Films that demonstrate how governments or quasigovernmental groups have violated or promoted the values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Why would an apolitical medical student from an affluent family in Buenos Aires become a revolutionary? The Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de Motorcicleta), directed by Walter Salles, not only explains why but also reminds filmviewers that the same injustices, which affected him so profoundly, still exist. With one semester to go in order to complete medical […]
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TWO BROTHERS DEMONSTRATES THE NEED TO RESPECT ANIMAL RIGHTS Only 5,000 tigers remain in the wild today, compared with approximately 100,000 a century ago, according to titles at the end of Two Brothers, directed by Political Film Society awardwinner Jean-Jacques Annaud. The film is in effect dedicated to what titles call the “king of the
IMAGINING ARGENTINA DEPICTS THE HORRORS OF THE “DIRTY WAR” In Operation Condor, which involved eight Latin American countries from the 1960s to the 1980s, thousands of political dissidents and leftists were rounded up by the police and never heard from again. Military and police practiced torture techniques that were learned while they were students at
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CARANDIRU EXPOSES A SENSELESS PRISON MASSACRE IN BRASIL On October 2, 1992, some 111 inmates of the House of Detention at Carandiru, São Paulo, were brutally gunned down by a riot squad called in to break up a fight between rival gangs. The film Carandiru, directed by Hector Babenco, recreates those events with voiceovers by
THE GATEKEEPER ANSWERS THE MEXICANPHOBIA OF HARVARD PROFESSOR HUNTINGTON When The Gatekeeper begins, a talk-show radio host lambastes Mexicans, saying that they account for 90 percent of the 11 million illegal aliens in the United States, 70 percent of schoolchildren in California and 80 percent of the drug traffic. Further, the voice says that all
Loosely based on a true story, Osama is a retrospective about how women coped with the Taliban in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The film begins with about one hundred women in light blue burkas demonstrating; banners say that they are widows who want to work, as they are hungry, but also say that they are not
THE STATEMENT DOCUMENTS DENAZIFICATION IN FRANCE AS LATE AS THE 1990s The Vichy regime was a part of France not occupied by the German military but instead governed by French who were willing to collaborate with the Nazis. Although much attention has been directed at Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” less well known is
BEYOND BORDERS SHOWS THE UGLY SIDE OF REFUGEE RELIEF According to Sarah Jordan (played by Angelina Jolie) in Beyond Borders, there are some 50 million refugees in the world; the United Nations High Commission for Refugees handles half, and various nongovernmental organizations cope with what they can of the rest. Directed by Martin Campbell, the
TWILIGHT IDENTIFIES ALLEVIATION OF POVERTY AS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT The Iranian revolution of 1979 repudiated the rule of the Shah, in part because windfall revenues from oil went to crony capitalists while the rest of the population lived in poverty. Nearly twenty-five years later, the Shah is gone but poverty remains, including the associated
INITIALLY BANNED IN INDIA, SANDSTORM REVEALS A FIGHT AGAINST ENTRENCHED CASTEISM & SEXISM Some years before the release of Sandstorm (Bawandar), Sanwari (played by Nandita Das) of the Untouchable caste works as an organizer for a feminist organization in India to make some extra money for her family. Shobha Devi (played by Deepti Naval) hired