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.
A BLACK NAVAL OFFICER FINDS PEACE SEARCHING FOR HIS PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS Antwone Fisher, a young African American in the U.S. Navy decided one day to write the story of his life. Ten years later, his autobiography, with some fictionalization, has now been portrayed on the screen. The story so deeply touched Denzel Washington that he […]
SKINS EXPOSES THE DESTITUTE CONDITION OF NATIVE AMERICANS Skins takes place at Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, the poorest county in the United States. When the film begins, a voiceover recites statistics of the miserable plight of Native Americans concerning their poor health and low income. The story focuses on Rudy Yellow Lodge (played by
A SINGLE FATHER ESTABLISHES A PRECEDENT TO GET BACK HIS CHILDREN IN EVELYN When Evelyn begins, Desmond Doyle (played by Pierce Brosnan) is celebrating Christmas together with his wife and their three children in Dublin; the year is 1953. Earlier, Desmond lost his job and had been spending so much time drinking at the local
A SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION EMERGES IN TO END ALL WARS The early comment in To End All Wars by a Scottish soldier characterizing World War II as the second “war to end all wars” somehow tells us that we are to view a film that will make us think. Based on the book The Miracle on
AUSTRALIAN “HALF-CASTES” DENIED RIGHTS ALONG THE RABBIT-PROOF FENCE The longest fence in the world bisects Australia for 1,500 miles. Farmland is on one side of the fence, which thus serves to prevent rabbits from invading the crops; hence the name “rabbit-proof fence.” Building and maintaining the fence placed some European settlers into contact with the
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ARMENIAN GENOCIDE FEATURED IN ARARAT Ararat, directed by Atom Egoyan, is a film about a film. We see only a few scenes staged for the background film, entitled “Arara,” which might have been an exciting epic about the death of one million Armenians in 1915 by the government of Turkey, which forced them on a
JEWS CARRY OUT THE HORRORS OF THE HOLOCAUST IN THE GREY ZONE Those who have seen the original film footage of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, whether in the 1955 classic Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) or as evidence in the trial of Nazis presented in Nuremberg (1999), may think that they
WORLD WAR III AVERTED IN K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER By 1960 the United States established an offensive nuclear advantage by placing Polaris submarines with nuclear missiles under the Arctic ice cap, in range of Leningrad and Moscow. Not to be outdone, the Soviet Union rushed construction of a similar submarine, named K-19, for operation by 1961.
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CIRCUIT EXPOSES A MERRY-GO-ROUND RUN BY A BAGMAN When a gay person can no longer stand being trapped in a small town, the opportunities of big city gay life seem overwhelmingly tempting, and the gay migration to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco has changed the culture of such meccas irreversibly. But gays,
CAR-WINDOW SOCIOLOGY OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN MÉXICO EMERGES IN Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN Two seventeen-year-old Mexico City boys spend a summer together in the coming-of-age Mexican film Y Tu Mamá También, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. When the film begins, their girlfriends are about to leave for a vacation in Italy, though not before one