14
Nov/10

STRANGER THAN FICTION: 12th & DELAWARE

14
Nov/10

Documentary looks at battle between prolife center and abortion clinic on a Florida street corner

12th & DELAWARE (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, 2010)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Tuesday, November 16, $16, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.hbo.com/documentaries

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who have teamed up for such documentaries as THE BOYS OF BARAKA (2005), the Oscar-nominated JESUS CAMP (2006), and one segment of FREAKONOMICS (2010), spent a year on the rather indistinct corner of 12th St. & Delaware Ave. in the small community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where an intense battle is waging. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic, while on the other side is the prolife Pregnancy Care Center. Ewing and Grady are able to get the primarily young, poor pregnant women considering abortion to open up and share their stories as they face one of the most difficult decisions anybody will ever have to make. The women are met by a constant handful of protesters outside the abortion clinic, who try to get them to change their mind and go across the street. Several of the women go to the Pregnancy Care Center by accident, believing it to be the abortion clinic — which is precisely why the center set up shop there — where they are not told of their mistake and are offered money and clothing to not go through with the termination of their pregnancies. They become pawns in a religious and moral battle that Ewing and Grady show can be as infuriating as it is heartbreaking, although the filmmakers do an excellent job of remaining neutral, not casting judgment. Interestingly, while the workers at the prolife center have a lot to say on the issue, the people at the abortion clinic are far more cautious and reserved, with the owner-doctor never being seen on camera but only pulling up in his car (perhaps at least partly for safety reasons, as Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered during the time the film was being made). This special screening of 12th & DELAWARE, which will be followed by a Q&A with Ewing and Grady, is part of the fourteenth season of IFC’s Stranger than Fiction series, which continues November 23 with Maximilian Schell’s MARLENE (1984) and November 30 with John-Keith Wasson’s SURVIVING HITLER: A LOVE STORY (2010).