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.
BABY BOY NOMINATED AS AN EXPOSÉ ABOUT AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILIES Baby Boy begins with a voiceover that quotes a psychological theory that racism has made black men into babies, citing three reasons: (1) They call their spouses “mama.” (2) They call each other “boy.” (3) They call their home “the crib.” However, no such terminology […]
JANITORS FIGHT FOR WAGES AND RESPECT IN AFFLUENT LOS ANGELES Forty million persons have no medical insurance in the richest country in the world, the United States. Among the uninsured are recent immigrants, who often work at wages below the minimum allowed by law while immigration quotas are not relaxed to allow badly needed unskilled
TURKEY’S REPRESSION OF THE KURDS LAUNCHES A JOURNEY THROUGH HELL The title of the film Journey to the Sun (Günese Yoculuk) describes a trek by a young Turkish man, Mehmet (played by Newroz Baz), with the body of his Kurdish friend Berzan (played by Nazmi Quirix) from the European side of Istanbul to Zorduc, a
Journey to the Sun Read More »
As a comic book, X-Men has the distinction of being very political. Directed by Bryan Singer, the film X-Men begins in the Warsaw ghetto of 1944, with an incident in which Magneto as a child (played by Brett Morris) overpowers Nazi police but otherwise is unable to stop the Holocaust. The tagline of the movie, “Join the evolution,” informs
TRAFFIC EXPOSES THE HYPOCRISY OF THE WAR ON DRUGS The War on Drugs has been exposed as a fraud in Traffic, which is based in part on the 1990 BBC miniseries Traffik, which focused on drug traffic from Pakistan to Britain. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, whose Erin Brockovich was nominated for two awards earlier this
CASTRO’S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD EXPOSED IN BEFORE NIGHT FALLS Before Night Falls gives filmviewers a unique opportunity to get an inside look at Cuba since the revolution of 1959. Director Julian Schnabel (nominated by the Political Film Society in 1996 for directing Basquiat), exposes the contradictions of the Castro regime in a bio-pic about acclaimed
Before Night Falls Read More »
THIRTEEN DAYS RELIVES A TIME WHEN THE WORLD WAS AT THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR A nuclear winter nearly began in October 1962, when American leaders pondered a military response to the installation of more than two dozen offensive SS-4 nuclear missiles in Cuba that could hit nearly every city in the United States. The
TIGERLAND EXPOSES THE ABSURD MILITARY TRAINING FOR VIETNAM American combat troops in Vietnam were not particularly revered, and there have been few war heroes aside from those who suffered as prisoners of war in the Hanoi Hilton. Although some have attributed the American defeat to various factors, it was not until the release of Tigerland,
REMEMBER THE TITANS WARNS THE SUPREME COURT NOT TO RESEGREGATE AMERICA Although the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in 1954, some 500 of the 1,500 school districts in the United States had done nothing to integrate enrollment by 1968, when the Supreme Court ruled that immediate integration was required. In 1971, Alexandria,
Remember the Titans Read More »
PARIS SHORTCHANGES CHILDREN TO “SAVE” THE FRENCH ECONOMY During the 1990s, French unemployment hit 10 percent. The province of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (the same province featured in the recently released Humanité) had an unemployment rate of 33 percent, but government agencies turned a deaf ear to the social consequences, according to the fact-based story in Ça commence
It All Starts Today Read More »