Lake of Fire will be screened at a number of film festivals before its official release in October. A film writer reported some intriguing audience reactions from the New York screening:  

The air was electric at the Museum of the Moving Image's preview screening of Tony Kaye's entirely offensive and altogether brilliant new abortion documentary "Lake of Fire," Josh Rothkopf's selection for its "Critics Choice: Great Documentaries" series. The 152 minute, black and white film (which features footage of two actual abortions, as well as close-ups of their remnants) insists on challenging viewers on all ends of the spectrum, and a good portion of the audience was predictably pissed off, as audience members hissed and incredulously laughed throughout the film, and lobbing angry questions at the director during the Q&A that followed.

"Wasn't this film anti-Christian?" one furious viewer asked, while another pointed out that the reproductive rights movement was trying to stray away from the clinical notions of abortion that Kaye forces his audience to consider. Kaye, seemed remarkably shy for a director who courted controversy for his "American History X" by placing a full-page ad in Variety to denounce it (because of changes that were made that he didn't approve), stated that he wished to avoid offering any easy compromises or simplistic propaganda, instead opting to show the issue as an endlessly complicated morass of moral choices in which all sides appear to be right, and where there is no room for compromise.

Indeed. Such a film makes it difficult to simplify the issue. We know from reviews (I have not yet seen the film myself), that a woman who allowed her entire experience from counseling - through the procedure - to the aftermath to be filmed, has complex feelings about it. In the end she feels she did the right thing and says so.  Naturally, any such message even seeing the light of day is disturbing to the religious right.  Also disturbing to the religious right will be the detailed discussion of the ideology of domestic terrorism presented in inteviews with convicted murderers of doctors, notably Paul Hill.

Clearly, the way that the film seeks to give equal credence to the antiabortion point of view will discomfit prochoicers as well, as the above report indicates.

So I will restate my warning from a previous post.

It is imperative that supporters of reproductive rights be prepared to take reaction to this film into account. Similarly, Democratic pols who have fallen under the sway of antiabortion evangelicals suchas Jim Wallis, Mara Vanderslice, and Eric Sapp, will need to consider that it may not be possible to tamp down discussion of reproductive rights as we go into the '08 elections in the ways that they had planned.  Progressive and prochoice religious leaders will also need to take the film into account as it moves through the body politic. And the sooner that process begins, the better.