POLITICAL FILM SOCIETY HAS SELECTED THE BEST POLITICAL FILMS OF 2018
During January, members voted to narrow the list for the best films in the categories of HUMAN RIGHTS and EXPOSÉ. During February, members voted for the best film on the final list.
For the category EXPOSÉ, which recognizes the importance of raising political consciousness by bringing to light little-known facts, the winner is Boy Erased, a film about the cruelties of efforts to de-program gays of their homosexual tendencies. The award recipient is director Joel Edgerton.
Voting for the film that best raised consciousness of the need for greater HUMAN RIGHTS went to BlacKkKlansman, which depicts how a Black police officer infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. The award goes to the director, Spike Lee.
TERRORIST VIEWS ARE REVEALED IN MY STRETCH OF TEXAS GROUND
Director Erich Kemp wants filmviewers to know more about the aims and methods of jihadists. In a fictional account, Abdul Latif Hassan (played by Junes Zahdi) is recruited from Tunis by jihadists to assassinate Texas Senator Cruthers (Mike Gassaway) for a mere $10,000. The jihadists believe that the United States has killed far too many innocent children and women in Afghanistan, so revenge is a sharia imperative. Senator Cruthers is to be the victim because he is a strong proponent of the American intervention in Afghanistan. Whereas President Donald Trump wants to reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan, Cruthers is the chief sponsor of a bill to increase funding for the intervention by 15 percent.
Hassan enters the United States across the Mexican border and goes to Washington to pretend to be a reporter at a press briefing on his bill. He then finds out that the Senator will be vacationing at a lake in Texas. Meanwhile, filmviewers are introduced to Sheriff Joe Haladin (Jeff Weber), his family, his deputies and secretary, his decent work habits, and his skepticism of the longest war in American history. The two protagonists meet at a gas station near the future crime scene, not realizing that the FBI is tracking Hassan. When the FBI shows up, the plot has thickened to include kidnapping of the senator as well as the sheriff’s son. The kidnapping occurs because Hassan plans to tape a propaganda film alongside the bound senator about the thousands of children and women killed by the American forces in Afghanistan. The sheriff is then determined to rescue his son and apprehend Hassan. Unfortunately, the acting in My Stretch of Texas Ground is stiff, lacking a music score that would intensify suspense until some of the climax. MH