroom comedy that pits married lawyers against one another.