Films that bring previously obscured truths about the political process to the attention of the public, showing for example how offices of public trust are used for private purposes.
5 DAYS OF WAR IS JUST TOO LONG Beginning with a quote from Hiram Johnson that truth is the first casualty of any war and a frame revealing that 500 war correspondents have died during the last decade, 5 Days of War reports on the five-day war in Georgia during mid-2008, which received little attention […]
JOHN SAYLES SCORES ANOTHER HOME RUN WITH AMIGO Feature films are often more effective than documentaries because they humanize issues, depicting interpersonal relationships that symbolize policy problems. From 1899-1902 the United States conquered the Philippines by suppressing the independent Philippine Republic in a war with perhaps 1.5 million casualties. In Amigo, Political Film Society awardwinner
IMMUNITY IS IMPUNITY IN THE WHISTLEBLOWER Lincoln, Nebraska, police officer Kathy Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz) decides to take a lucrative offer as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia (though filmed in Romania) during 1999 and is soon appalled at how women are treated in the country, where nearly half the men have been killed in
THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE REVEALS INNERMOST SECRETS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN’S BAGHDAD Some rulers are so nervous about their security that they hire doubles. Saddam Hussein was one, as revealed in The Devil’s Double, directed by Lee Tamahori. But the film is not about Saddam. Instead, the focus in the embellished biopic is a screenplay adaptation of
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City of Life and Death, may be too graphic for the fainthearted in exposing Japanese atrocities committed in China’s capital Nanjing during 1937. As in the film John Rabe (2010), the focal point of the film is the sanctuary provided by the German John Rabe (played by John Paisley) for foreigners, Chinese women and children,
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PHOTOGRAPHERS WIN PULITZERS IN THE BANG BANG CLUB Newspaper photographers are taken for granted, often equated with paparazzi. Not so in The Bang Bang Club, directed by Steven Silver. The African National Congress has declared a boycott of all work for the White establishment, which in turn offers the jobs to Zulus, some of whom
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RELEASE OF THE CONSPIRATOR PROVES TIMELY IN MORE THAN ONE RESPECT Robert Redford clearly had a political agenda when he began to direct The Conspirator. Its release in April 2011 is timed to revive memories of the first shots of the Civil War some 150 years earlier. The story is about the trial of Mary
WHO IN CASINO JACK IS THE VILLAIN? Who would have predicted that Jack Abramoff (played by Kevin Spacey) would be the hero of a biopic? That’s what the late George Hickenlooper presents in directing an exposé of Washington that harkens back to Political Film Society awardwinner The Distinguished Gentlemen (1992). When the film begins, the
MAO’S LAST DANCER LEAPS FROM THE SCREEN Directed by Bruce Beresford, Mao’s Last Dancer is a biopic based on the 2003 autobiography of Li Cunxin (played by Chi Cao). With flashbacks throughout, the film traces Li’s life from 1961, when he is selected at grade school for ballet training in Beijing (a project of Mao’s
FAIR GAME DEPICTS HOW THE CIA OPERATED UNDER THE “COMMAND” OF DICK CHENEY According to the Constitution, the Vice President of the United States presides over the Senate, where he can decide a tie vote. Fair Game reveals Cheney’s megalomaniacal quest to establish his “1% doctrine,” that is, that the American government must act decisively