Toronto To Fete Doc "Dixie Chicks - Shut Up and Sing" with Gala Screening

Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple ("American Dream") will screen her latest film, "Dixie Chicks - Shut Up and Sing" at the 31st Toronto International Film Festival. Co-directed by Cecilia Peck, the film will be presented as a Gala Presentation, and is the first time in 14 years that TIFF has screened a doc as a gala. On stage at a 2003 London concert Natalie Maines, lead singer of Texan trio the Dixie Chicks, spoke these 15 words to a small audience at the start of their sold-out international tour: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." The comment was delivered on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, and drew cheers from the decidedly anti-war and anti-Bush British crowd. According to TIFF, the film "travels with the Chicks, from their peak of popularity as the national-anthem-singing darlings of country music and top-selling female recording artists of all time, through the now infamous anti-Bush comment, and on through the days, months and years of mayhem." [Brian Brooks]