Steady Diet of Film

Review: Human Terrain

Since the early 20th century, modern warfare has ceased to rely solely on what happened in battlefields with tanks and guns. Campaigns to win the hearts and minds of the moderate or allied-minded civilians has been a standard component of military strategy never more necessary and complex than in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In 2003, the United States military began funding a campaign called The Human Terrain System (HTS) that embedded anthropologists with combat brigades to help the teams better understand local customs and cultures as well as provide detailed reports to commanding officers back home about the social and power structures in the far-flung, little understood provinces where jihadism is widely considered by American intelligence, to be in an incubative state. The film comes right up to the edge of, but won't quite explicitly say that an unstated agenda of HTS is to compile a hitlist for potential jihadists leaders. 

Where the film does go into great detail is the complicated nature of implementing largely theoretical concepts into high stakes war zones and the in-fighting this shift has created in both military and academic circles. 

Previous to HTS, military efforts to be culturally sensitive had run from the ridiculous to the sublimely logical. Hiring nearby residents to work as navigators of local customs seems smart enough. Elaborate SIMs-like training video games wherein soldiers (depicted by crude avatars) have to determine (with all the time in the world to decide) if a given situation calls for a friendly chat or turning someone's house upside down and arresting them seem somewhat less effective. While delivering toys to village children, including a truckload of soccer balls with dead American soldiers' names written on each one seems both futile and tacky considering the rate of civilian casualty in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Similar to Charles Ferguson's Oscar-nominated No End in Sight, Human Terrain relies on high-level officials, diplomats, journalists and historians to explore the nuances of these complex issues. Richard Holbrooke represents the current administration's official viewpoints, Christopher Hitchens ensures angry, malcontents have their say and several Majors, Lt. Colonials and one Major General are invited to discuss HTS effectiveness. All are in agreement that warfare is changing making experimentation a necessary enterprise, but enticing young academics with the thrill of adventure and the honor of serving country leaves some of the old guard academics feeling queasy. At the same time, hardline military officers have seen the benefit of drawing lines in the sand and using force to make things clear and resent being guinea pigs for a new, touchy-feely military model. 

Human Terrain weaves these experiences and observations with two other main threads, the story of Michael Bhatia a social scientist who was embedded with a military unit in Afghanistan and died in an IED explosion. Bhatia's family members and co-workers, still sick with grief, talk about how naive they found his choices and share emails with the filmmakers that show Bhatia desperately trying to convince his former classmates and colleagues that this was legitimate academic work for a good cause. But as his tour stretches into long months his enthusiasm has clearly waned and he becomes increasingly despondent. The other 'human' element Terrain ties in are the crudely shot home video of troops and Congressional representatives behaving badly. The former threatening children and mocking slow-witted interpreters, the latter making bold and dumb proclamations in the interest of election-year grandstanding. 

This ancillary footage can feel overwrought and even on occasionally mildly insulting, but it serves as a good reminder that while a war of ideas may be raging in the insular worlds of military strategy and academia, the majority of people directly involved with the War on Terror are not as comfortable taking the longview approach.

Human Terrain screened as part of the HotDocs 2010 program.

Review: Canal Street Madam

Director Cameron Yates spent five years shooting with Jeanette Maier, starting with the FBI bust that ended her career as a sex peddler to New Orleans government and corporate elite, a trade she learned from her formidable mother Tommie and used to employ her daughter Monica. Far more confining than any social stigma of being convicted of multiple felony sex crimes (locals regard Maier as a charming addition to New Orleans's seedy mythology) is the legal and employment ramifications. She goes to nursing school but finds out convicted felons can't be certified, she turns her efforts to the seemingly less puritanical world of real estate development only have the same door slammed in her face. Though extraordinarily savvy and almost pathologically like-able, Maier is left to dine out on her notoriety making public appearances where she is often met with ridicule and abuse. Paradoxically, the brothel's client list is kept under airtight security by Federal and state officials. 

Throughout this five year period Maier is also constantly attempting to heal her troubled family. Jeanette, Tommie and Monica have all been molested or abandoned by the men in their early lives, but each woman's decision to enter sex work is presented as equally being the result of something intrinsic to their personalities as well as one of the unfortunate lasting legacies of abuse. While the Maiers women may be victims of poverty and abuse, the actual work of prostitution seems to have generally served them positively. And when forced out of the sex trade via Federal prosecution, they each maintain their wits and are able to maintain relatively normal lives (Monica is a member of the PTA, even). Jeanette's two sons however struggle with drugs and are in and out of prison, their bad fortune poses the toughest rebuke to conventional wisdom that all sex workers are hapless victims and their troubles remains the greatest source of stress and grief in Jeanette's life. 

In one scene, Yates shows Jeanette's reaction to her oldest son nearly overdosing on heroin the day before meeting (and presumably, a drug test) with his parole officer. She flies into action, reviving him, cleaning up needles, convincing a snooping landlord to back off and calming his angry girlfriend. It's enabling, unhealthy behavior certainly honed over the course of years of cleaning up other people's bad behavior, but there's also a talent for this kind of crisis management that we see woefully lacking in the local government structure when a few months later Hurricane Katrina hits. Jeanette is out in full force handing out pallets of bottled water, instant mashed potatoes and her business card to men who may be looking for.. a little relief. 

Canal Street Madam lends itself well to a provocative 200 word plot synopsis that might turn a lot of filmgoers away. But while Yates doesn't avoid the grimmer details of Jeanette's life and choices, The Canal Street Madam is a thoughtful examination of some of the greater complexities of poverty and sex work as well as the glaring hypocrisies of the justice system.

Canal Street Madam screened as part of the HotDocs 2010 program.

Review: Presumed Guilty

Geoffrey Smith's and Roberto Hernandez's Presumed Guilty follows two Berkeley attorneys who take up the appeals case for José Antonio Zúñiga Rodriguez (nicknamed Tono), a young man who worked in a marketplace selling electronics before being convicted of murder based on faulty police work, contradicting testimony and zero physical evidence. The attorneys (director Hernández and his colleague Layda Negrete) obsessively videotaped all hearings and procedures in an attempt to showcase some of the problems with Mexico's judicial system.

By the time his appeal is heard, Tono has already spent over a year in an over-crowded, violent prison. In an effort to demonstrate that he is maintaining high spirits through a difficult time, Smith and Hernandez show him working on his (increasingly awesome) breakdancing skill. In this way, we understand that this time is far easier on him than it is for his family, who sneak him food rations and worry constantly about his fate as he faces the enormous odds of a legal system designed to prioritize conviction rates rather than increasing actual safety of its citizenry. 

Smith and Hernandez delight in showing the intricacy of Mexico's labyrinth of legal corruption. The judge assigned to Tono's appeal is the same one who originally heard the case (a trial that Tono was not allowed to attend). He refuses to allow any previous testimony to be re-examined, the arresting officer refuses to answer any questions, the key witness appears to be coached and we learn that Tono's original attorney is practicing law without a law degree. While the filmmakers try to make these scenes more edgy or incendiary with graphics and sound effects, it's clear that the bulk of Tono's problems stem from the entitlement of lazy civil servants and not a master conspiracy or a system where corrupt fortunes are being spent. This has the result of making the attorneys' passion seem somewhat leaden.

Smith's previous film, The English Surgeon, documents the noble humanitarian efforts of Dr. Henry Marsh, all the while showing him as a human being. A talented neurosurgeon, Marsh could spend his off hours vacationing in Ibiza or building a small fortune in an American practice. Instead, he dedicates an enormous amounts of time, money and energy to the hopelessly poverty-stricken segments of the Ukrainian population -- who would otherwise die horrible deaths in grossly outdated health care facilities. The film provides real world examples of both the import of his work and the enormity of the problems (such as the lack of systemic cohesion) he faces.

It's these additional layers of complexity that are frustratingly absent from Presumed Guilty. Instead we get recycled b-roll of a camera panning through a warehouse of paperwork to suggest that Tono's case is not a unique set of circumstances. And it's never acknowledged (or explained) that if not for the two Americans who took his case, he would have likely remained an anonymous file in a warehouse for decades. While it's easy to look at Mexico's legal statute of presumed guilt (which we learn in a post-script will be reversed in 2011) and feel superior, it's likely a pair of talented attorneys from Mexico City could find a similarly outrageous conviction committed on American or British soil. By condensing the explanation of a nation's faltering legal system down to one bad judge and one grumpy cop (with one man, stuck in the middle, breakdancing his way to spiritual enlightenment), Presumed Guilty devolves into little more than humanitarian pornography.

RIYL: Paradise Lost, Crude, The Take, Manda Bala. 

Presumed Guilty will screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival April 22nd - May 6th. And will air on PBS's POV July 27th, 2010.

Review: Marwencol

Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg's directorial debut and winner of the Grand Jury prizes at SXSW 2010 and the Cleveland International Film Festival, follows Mark Hogancamp, a recent head injury victim who has come to embody the definition of an outsider artist.

Marwencol whizzes through its necessary exposition. We get the broad strokes of how unbearable Hogancamp used to be. A self-loathing alcoholic (and luckily, a devoted journal keeper), a brutal attack by five teenagers wiped out his memories and left him with permanent brain damage. This resulted in a total disinterest in alcohol and a debilitating fear of the world around him. We also zip quickly through the harrowing process of re-learning every basic life function and the bureaucratic brutality of getting kicked off his benefits barely into his recovery.

Instead Malmberg quickly plunges us into the world of Marwencol, a small Belgian village circa World War II that Mark has created in his backyard using hand-built model houses and hand-painted Barbie dolls. Marwencol has an elaborate and complex story that includes all of the people from Mark's real life. His mother (depicted by a doll from the Barbie Bond Girl collection) tends bar, his real life co-workers are Allied military officers and his first (post-beating) crush all make up the fabric of the Marwencol mythology. People fall in love, start businesses and eventually band together to kill the the Nazi occupiers.

Marwencol began as a dexterity exercise and emotional safe haven as Mark coped with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It gave him a chaotic war zone he could shepherd into peace, while making his loved ones glamorous and powerful. It endeared him to members of the town who remembered Mark as an alcoholic and it's touching how supportive the community is of his homemade therapy. But when he began photographing his scenes and stories he quickly caught the attention of the New York art scene, who express no small amount of awe at his lack of irony. But this new recognition brings a fresh hell when Mark is invited to a gallery exhibition in loud and crowded Manhattan. And it will put a slow ache in the heart of any viewer to watch him struggle with first screwing up his courage to get to New York (thus the Nazi overthrow) and then his crippling anxiety around speaking to the people who attend his show.

Spending so much time in the Marwencol fantasy village has a dual effect. Mark relaxes in front of the camera, allowing him to talk about his motivations and the connections he's making between fantasy and real life in a way he might not have been able to if Malmberg had not dedicated several years to the filming process. The audience develops an intimacy with Mark, allowing viewers to better understand the way his emotions have twisted themselves as a means of protection from the memories and fears from his assault. An insight into the complexities of PTSD, this film is utterly necessary at this point in history yet doesn't end with overwhelming despair.

RIYL: The Living Museum, In the Realms of the Unreal, Unknown White Male.


Marwencol will screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival April 22 - May 6. It will also screen at Hot Docs April 29 - May 10.

Review: Transcending Lynch

In Transcending Lynch, Marcos Andrade follows filmmaker David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive) on his "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity" book tour through Brazil. Lynch soldiers through a tight schedule of college speaking tours, bookstore signings and even visits a reform school for teenage boys -- all to massive audiences with feverish clamour. He speaks about his experiences with Transcendental Meditation (TM), a practice taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who came to Hollywood in the 1950s and whose concepts of "dynamic peace" counts Lynch, members of the Beatles and Mia Farrow among its believers. 

Two things emerge from the film. First, the infectious enthusiasm that Brazil has for Lynch. It's difficult to listen to their effusive praise and not remember that sometimes when watching Lynch's films it feels like anything is possible. But at a Lynch Q&A in the States, you're far more likely to be treated to a mic hog talking about how smart they are than to hear someone gush that Lynch's films saved their life and that he is their hero.

The other, far less fortunate message of the film is how unimpressive Lynch's pitch for TM is. After 20+ years of practice, he's low on examples of the tangible differences its created in his life but high on platitudes and charming-but-empty metaphors about fishing, milkshakes and talking to pretty girls.

Andrade freely admits he comes to this subject as a devout believer in TM and an ardent fan of David Lynch. Transcending Lynch is a film with low ambition. Little more than a travelogue, it boasts eye-scalding admiration of its subject. One doesn't walk away with any new knowledge of Lynch or TM, but it's clear Andrade had a lot of fun shadowing his idol for a week. Andrade's techniques as a filmmaker have a parallel lack of purpose, adding Lynch-ian flourishes to low-tech film-making (a scene played backwards, classical music swollen to highlight the equal grandness and absurdity of a massive book signing, Donovan Leitch filmed backstage prior to a gig in menacing lowlight). 

It will be interesting to see how viewers react to Transcending Lynch in comparison to David Wants to Fly, which premieres later this month at Hot Docs in Toronto. David Wants to Fly, made by a film-maker with a less successful experience with something that seems similar to TM, is a great deal more critical of Lynch's participation in the business of TM evangelism. I have a hard time getting too worked up over a bunch of bored college kids being lured into spending their parents' money trying to buy their way into being a cool, edgy artist (in fact, it's its own form of transcendentalism for me). But who doesn't enjoy seeing the fanboys get worked into a lather?


Transcending Lynch will screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival April 22 - May 6.

Review: Videocracy

At the center of Videocracy, Erik Gandini's snapshot of Italy's celebrity-obsessed popular culture, is Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi, a millionaire turned television mogul turned billionaire turned Prime Minister, is an untouchable figure who has become the revered and reviled focal point for Italy's perception of itself. (See Michael Moore's Roger & Me for a different version on a similar theme.)

Berlusconi made his fortune by buying up 90% of Italy's television programming and churning out cheap programming that was high on nudity, silliness and spectacle. Over time, he has become a star-maker for young beauties hoping to score a gig as a Velisa girl (a woman who stands next to talk show hosts and inevitably winds up married to a soccer player). Gandini's critique is widened to the point of indicating a national pandemic by some fuzzy statistics on Italy's gender inequality, plastic surgery rates and general ignorance about current world events. His points are beautifully illustrated by slow-motion long shots of an open casting call for Velisa girls held in a mall where mobs of young women gyrate awkwardly in front of a jeering crowd.

The film captures dozens of salacious anecdotes and insights. But one that best encapsulates the universe depicted in Videocracy is a scene at the PM's private island villa called the Billionaire Club (where Denzel Washington, Paris Hilton and even former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been known to party), where girls are scouted to be the President's official weather girl.

This fame domain is explored in more depth through the stories of an aspiring gameshow contestant, a Mussolini-idolizing television agent and ruthless paparazzo Parlo Corona. Corona, a handsome upstart paparazzi photographer imbued with a fairly superficial self-righteousness and hatred of the beautiful people, is a particularly fascinating and pitiful example of the toxicity of fame. He eventually becomes so successful he's absorbed into the system, becoming a de facto broker between his army of hired photographers and the wealthy people happy to pay top dollar to keep their ill behavior (none of which is disclosed in the documentary) from the public. He's eventually jailed for slander and becomes an even bigger celebrity (albeit an oddly corrosive one), going on Silvio-owned talk shows to answer Boxer/Briefs-type questions. His efforts to shine a light on the sickness in the culture are eventually dwarfed, then seduced by his own need for public validation. In his final scene we see him wearing a hidden camera to tape his own divorce proceedings when his supermodel wife leaves him and going to murder scenes to ask grieving parents if they'll wear t-shirts emblazoned with his face.

Videocracy is a bubbly addition to the recent spate of documentaries (Bhutto, Fixer, After the War: Life post-Yugoslavia) that explore how political and cultural upheaval leaves people at a loss for a sense of cohesive community. And when pessimism runs too deeply for a strong national identity to be forged, people will respond to the simpler messages of religious fundamentalism or crass commercialism. In fact, Silvio's next campaign slogan could easily be: Boobs Not Bombs!  


Videocracy opens in select cities February 12th and plays at the Portland International Film Festival February 11-28th.
 

Review: The Art of the Steal

After growing up destitute and making millions selling pharmaceutical snake oil, Dr. Albert Barnes was intent on giving back by opening the world of rarefied art appreciation to the masses. Barnes assembled one of the world's most impressive modern art collections, displayed it only in his suburban mansion just outside the nefarious reaches of Philadelphia high society (against whom he had a long-standing grudge). When he passed away, the collection (valued at about $9B) became the target of the entire art world, Philadelphia politicians with tourism dollars in their eyes and Barnes's considerable enemies. Barnes is said by all to be a contentious personality, but his number one enemy was Walter Annenberg, son of newspaper publisher/gangster (oh, Philadelphia) Moses Annenberg and a Nixon loyalist whose hatred for Barnes would extend far into both of their graves.

Director Don Argott subtly displays the inanity of people who either inherited their wealth or profited from fools having little better to do than throw darts at one another. Maybe, the film hints, it's lack of imagination that is key to Philadelphia's tourism problem. (Or you know, the fact that it's only known for its political corruption, poverty and long-since-past-historical-significance.)

Since Barnes died without having any children, he attempted to leave his collection in the hands of people who would keep it small, tethered to its location and private. He believe the museum world was too sterile, bureaucratic and profit-driven to be a house of art. Barnes' believers make an impassioned point, but there's also something to be said for the democratization that occurs in the commercial sphere. After a lot of bribery, collusion, favor-trading and paperwork (so much paperwork), the Barnes collection was taken on the road to a dozen cities, where it was made available to those who didn't have the opportunity (or the interest) to travel to the Philadelphia suburbs.

Some of the most memorable moments in the film come from the Barnes believers that are still alive. A few of them are deeply cynical and interviewed in squalid, cramped apartments who we later see attending protests outside Philadelphia wine and cheese parties chanting "Philistine! Philistine!" Others are big-time collectors and curators having ingratiated themselves into the patrician, sterile world of high art collection. Like in Amir Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That the film crackles with glimpses into the clashing ideas about how to appreciate art. A particularly great scene shows a big-wig art buyer walking through a Sotheby's auction, explaining (sometimes in great detail, occasionally in irritated huffs) the difference between what makes "a Barnes-worthy Matisse" and what doesn't.

The Art of the Steal is so beautifully constructed it's easy to forget you're watching a story that relies almost solely on legal documents, talking heads, court rulings and paintings to make its points. Argott gracefully raises the issues of privacy rights and the tricky business of making art into commerce -- all the while creating a tidy, suspenseful film that serves as a showpiece to the ingenuity spawned from good old-fashioned contempt for one's fellow man. Each twist and turn of the story (spanning 6+ decades) could easily have been made less egregious if any one person involved had elected to take the high road. But they don't. And their greed and sense of collective self-righteous is made all the more tantalizing by their total lack of self awareness and the fact that only other bored, rich a-holes and grant-funded art wanks are being directly impacted by this mess.


The Art of the Steal plays in select cities February 26th and screens at the Portland International Film Festival February 11-28. 

Review: Bhutto

In 1988 Pakistan elected its youngest and first female prime minister in Benazhir Bhutto. Bhutto became a valuable ally to Western leaders as an example of the precarious but burgeoning democractic progress in the Middle East. Even her assassination in late 2007, was mostly covered as a BFF contest for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

Bhutto, Jessica Hernández and Johnny O'Hara's Sundance documentary competition film, focuses on the tempestuous family and national entanglements that led to her rise and fall from power. The film draws many parallels between the difficulties within the Bhutto family and the state of Pakistan itself -- both inherently lack a stable foundation or sense of unity, absences which constantly undermine the chance of significant progress.

Benazir's father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was a self-aggrandizing but charismatic and progressive leader. He championed education and pushed for worldwide recognition of Pakistan, whose basic geography was constantly under threat of being re-written by neighboring India. But because he was so hated by the conservative religious and military elements in his country, once his popularity slipped with the people he was unseated and eventually executed on charges of conspiracy to assassinate a rival.  

Benazir, whose political conscience was born in the flames of the 1960s radicalism she witnessed on the Harvard and Oxford campuses, became galvanized by the (self-described) martyring of her father. She took over her his political party and set her sights on becoming the next Prime Minister, which she did when the previous PM fell out of favor with the people and was imprisoned. Yet she quickly learned that even top-down change doesn't turn on a dime, especially in a country where the military and scientific community (which, at this point, was developing nuclear weaponry) doesn't recognize the legitimacy of its own government's leadership. Bhutto was ultimately deposed, imprisoned, exiled, returned, lauded and re-elected after a rival prime minister (Khalid) fell out of public favor.  

The comparison is made many times throughout the film that the Bhuttos are essentially Pakistan's version of the Kennedys. Both families are  enormous, hyper-intelligent, preternaturally photogenic (okay, maybe not so Kennedy-esque on that one) and deeply invested with a sense of civic responsibility. Since that investment is so insulated in a lives of privilege, it comes with no small amount of vanity. Interestingly, since Pakistan's largest institutions are in a constant state of chaos, civic responsibilty takes far weirder forms for the Bhuttos. In 1981 Benazir's brother Murtaza hijacked a plane, ostensibly for the release of a few vaguely described political prisoners, leaving one person dead.

Not unlike the US's romantic obsession with the Kennedys, there is zero reflection on how political dynasties can both create and undermine a national identity. It's never mentioned that for as talented and caring as the Bhuttos try to be, part of the problem for Pakistan may be that 50% of their political history has been controlled by one family, let alone a family whose internal power struggles manifest in constant public squabbling, plane hijackings and assassination attempts. At least the vainglorious Kennedys understand the value of keeping a public face on internal strife. The film also glides right over mentions that the New York Times published pieces of Mullah-sponsored propaganda that landed Bhutto in prison (a second time) and that CNN published her hacked private emails after she was assassinated. Instead, Bhutto is made into a martyr, who, in the film-makers' eyes at least, was her country's last hope. It's reductive and inherently dishonest.

Bhutto functions well as a privileged people's history of Pakistan. Certainly, audiences walk away with a few more details of the ingrained grudges that prevent a more comprehensive national unity. But by reducing so much of the political history as a reason-less toggling between two parties (who imprison all members of the opposition when in power), the complex role Pakistan plays on the world stage is turned into bloody melodrama that occasionally veers into The Gods Must Be Crazy territory.

Bhutto screened at Sundance 2010 Film Festival and is currently seeking US distribution.

Review: The Shock Doctrine

Most people can agree that human motivations are largely driven by economic necessity and aspiration. So there's a fundamental gap in the way many documentary film-makers often approach history. Instead of looking at how power and influence are carefully created and manipulated, we often get constructed narratives about heroes and villains acting as though they were struck by lightening bolts and lifted up by faceless masses, culminating in the ecstatic state of now.

Michael Winterbottom's (A Mighty Heart, Code 46) and Mat Whitecross's adaptation of Naomi Klein's bestseller "The Shock Doctrine" examines the inspiration and methods of what Klein dubs 'Disaster Capitalism'. The film illustrates several moments in history when free market zealots, guided by the teachings of economist Milton Friedman, seized upon chaos to carry out extreme policy changes. These changes are (in the film-makers' eyes) completely against the interests of the people, but the people, reeling from military coups and natural disasters, were too stunned to defend themselves.

These policy changes started with removing price controls and eradicating labor standards then quickly progressed to privatizing land, utilities and eventually military combat (that last one took Friedman's ideas beyond even his own greatest expectations). Klein and Winterbottom make the case that 1. we should care about this because it's likely the land we live on is more valuable without us on it and natural disasters can happen anywhere and 2. free market solutions succeed only at widening the gap between wealthy and poor while muting the democratic process.

The test cases Winterbottom focuses on are Pinochet-era Chile, Thatcher-era Britain, Yeltsin-era Russia and Bush (43)-era United States. Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and tsunami-decimated Indonesia are used as supporting examples since the timelines for the book and the film dictated that these latter two tragedies be covered in far less depth. 

As snapshots of culturally-diverse but ideologically-identical political histories, The Shock Doctrine is a bitter treat. Stalwart in its beliefs and visceral in its execution, economic lessons are rarely this thrilling. But because it takes the side of the systemic underdogs, the film struggles to end on a hopeful note. And it's impossible to not see the footage of Russians standing in soup lines and being beaten in broad daylight by mobsters and not be scared to death for the people of Haiti. 

It's also gratifying to see a documentary about the muddled lead up to the American invasion of Iraq set in a larger historical context. The news footage of Ford administration-era Donald Rumsfeld speaking about the Soviet Union with even more florid language than he ever used for the post-9/11 "Axis of Evil" produces a sincere hope that he's using his newfound unemployment to write a book. Or at least doing some serious self-reflection. 

There were reports last summer that Klein has disavowed the film after clashing with the film-makers on how best to convey her ideas. But Klein's speaking appearances serve as the framework for the film and she personally conducted many of the interviews that appear in the final cut. And according to the official Sundance program, she will join Winterbottom and festival founder Robert Redford for a Q&A after the film's screening at the film festival this week.


The Shock Doctrine  is screening January 21-31 at the Sundance Film Festival and will also be launched simultaneously on-demand as part of the new Sundance Selects program.

Review: Freedom Riders

Direct action groups are often seen within larger social movements as being too demanding, too naive and ultimately too annoying to contribute to the larger purpose at hand. But few people ever opened a newspaper to see a photo of someone writing a letter to Congress or attending a silent auction and felt a call to action. History may be written by the letter writers, but it's made by people who didn't have the good sense to be patient and stay put.

Freedom Riders delves into the amazing constellation of events that transformed a group of twelve scrappy activists, barely on anyone's radar, to a phenomenon that over the course of six months made the world hold its breath while fundamental political, social and cultural ideologies were put to the test in the hills of Alabama and Mississippi.

Director Stanley Nelson (The Murder of Emmett Till, Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple) looks at the role international bad publicity (an outraged German news program proclaims: "In the land of Ernest Hemingway, some still struggle for basic rights!"') played in getting a reaction from President Kennedy, the different ethical issues covering the events the black members of the press faced, the collusion of the KKK with police and members of the national media, activists' strategies for communication in a time before Facebook, different reactions within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) over Martin Luther King Jr's decision not to join the Freedom Ride and the bizarre political powerplay between the Safety Commissioner and Governor of Alabama that (inadvertently) saved hundreds of lives.

But for my money, the best anecdotes in the film are those that showcase John Seigenthaler's (Attorney General's Robert Kennedy's assistant) personal awe of Diane Nash. Nash, a leader in SNCC, led the second round of Riders after the first wave had been beaten so severely they were convinced they would die if they continued. One imagines the (now very comic) scene of the entire Kennedy White House in a lather trying to negotiate with the Riders to cease their operations, expecting to be put on the phone with a hardened Teamster-type and instead getting the demure but steely Nash.

Freedom Riders is an engaging, thorough elaboration on a hugely historic event that averages about a paragraph in a typical public high school textbook. It will surely reach a considerable and appreciative audience on PBS on the 50th anniversary of the events when it airs as part of the American Experience program in 2011.

This film also provides an interesting prism through which to examine Fair Use regulations. Nelson has made six films that wound up screening on PBS, each casting a spotlight on little known or regretful moments in American history. Nelson does so with photographs and newsreel footage that is rare and astronomically expensive to license for commercial use. Because of these costs, only film-makers backed by institutions like PBS can access these artifacts and tell these stories without resorting to puppet reenactments.

Since television is considered too bureaucratic and narrow in focus to appeal to film-makers trying push the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling, there exists a chasm in the documentary world between the film-makers who view themselves as artists first and film-makers who desperately want to tell these stories now while some of the participants are still alive to share their firsthand accounts. Ultimately the real losers in this battle are viewers, whose lives could be enriched by further understanding how our world has been shaped and where it's going. History is most accurately reflected when as many voices as possible get involved in the telling of stories.

As long as I'm on a soapbox, it's also draconian United States copyright laws that keep touchstone films like the Civil Rights documentary Eyes on the Prize out of reach of any audience. I, however, gleefully pirated Eyes footage for my college film, paying tribute to Nash. 

Freedom Riders is a real life David and Goliath story that will exhilarate all audiences. However, it's in that very exhilaration that also exists a painful reminder of just how cut off we are from our own history because of greed-driven, fundamentally anti-democratic protectionist laws.

Freedom Riders is screening January 21-31 at the Sundance Film Festival.