Enoch Gathering, Documentary & Dinner:
Equal parts Dr. Strangelove, Putney Swope, and Network, Sammy-Gate takes you on a psychedelic trip into the 1970s polyester heart of darkness. On a USO tour (an American non profit-charitable corporation that provided live entertainment, such as comedians, actors and musicians) on Vietnam, Sammy Davis Jr. stumbles upon a CIA-sponsored plot to smuggle heroin into the United States. Through comic ineptitude mixed with noble intentions, Davis triggers a chain of bizarre missteps evolving the FBI, the Mafia, and the Nixon Administration that result in the Watergate scandal. "Psychedelic history" is what Noel Lawrence calls this LSD-drenched version of the Watergate scandal. Think: a satanic Richard Nixon talking like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. In 1972, the break-in at the Democratic headquarters in Washington wasn't a simple Republican plot. This motley mix of fiction and altered archive images has a lead role for celebrity Sammy Davis Jr, who is sent to Vietnam by president Nixon to find out why so many American GIs ("galvanized iron" soldiers) are becoming heroin addicts. Davis uncovers a right-wing conspiracy set up by American billionaire Howard Hughes, who is importing vast quantities of heroin into America to get the black inner-city youth addicted, with the aim of suppressing the political activism that was arising in the late 1960s. – International Film Festival Rotterdam.