Cheap dates with plenty to talk about are being offered by Monterey Democrats every Saturday night at 7pm for the next two months.

Starting Aug. 28, and running until the November election, films meant to rile up voters will be shown at the Democratic Headquarters, 524 Fremont St., Monterey.

Organizer Kathy MacKenzie says she decided to plan the free film series after arranging a showing last month of the Robert Greenwald documentary Outfoxed, which critiques the Fox News channel.

“When we showed Outfoxed, the event turned out to be huger than we could have ever expected,” she says. “I got the sense that people are really hungry for information, and not just that, but that they want to be active.”

MacKenzie is working with other local groups to organize the film showings, which she says will include discussion afterwards with speakers relevant to the films.

The kickoff event on August 28 will show Greenwald’s Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election, and will be followed by a presentation by the Seaside Voter Education Center.

“We’re trying to get people motivated to vote,” MacKenzie says.

Other films that will be shown include Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of the American Empire, on Sept. 4; Poetry in Wartime on Sept. 11; and There’s Something About W on Sept. 18. MacKenzie says she’s waiting to plan the rest of the films in the hopes that new ones will be released before the election.

“The documentary producers these days are just distributing like crazy,” she says. “They are very active in the movement to get information into the hands of people in a really timely way.”

Many of the films shown will be graphic; scenes from the war in Iraq will be shown and MacKenzie cautions that it won’t be pretty.

“Some people won’t be able to look at that,” she says. “If you can’t look, that’s your choice, but it needs to be available. We don’t see these things in the regular media. We get the rockets red glare bursting in air, but we don’t see the people on the ground being affected. It’s critical that we at least be given the choice to see what’s going on rather than having someone else do the editing for us.”

For information about the film series, call 655-3121 or 724-2989. [BW]