According to a new documentary, the pictures that made Cleveland’s 1969 river fire famous were actually of an earlier fire.
On Saturday, enough Clevelanders braved a Siberia-esque snowstorm to pack Tower City Cinemas for the Cleveland Film Festival. And while most of the films seem to be about far-from-Ohio topics (did you see the one about the hermaphrodite Scottish whaler facing the onset of globalization?), a few are closer to home . There’s even a film about that big watery thing that snakes through our city and that hammered people occasionally fall into: the Cuyahoga River. The WVIZ-produced Return of the Cuyahoga chronicles Cleveland’s history with the river. As you might have guessed, it’s a pretty abusive one. …
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2008.