WAIKIKI MOURNS THE LIVES OF MANY NATIVE HAWAIIANS Christopher Kahunahana, the first Native Hawaiian to direct a film, has decided to portray how some people occupying islands for more than a thousand years now feel strangers in their own land. The focus is on Kea (played by Danielle Zalopany), who is employed as a hula […]
RUSTIN CELEBRATES THE ORGANIZERS OF THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON A biopic of Bayard Rustin (played by Colman Domingo), the film Rustin reveals that the March on Washington of August 28, 1963, was a goal he sought since 1941. He was frustrated that nothing much happened in Congress after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that schools
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AIDS THE OSAGE NATION IN KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON Director Martin Scorsese begins the film as if seated on the stage in front of the curtain to assert that the film is made to correct the record, presumably hinting that he had some personal interest. But the film takes place in
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MIRANDA’S VICTIM FOCUSES ON THE WOMAN RAPED BY MIRANDA A lawyer for Ernesto Miranda (Sebastian Quinn) successfully argued that his kidnapping and rape confession was coerced because he was denied an attorney before and during interrogation. The case was the most prominent of four similar cases that were reviewed in which the U.S. Supreme Court
THE BURIAL DEMONSTRATES HOW CLEVER ATTORNEYS IMPRESS JURIES Much less is known about the lawsuit in The Burial, directed by Maggie Betts. Jeremiah O’Keefe (played by an aging Tommy Lee Jones) is the owner of several burial companies as well as a burial insurance company in Mississippi. After World War II, O’Keefe contributed to civil
GOLDA TRIES TO REDEEM THE REPUTATION OF GOLDA MEIR Israel’s prime minister Golda Meir, sometimes known as the “Iron Lady,” has been blamed for unnecessary deaths in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but when her conduct before, during, and after the war are examined in Golda, filmviewers may make a very different assessment. Directed
AURORA’S SUNRISE Graphically Explains the Armenian Genocide A biopic about Arshaluys Mardiganian, Aurora’s Sunrise is also a biopic and mini-critique of the previously forgotten film Auction of Souls (1919). The latter film is a story (though she was renamed Aurora to sell to an American audience), of a 14-year-old who is evicted from her home
Oppenheimer Tries to Restore A Reputation A biopic about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), scenes shift back and forth throughout his life, with particular attention to those trying to destroy his reputation after his face appears on Time magazine as the father of the atomic bomb. Although he mostly speaks softly in
WE SAID NO! NO! A STORY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE FOCUSES ON Japanese Although most Japanese sent to “internment camps” during World War II appeared compliant, some were not. We Said No! No! A Story of Civil Disobedience, a re-enactment with historical film footage and interviews with participants, is the story of those who resisted. The
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THE WIND AND THE RECKONING DESCRIBES AN ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE IN HAWAIʽI After titles inform filmviewers that the Kingdom of Hawaiʽi was overthrown in 1893, the context is on a new law of the Republic of Hawaiʽi that required all persons with leprosy (Hansen’s disease) to be rounded up and sent to a “leper colony” on
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