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.
CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR LINKS THE SOVIET DEFEAT TO 9/11 On April 6, 1980, Texas Congressman Charles Wilson (played by Tom Hanks), while nude in a Vegas hot tub and imbibing whiskey, watches a Dan Rather news story from Afghanistan in which an Afghan woman wonders why the Americans are not helping her people to defeat […]
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WILEY COLLEGE DEBATES HARVARD IN THE GREAT DEBATERS In 1935, a debate team from Wiley College for the first time tangled with the top debate team in the United States, Harvard University. How could students from an obscure traditional Black college in Marshall, Texas, receive such an invitation? The Great Debaters, directed by Political Film
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HOLLY HOLDS UP IN TRAFFICKING For centuries, poor families have sold their children in certain parts of Asia to perform services for the rich. In recent years, an estimated million or so have been coerced, sold, or stolen into prostitution at young ages. One of the centers of child trafficking, Cambodia, is featured in Holly,
IRAN’S PAINFUL HISTORY THROUGH THE EARS & EYES OF A TEENAGER IN PERSEPOLIS Persepolis is a coming-of-age biopic based on a four-volume graphic book (subtitled The Story of a Childhood) that is portrayed on the screen through animation. Based on the life of Marjane Satrapi, who writes the book and directs the animation, the story
REDACTED PROVIDES A HAND-HELD VIEW OF BLOGGERS & RAPISTS On July 7, 2006, two American soldiers raped Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, a fourteen-year-old girl in Samarra, and killed the rest of her family in cold blood. An Army report of the incident is largely redacted to hide the identity of the soldiers, their victims, and
STRANGE CULTURE DEMONSTRATES THE CANCER OF THE “WAR ON TERROR” Americans, who feed on genetically modified organisms (GMO), are undergoing a massive human experiment in which Europe, Japan, and other countries are interested but skeptical spectators. Without knowing what is happening to their food, Americans are unwittingly becoming sick while corporations patent the GMOs and
TRADE EXPOSES HOW HUMAN TRAFFICKERS BRING SEX SLAVES TO THE UNITED STATES Titles at the end of Trade state that one million persons are transported from one country to another for sale and that at least 20,000 slaves enter the United States each year. Directed by Marco Kreuzpainter, Trade focuses on sex slaves, who account
THE HUNTING PARTY LOCATES THE WORLD’S MOST WANTED MAN–A SERBIAN WAR CRIMINAL From 1985, when the Dayton Peace Accords ended the Bosnian War, Radovan Karadžić (aka the Fox), Bosnian Serb leader, has had a $5 million bounty on his head for war crimes (ethnic cleansing, rape, body mutilation, etc.) yet remains at large despite the
SEPTEMBER DAWN INDICTS MORMONS, INCLUDING BRIGHAM YOUNG, FOR A MASSACRE ON 9/11 In 1844, Joseph Smith, Jr., was assassinated in Illinois. Two years later, Brigham Young led many of Smith’s followers on a trek that ended up in barren Utah, then a part of México. After the Mexican War, in 1850, Utah was recognized as
AMU DIGS INTO INDIA’S ANTI-SIKH RIOTS IN 1984 In 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards. Both were Sikhs. Immediately, afterward, a three-day riot in New Delhi was responsible for the deaths of at least 5,000 innocent Sikhs. An orphan of that riot, three-year-old Amu (played in a flashback by Ekta Sood),