Feminist politics at the turn of the twentieth century took many forms, including civil disobedience that was revisited in the 1960s by the civil rights movement. One of the most powerful forms of feminist protest came from the pen of Edith Wharton, whose novels dramatized the shallowness of money-driven American society in the Gilded Age, […]

In Humanité, directed by Bruno Dumont, an eleven-year-old girl is brutally raped and killed in Bailleul, a working-class town in the French province of Nord-Pas-de-Calais near Dunkerque and the Belgian border. Police superintendent Pharaon De Winter (played by Emmanuel Schotté), an unattractive man in his thirties, is assigned to the case and cannot at first imagine

Romantic love is unrequited love between those of different social positions. Western civilization has moved beyond romantic love, largely because barriers of class have broken down and women are liberated. Many parts of Asia, however, retain traditional cultures that present impenetrable barriers. In the Mood for Love, written and directed by Kar-Wai Wong, brings romantic love

Although not yet commercially exhibited outside the Philippines, Markova: Comfort Gay is a film about human rights violations that deserves a larger audience. Directed by Gil M. Portes, the movie is a biopic of Walter Dempster, Jr., who begins the film at the age of seventy-three; as a title at the end of the movie indicates, he

  Sérgio (played by Ricardo Meneses) is a North Lisbon garbage worker who lives in a one-room flophouse in O Fantasma (Phantom), a film noir that takes place mostly at night and has very little dialog. Although a female coworker, Fátima (played by Beatriz Torcato), is attracted to him, he is attracted to men, though he

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is nearly a camp version of portions of Homer’s The Odyssey, or so we are told at the beginning of the film, directed by Joel Coen. When the film begins, Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney), Pete (played by John Turturro), and Delmar (played by Tim Black Nelson) are escaping from

  Why did George Bush Senior take the trouble to invade Panamá at the end of 1999? If the arrest of Panamanian President Manuel Antonio Noriega is accepted as the president’s stated objective for the military action, then why so many casualties? The official bodycount is 500 Panamanians dead and over 3,000 wounded, with 23

ANNA AND THE KING—A FAIRY TALE WITHOUT LYRICS In 1862, Thailand was surrounded by imperialist powers and ruled by the Chakri dynasty. Britain controlled Burma on the East, and France was moving up the Mekong to exercise sovereignty over Indochina on the West. Dissatisfied with religious-oriented education provided to members of the royal court by