Films that demonstrate how governments or quasigovernmental groups have violated or promoted the values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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 […]
WOMEN ASSERT THEIR RIGHTS IN MADE IN DAGENHAM Whereas the Equal Pay Act passed Congress in 1963, Britain granted equal pay based on sex in 1970. The dramatic story of the British struggle is told in the film Made in Dagenham, directed by Nigel Cole. When the film begins in 1968, 187 women are sewing
LT.-GENERAL DALLAIRE WIPES OFF HIS HANDS IN SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL Shake Hands with the Devil, directed by Roger Spottiswoode, has clearly upped the ante from Hotel Rwanda, Political Film Society awardwinner of 2004. Whereas hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina saved the lives of 1,200 Tutsis, Roméo Dallaire (played by Roy Dupuis) saves 26,000 lives
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MASS MURDERER #1 TRIES TO EVADE JUSTICE IN EICHMANN The central task of the independent docudrama Eichmann, directed by Robert William Young, is to reveal how he was convicted. Although the drama features his kidnapping in Buenos Aires during 1960, and his signature on a document that he went to Israel of his own free
A FRUSTRATED GENERATION FINDS A VOICE—AND THE SOUND IS HOWL If you have never attended a poetry reading, now you have the chance. Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is a poetry recitation, explication, exegesis, and deconstruction with graphic imagery unexcelled in film. The focus is Allen Ginsberg’s 75-cent, 26-page jeremiad Howl, which
THE BIOPIC JOHN RABE CELEBRATES A NAZI WHO SAVED 200,000 CHINESE LIVES Historians record the death of 300,000 Chinese in the “Rape of Nanjing” of 1937 at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. Similar to Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), the film John Rabe, directed and written by Florian Gallenberger from John Rabe’s diary, reveals
AGORA RECREATES EVENTS OF THE YEAR 391 IN ALEXANDRIA While the Roman Empire was in decline, Alexandria flourished not just because of the famous library and archeological wonders but also the exercise of free speech, philosophy, and science, as depicted in Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar. The philosopher of the day is Hypatia (played by
PRINCESS KA‘IULANI DRAMATIZES THE FALL OF THE HAWAIIAN MONARCHY After years of research at the Bishop Museum, Marc Forby directs Princess Ka‘iulani as a tribute to the sad history of the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy. The drama picks up steam when King Kalākaua (played by Ocean Kaowili) is forced in 1887 to sign the
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BLOOD RUNS IN GREEN ZONE, BUT WHY? Although Green Zone, directed by Paul Greengrass, attributes facts portrayed in the film to journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City (2006), the sequence of events from the American occupation of Baghdad in April 2003 has been provided in several accounts. Much more are in George
FORMOSA BETRAYED DEPICTS THE DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT IN TAIWAN In 1989, the Political Film Society voted A City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi) as the best political film at the East-West Center Film Festival. The film depicted the brutal takeover as the Nationalist China Army retreated from Mainland China to the island of Taiwan, killing