FREE THE NIPPLE EXPLAINS HOW TO ORGANIZE A MOVEMENT
Photos in the 1920s show that both men and women covered their upper bodies at the beach. Sometime afterward, men showed their pectorals, but women were told that equality in that regard was obscene. Free the Nipple begins by noting that the legality of the public baring of breasts was upheld by the New York Supreme Court in 1992. Yet for two decades, filmviewers must assume, few women have asserted that right. The film then explains how protesters, particularly photographer Holly Van Voast (played by the director, Lina Esco, under the stagename With), seek to establish that right –and how their movement goes global during 2013. A test case, involving an arrest, is tried, but success comes only when posters are plastered all over New York City, women strip off their blouses all over the city, social media blog that development worldwide, and press coverage follows. Although Free the Nipple is about human rights, the most important contribution is actually in promoting democracy—the idea that people can make changes by political mobilization. Accordingly, the Political Film has nominated Free the Nipple in both categories. MH
THE KILL TEAM EXPLAINS HOW SOME AMERICAN WAR CRIMES HAVE OCCURRED
Patriotic Americans volunteer to serve in the army of the United States only to learn that the they are sometimes at the mercy of their commanding officers more than in jeopardy because of an enemy. In The Kill Team, a documentary directed by cinematographer Dan Krauss, recruits in Afghanistan are told that their mission is to kill people. Rather than having a script, the film mostly pulls together assorted interviews with the apparent aim of showing the stresses of combat, parental grief, and the absurdity of American military justice. Never interviewed, a Sergeant Gibbs is identified as someone who understands the mission to be to order his subordinates to shoot unarmed Afghan civilians, drop weapons on them, and then take photographs of the scene, so that their deaths can be justified as self-defense in combat. If a young Private objects to such a war crime, then he is charged with the crime and must confess to a lesser sentence in order to avoid life in prison. The film interviews some of those caught in the trap, while their army buddies side with Gibbs to avoid the same fate. Unfortunately, the focus is not on the fact that the military indeed is engaging in war crimes (a term not used) and not on the fact that such practices have delegitimized the role of the United States in the eyes of Afghans, thereby serving to bolster the prestige of the Taliban as the only local force fighting for ordinary people. The message of the documentary is thereby politically castrated (as was Frank Lafferty, who was forced to retract his charge on CNN that Donald Rumsfeld was a “war criminal”) despite a puzzling credit at the end stating that Gibbs serves a lifetime sentence for his role in ending the lives of innocent Afghans and another credit indicating that one of the whistleblowers was inexplicably released early from prison after being bullied into pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. MH