Films that demonstrate how governments or quasigovernmental groups have violated or promoted the values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
PERSEVERENCE WINS IN THE 33 ‘Tis the season for heartwarming movies, and The 33 may top the genre for 2015, just five years after 33 men were rescued from a Chilean mine for 69 days (though filming is at a mine in Colombia). But the film is not entirely a feel-good film because of their […]
SPOTLIGHT SHOWS INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AT ITS BEST The Boston Globe has a special column called “Spotlight,” written by a team of crack journalists who spend more time developing a story than the rest of the reporters. Yet complaints that Catholic priests sexually abused children as far back as the 1960s were not printed, even when
TRUMBO EXPLAINS WHY THE POLITICAL FILM SOCIETY WAS FORMED In 1947, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, refused to answer that he joined the Communist Party from 1943-1946, was one of the Hollywood Ten held in contempt of Congress, and was imprisoned for a year while at least 500 in
DUKHTAR IS ABOUT ANOTHER MUSLIM GIRL TRAPPED BY TRADITION Among recent films focusing on how “women’s lib” is needed in some Islamic countries, The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008) is perhaps the most tragic. Last year’s Difret was more hopeful, reporting how arranged marriage kidnappings and rapes were recently banned in Ethiopia, but that is
SUFFRAGETTE FEATURES EVENTS IN LONDON DURING 1912 In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft’s book A Vindication of the Rights of Women launched a movement. Suffragette, directed by Sarah Gavron, takes place in London during 1912, when the movement’s leader Emmeline Pankhurst (played by Meryl Streep) urges suffragettes to engage in civil disobedience, though titles indicate that the
DOMESTIC PARTNER BENEFITS ARE HELD UP IN FREEHELD New Jersey voted for domestic partnerships in 2005 but left a loophole for survivor benefits in government union contracts. Freeheld, directed by Peter Sollett, focuses primarily on a true story involving Laurel Hester (played by Julianne Moore) and Stacee Andre (Ellen Page). Not long after Stacee
LABYRINTH OF LIES REVEALS INCONVENIENT TRUTHS The last Nuremberg Trial ended in 1946, convicting 133 persons (not 15, as a title in the film pretends). Courts of various countries soon convicted other war criminals, including two in German courts who had been found not guilty at Nuremberg. When the postwar occupation of Germany ended
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON ENDS WITH A GAY PUZZLE After the Watts Riots of 1965, some African Americans in Los Angeles thought that a solution to the tyranny of the Los Angeles Police Department over African Americans was to move to a small town and gain majority control. One such town was Compton, not far from
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THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT QUESTIONS WHO WERE THE SUBJECTS In 1961, Yale Psychology Professor Stanley Milgram sought to determine whether Adolf Eichmann’s claim that he was merely following orders was credible. He then began an experiment in which subjects for less than an hour were paid to punish someone in another room with electric shocks
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NOBLE GOES FROM IRELAND TO VIETNAM AND HITS THE JACKPOT A biopic of Christina Nobel (played by Deirdre O’Kane), the film Nobel features an Irishwoman from her life as a toddler in 1955 to her arrival in Vietnam during 1989 and beyond in a quest to save children from much of the same destitution that