HAWAI`I INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL STARTS NOVEMBER 7
The Ice Storm will open the 1997 Hawai`i International Film Festival at the historic Hawai`i Theatre on Friday, November 7. Director Ang Lee will be present to introduce the film and answer questions afterward. The festival, which lasts a week on O`ahu and moves to the Neighbor Islands the following week, features films from Asia and the Pacific. Political Film Society members will vote for the film at the festival that best raises political consciousness.
MORE FILMS NOMINATED FOR 1997 AWARDS
DreamWorks’ first major film, The Peacemaker, has been nominated for an award as the best political Exposé for 1997. Having demonstrated the feasibility of a scenario in which “suit case” nuclear bombs could be hijacked from the Soviet Union by forces loyal to Iran, Iraq, or terrorist groups, Senator Richard Lugar called for an investigation within a week of the premiere of the film.
L.A. Confidential, nominated for an award in the category Human Rights, reminds us of pre-Miranda police methods and warns of the dangers of returning to the era of rampant police abuse.
Seven Years in Tibet, which focuses on China’s brutal war against the Tibetan people, has been nominated for three categories—Exposé, Human Rights, and Peace.
Rosewood was earlier nominated for the category of Human Rights.
PFS members can also nominate for the category Democracy.
HOLLYWOOD CONTINUES TO CORRECT THE RECORD
During the blacklisting of the 1950s and 1960s, many screenwriters were forced to ghostwrite scripts. Thanks to recent research by the Writers Guild of America, revised credits are now being issued to recognize Bernard Gordon for The Day of the Triffids (1963), Albert Maltz for Broken Arrow (1950), Nedrick Young for The Defiant Ones (1958), and Abraham Polonsky for Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).
PFS PUBLISHES EIGHTH WORKING PAPER
Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post have contributed Political Paranoia as Cinematic Motif: Stone’s “JFK” as the eighth essay in PFS’ Working Paper Series. Other Working Papers are also available:
#1 Genovese, Art & Politics: The Political Film as a Pedagogical Tool
#2 Morlan, Pre-World War II Propaganda: Film as Controversy
#3 Giglio, From Riefenstahl to the Three Stooges: Defining the Political Film
#4 Williams, The Real Oliver North Loses: The Reel Bob Roberts Wins
#5 Savage, Popular Film & Popular Communication
#6 Aoki, “Chan Is Missing”: Liberalism and the Blending of a Kaleidoscopic Culture
#7 Allen, Using Film and Television in the Classroom to Explore the Nexus of Sexual and Political Violence.
PFS PUBLISHES SYLLABI
Six course syllabi are also available from the Political Film Society.
To obtain copies of publications in either series, send a $1 donation per item re- quested, with a check payable to the “University of Hawai`i Foundation.”