15 posts tagged “politics”
Strange Culture is playing at the Roxie and the Rafael through Thursday, September 27th. It will be at the
Cinema Village in New York from October 5th to 18th (check the website for other places it will be shown).
It tells the story of artist Steve Kurtz's arrest in 2004 weaving together documentary, segments with Tilda Swinton and other actors, and animation. I saw Kurtz talk about his art at SFMOMA in March and saw the film at the San Francisco International Film Festival in May (photos).
Lucy Gray interviewed Kurtz and director Lynn Hershman Leeson in March and interviewed her again recently.
DocFest opens at the Roxie on Friday and runs through October 10th and the Mill Valley Film Festival opens at the Rafael and other theaters on October 4th and runs through October 14th. I'll be writing about both festivals.
The film tells the story of the genocide in Darfur through the eyes of Brian Steidle who became a military observer there in 2004 after leaving the Marines. He photographed the horrors he saw there, but later wrote that his camera was not nearly enough. But the images he took are powerful, particularly as he tells the story in the film.
Wells says there will be a feature film based on his story, but people should see the documentary now. I asked
her about being the field producer on a segment of the film where Steidle visits Rwanda. She said people are still in mourning twelve years later, that what happened had an impact long after the killing stopped.
Revolution Summer which played at the San Francisco International Film Festival also opens at the Roxie tonight. Jonathan Richman who did the score will perform.
I'll revise this post with more tomorrow, but until then, he'll be showing it again at 5:15 pm on Sunday, June 10th at the Roxie.
There also is a free screening (though you have to RSVP) of Go Bots: Battle of the Rock Lords at 1 pm Sunday at the Roxie.
More on Dennis Nyback.
At a press conference (accompanied by his grandson - more photos), he said he had wanted to be involved with African Cinema for many years. He also talked about his production company, Louverture Films, which is developing many projects including Toussaint which Glover will direct this summer and a film about the friendship between Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein.
Michael Guillen has an interview with Glover. He also posted the press notes for the film which includes an interview with Sissako.
the role race played in them.
witness the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. More Community Cinema screenings.
on Friday (Maxed & AUM also are or will be in some other cities).
I saw Maxed Out on February 21st. San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros spoke briefly before before the film about Bank on San Francisco, a program which gives anyone a bank account, so they don't have to go to an expensive check cashing place.
Maxed Out covers some of the same ground as Frontline's The Secret History of the Credit Card (which was made in 2004 and you can watch online) and Danny Schecter's In Debt We Trust (which will be available on DVD), but each adds to an important (and often undercovered) story.
These documentaries could help make a difference. With the Democrats in control of congress again, legislation may finally be passed to help protect consumers. Congress held hearings recently (NPR story, Forbes story).
I wish An Unreasonable Man had spent less time on the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, but I suppose the filmmakers felt they had to address it extensively. But I was more interested in the parts of the film on Nader's earlier career which paved the way for the issues addressed in Maxed Out.
Another tie between the films you'll notice on both trailers is they were co-produced by Red Envelope Films which is part of Netflix (and named after the color of the envelope the films come in) though they have different distributors.
When I was briefly introduced to Marisa Handler by Chris Cook at the January 27th anti-war march, she had just received a copy of her first book, Loyal to the Sky: Notes from an Activist.
She's been on a tour for the book and will be in the bay area over the next couple of days before heading to Seattle (, Portland, and LA. She'll have a conversation with Rebecca Solnit (who wrote the foreward) on Thursday, March 1st at 7 pm at New College (details). On Friday, March 2nd at 7:30 pm, she'll be reading at Black Oak Books in Berkeley.
A brief interview and a longer interview.
Series she wrote for Salon from the 2003 Miami protests.
The New Amazon, Orion Magazine
Interview with Larry Bensky on Sunday Salon (download MP3)
I haven't decided who would be the best candidate in 2008 (it is pretty damn early), but I am interested in what Barak Obama has to say. I just got this email from the campaign (I've signed up to get emails from most of the candidates).
You can watch a live video feed of the event on BarackObama.com, which will be a brand new site in the morning. Here are the details:
Live Video Feed from Springfield, Illinois
10:55 AM Eastern / 9:55 AM Central / 8:55 AM Mountain / 7:55 AM Pacific
http://www.barackobama.comPlease pass this along to anyone you think might interested.
They also have what they call a preview video (I couldn't get the embed code for it to work - hopefully Vox will made this easier beyond sites like youtube and ifilm). It is really more a call for people to get involved in his campaign using the website.
They have also posted his schedule through Monday which includes Iowa and NH with a stop in Chicago Sunday afternoon for a rally.
the process of making Iraq in Fragments in detail in his production notes, but you really need to see the film in a theater if you can. It will eventually be on HBO, but there is a reason it won the best cinematography award among others at Sundance. They don't seem to have an email list, so probably the best way to find when it will play near you
is, yes, to make the film a friend on myspace.
Longley spends time with an 11-year-old boy in Bagdhad, the followers of Moqtada Sadr in Nasseriya, and the Kurds in northern Iraq. He shows the rifts in the country which have been widened by the US occupation at a time when some political leaders like Joe Biden (who will now be chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) are talking about breaking Iraq into fragments. But at a panel at the Chicago Humanities Festival last Sunday, everyone warned this was the wrong approach. Juan Cole wrote about it in more detail in an op-ed.
The film, like My Country, My Country which aired in October on POV, provides a rare look at Iraq from the persective of Iraqis. The kind of complex coverage the commercial broadcast and cable news networks should be providing.
If only every voter watched the first three Frontline programs of the season: tonight's The Lost Year in Iraq, last week's The Enemy Within, and The Return of the Taliban. They form kind of a trilogy though they are really just the latest in an ongoing series of what is among the best journalism of the post 9/11 era (and you can watch them all online).
Tonight's documentary chronicles the year after the fall of Bagdhad. I first learned from an earlier Frontline that
the Pentagon ignored State Department plans for a post-war Iraq. Since then, many books have gone into more detail, but seeing it outlines over an hour of television still has an impact (and probably an even greater impact for people who haven't been following Iraq as closely as I have).
And My Country, My Country which airs on Wednesday, October 25th as part of POV on PBS shows the consequences of that lost first year.
