Films
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Tracy Reed, Slim Pickens
Black and white, 1964. 93 minutes.
Beyond our imagination
The sun experiences nuclear explosions every single second, creating the raw material for life. But when these explosions happen on Earth they pass beyond the realm of our imagination. Our brains are capable of understanding how to trigger a nuclear reaction — and how to harness its energy for peaceful means — but the sheer power of nuclear energy is, in many senses, too complex for us to fathom. We are biological organisms tottering about on the planet Earth yet we have learned how to imitate the sun.
There is something inherently absurd in this vast difference of scale and power. And the fact that we are capable of blowing all life on earth to smithereens at any given moment of the day — even now — is even more absurd.
Absurdity onscreen
If there is one film that captures the utter absurdity of our methods of administering nuclear power, it is Dr. Strangelove. This black and white 1964 satire examines a strategic mishap in the midst of the Cold War. The U.S. and the Soviet Union are locked in a policy of nuclear deterrence, with each country amassing a nuclear arsenal so large as to discourage the other side from attacking. The rationale is that no country will attack the other for fear of triggering a nuclear holocaust. The solution: build more bombs.
District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
Produced by Peter Jackson
Starring Sharlto Copley
Key Creatives, 2009. 112 minutes.
District 9 has taken the American box office by storm. The film depicts the arrival of aliens in the unlikely locale of Johannesburg, South Africa. Establishing contact with alien life forms in the movies is never as simple as we’d like it to be.
But this picture moves beyond a B sci-fi flick with some penetrating social commentary. At times satirical and other times allegorical, the story skillfully interweaves the history and culture of South Africa with mecha-robots and spaceships.
The vagaries of the film industry have resulted in the film being released in the U.S. before South Africa, subverting one of the central themes of the film — that America is not the center of the world. I still expect the reception in South Africa to be a positive one.
Here are 10 Things that you may not know about District 9.
Metalworkers (Peões)
Directed by Eduardo Coutinho
Brazil, 2004. 84 minutes.
Screening at the MOMA Premiere Brazil film festival.
Metalworkers is a complex portrait of the dynamic labor movement in Brazil that helped
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva come to power. Featuring numerous interviews from the former labor leaders that spearheaded Lula’s Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores), the film documents a prolonged struggle against foreign automobile giants.
Protesting during a military dictatorship during the late 1970s was fraught with risks. Some party members were fired while a select few rose to prominence. The marchers at
the 100,000 strong rallies risked everything to demand better working conditions, and their efforts left an imprint on the country that continues to influence Brazil today.
Should Nothing Else Work Out
(Se nada mais der certo)
Directed by José Eduardo Belmonte.
Written by Belmonte, Luis Carlos Pacca.
With Cauã Reymond, Caroline Abras, João Miguel.
Brazil, 2009. 120 minutes.
Screening at the MOMA Premiere Brazil film festival.
Should Nothing Else Work Out is a languorous work about optimism in people who have every reason to give up hope. Set in São Paulo, the movie depicts the intertwining lives of three characters on the brink of penury. They each long for the warm embrace of middle class life as they plunge deeper and deeper into poverty. Leo is a handsome, poorly paid journalist who has recently lost his money in a tax scam. Marcin is a teenage happy-go-lucky coke dealer and huckster. And Wilson is a morose taxi driver who totes around the pistol with which his father committed suicide.
Their various get-rich-quick schemes haven’t worked out, nor does it appear they will anytime soon. Leo’s girlfriend is addicted to coke, Marcin’s hook-up thinks she’s too flashy to keep dealing, and Wilson is in danger of losing his taxi cab. Yet somehow they believe that things will get better.
Cinderellas, Wolves, and Prince Charming
(Cinderelas, lobos e um príncipe encantado)
Written and Directed by Joel Zito Araújo
Brazil, 2008. 106 minutes.
Screening at the MOMA Premiere Brazil film festival.
Joel Zito Araújo’s Cinderellas, Wolves, and Prince Charming is a quirky, meandering documentary film that reveals the underbelly of the cross-border sex trade of Brazil. Over 900,000 women a year enter the sex trade each year, joining an estimated 20 million modern day slaves. Lured by promises of romantic marriages to wealthy Europeans, they board planes and are quickly ensnared within violent organized crime rings.
However, the exploiters of the sex trade are not always sinister Mafiosos. They are just as frequently boring middle-aged European males who travel to the country for sex. Some prey upon minors, while others seek a few weeks of unbridled companionship with prostitutes. Through numerous interviews with sex workers and sexual tourists alike, Cinderellas exposes the pernicious stereotypes which perpetuate the trade in a country suffering from poverty. The battle to end the sex trade will not just begin with stopping the traffickers, it will also entail debunking age-old myths of the exotic.
The Stoning of Soraya M
Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh
Written by Cyrus Nowrasteh and Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh
Mpower Pictures, 2009. 116 minutes
In Farsi, English, and French
Stoning is bad, but not because of the stones
Communities have sentenced offenders to stoning for several thousand years. The Egyptians and ancient Greeks utilized the punishment, and stoning appears in the texts of the major monotheistic religions. Stoning was, in short, a typical feature of the first Western civilizations. Strange that today stoning is not seen as civilized but barbaric — the United Nations has condemned stoning as a form of torture. Nonetheless, the practice continues around the world, although stoning has been most frequently noted in Islamic cultures adhering to Sharia law.
What is stoning?
The most memorable on-screen stoning — up to now — may be found in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). In that scene John Cleese hilariously tries to organize the stoning of a criminal by a group of women disguised as men, only to be stoned to death himself. But real stoning is much worse. A typical stoning requires the victim to be buried up to the waist so as to restrict movement. The executioners then hurl stones from behind a line until the victim perishes.
In The Stoning of Soraya M, a young French-Iranian journalist traveling to the Iranian border is forced to repair his car in a secluded mountain hamlet. It is the early 1980s, and the Shah’s regime has fallen just a few years before. Stricter, more conservative interpretations of Sharia law are emerging. As the journalist (Jim Caviezel) haggles with a mechanic, he is accosted by a mullah and the town’s mayor, who invite him to tea. A mysterious, crazed woman named Zahra (Shorhreh Aghdashloo) warns him not to consort with the men, and the journalist politely declines the invitation. The woman then convinces the journalist to tape record the sordid tale of the event that happened the day before his arrival.
Rebirth of a Nation
Written, Directed and Produced by Paul D. Miller a.k.a DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid
Starz Media/Anchor Bay Films, 2008. 100 minutes.
Screening at the MOMA from June-22, 2008
DJ Spooky, né Paul Miller, has plunged deeply into hip-hop, produced films, and explored the art of graphic design. He is now a spokesman for ‘remix’ culture, which attempts to celebrate the proliferation of digital media by mashing-it-up. He has sampled everything from Bob Marley tracks to the flow of ice crystals across Antarctica. Not all of his work is successful, but most of it brings a few a-ha moments of enlightened discovery.
The Rebirth
Paul Miller first remixed The Birth of a Nation in 2004. His creation, The Rebirth of a Nation, then toured the world with Miller providing live accompaniment. He revisited the work in 2008 and embedded the soundtrack in the film so that it can now be screened on its own.
The resulting film is another courageous exploration by one of the most exciting creative artists working today.
Read the full review of his latest film here.
All images credited to DJ Spooky. Rebirth of a Nation, 2008. Courtesy Anchor Bay Films/Starz Media
Beyond Rambo — Rendition and Traitor
A wide gulf separates Rambo from the new terrorist thrillers. In Rambo movies, the disaffected (and slightly tweaked) Vietnam vet John Rambo dispatches terrorists with guns and explosives, all extensions of his — and America’s — manhood. The terrorists drop like flies, he gets the girl, and all is right with the world. Until the next time.
Far easier to make a Rambo movie than any nuanced thriller, and let’s face it, Rambo goes better with beer. He also lends a certain logic to a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Thankfully, the new terrorist thrillers offer a staggering leap of creativity beyond this Manichean, good-versus-evil viewpoint.
Our obsession with terrorism in the 21st century can be directly traced to the attacks of September 11th. Before the attacks, our former president played golf and chainsawed wood on his ranch, and Hollywood was producing a delightful coterie of the next great threat — aliens.
But terrorism has shaped American policy in this decade more than any other single issue. So it is with relief that two films have transcended Rambo’s bandoliers, and taken terrorism seriously. Rendition (2007) and Traitor (2008) aren’t perfect but they make a real effort to address terrorism head-on, while still letting you reach for the popcorn.
The New Justice
When justice rings true, it has the power to silence and to awe. And it can mean a lot of things, from ‘making things right’ by your neighbor to ending a culture of impunity in which lives are destroyed without a thought. Two new films explore the pursuit of justice in the 21st century. Justice in today’s world is no longer just about simple retribution but also about the restoration of entire societies.
My Neighbor, My Killer
Directed and produced by Anne Aghion
Gacaca Films, 2009. 101 minutes.
Anne Aghion’s My Neighbor, My Killer is a chilling, elegiac film that documents the struggle of a rural community in Rwanda to overcome the trauma of genocide. Over 100,000 perpetrators remained in prison ten years after 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia in a few months in 1994. The masterminds of the genocide were removed to an international tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, but many lower level genocidaires remained in Rwanda. The government decided to conditionally release these prisoners and try them through a community court system called the Gacaca courts. Suddenly, victims of the genocide found themselves living once again next to their killers. And these killers did not come asking for forgiveness:
We were told they would approach us in peace, in their own time. But not one has so far darkened my door! My brother’s murderer lives just near our home. Why hasn’t he come to ask for forgiveness?
If My Neighbor, My Killer is a work of filmic poetry, The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court is fine prose. This film examines the turbulent origins of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The tone is more educational than entertaining, but presents an air-tight case for the need for a credible international body of criminal justice.
Slippery Independence
Since independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has been blessed and cursed by its abundance of high quality crude oil. Blessed because oil provides 99 percent of the country’s revenue; cursed because oil extraction has been marred by spills of blood. Oil has propped brutal military dictatorships and lined the pockets of corrupt politicians. If the revenue could be distributed equitably, the country could experience significant poverty reduction and economic growth. Sadly, similar experiences from around the world suggest that nothing of the sort will happen.
Oral argument is slated to begin in the historic case Wiwa v Royal Dutch Shell for environmental degradation and gross human rights violations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The proceedings will occur in Federal Court at the Southern District of New York in June 2009.
Both Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron-Texaco have been accused of being the greatest offenders. Writer, activist, and businessman Ken-Saro Wiwa was executed in 1995 for his involvement in protecting the homeland of the Ogoni people against corporate abuse. Evidence strongly suggests that Shell at least tacitly approved of the repression of Saro-Wiwa’s protest movement, and possibly even his execution. His cause is being championed by his son, Ken Wiwa, and a host of human rights groups. For more background, visit my earlier post here.
Crude
Directed by Joe Bolinger
2009, 101 minutes.
For a compelling view of the issues at stake in the Saro-Wiwa trial, buy some popcorn and watch Crude, a documentary that will be screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Crude examines the role of one of the other controversial actors in the Niger Delta region, Chevron-Texaco, several thousands of miles away from Nigeria in the rainforests of Ecuador. There, too, victims have suffered from flared oil wells, spills, sludge, and extrajudicial killings against innocent locals. Mysterious illnesses are appearing at an alarming rate and the victims, often indigenous Indians, are scared.
In My Shoes
by Urban Arts Partnership
Youth Media Activists.
2009, 28 minutes.
They are coming. The new hard-hitting filmmakers are bursting the bonds of the chrysalis, and they’re already flexing their wings. Soon they will begin to fly.
In My Shoes is a film written, directed, and produced by a handful of young men and women. The documentary depicts the frightening presence of youth homelessness in New York city and the courageous attempts of four kids to rise out of it. Over 3,800 children slept on the streets of New York last night.
The reasons the youth ended up homeless were different — inability to pay rent, kicked out of homes, abandonment by parents — but the outcome was the same, a hard life on the streets, riding subway cars from dusk until dawn. And the touching fact is that these youth had the resilience to focus on remaining in school. They may have been down and out, but they were strong enough to keep moving forward in a world that seemed hell bent to deny them.
Look Into My Eyes
A Film by Naftaly Gliksberg
2008, 80 minutes.
Click here for screening times.
To deny something is to admit to its existence; at least that’s what the word has come to mean in the media. When an official ‘denies’ the allegations, the cards are already stacked against her; far better to ‘vehemently disagree’ than to ‘deny’. For if she has denied the allegations then we all know (us, the listeners) that she probably damn well did it. Denial implies that we are ignoring a truth beneath, and we use the word all the time. It is a loaded term.
Naftaly Gliksberg’s film Look into My Eyes shows us how much anti-Semitism is denied today. And that, seething beneath this denial, the truth is more terrifying and insidious than we may have imagined.
Gliksberg, a former Rabbi from Israel, travels through Europe and the U.S. to speak with people about anti-Semitism. But he doesn’t want to find it. There is an optimism and kindness in his demeanor that suggests he would rather not discover anti-Semitism at all. Sadly, he not only identifies it, but unearths prejudice against Jews in everyone from altar boys to comedians.
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin.
Produced / Directed by Bennett Singer & Nancy D. Kates
DVD, 2008
Quaker leader Rufus Jones once intoned that pacifism is the “fiery positive”. A pacifist does not sit idly by, according to Jones, but directly engages in the affairs of the world. Bayard Rustin was the very embodiment of the fiery positive. Raised as a Quaker, the African-American Rustin excelled in academics and sports, reciting classical poetry to his football teammates after a hard tackle on the field. He went on to become one of the greatest American human rights activists of the twentieth century. Yet Rustin’s life has not been celebrated for one reason: he was openly gay.
Read the full review here.
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay
Written and directed by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Starring John Cho, Kal Penn
Comedy, 2008. 102 minutes.
This film follows on the heels of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), a slapstick comedy about two pot smoking twenty-somethings searching for adventure and good times in New Jersey. Escape from Guantánamo Bay picks up ten minutes after the first film ends as the two friends decide to travel Amsterdam to find Harold’s new flame. Their plan quickly goes awry when Kumar is unable to resist lighting up his bong in the bathroom of the airplane and the two are arrested as terrorists. They embark on an international adventure full of raunchy highjinx, screwball antics, and all the rest.
Go to White Castle broke new ground in American cinema by featuring Korean-American and Indian-American main characters. Escape from Guantánamo Bay pushes a whole lot further. What matters about this fiction is that it brings human rights issues into mainstream discourse – in a very funny way.
Read the full review here.
The Dictator Hunter
A Klaartje Quirijns Film
Directed by Klaartje Quirijns, Produced by Pieter van Huystee
Starring Reed Brody, Souleymane Guengueng
Documentary, 75 minutes. 2007.
This seminal film celebrates the efforts of victims, lawyers, and activists to bring Hissène Habré, the most notorious dictator ‘you’ve never heard of’, to justice for mass atrocities. Habré controlled the central African nation of Chad during the height of the Reagan era. Used as a bulwark by the United States against Libyan president Qaddafi, Habré profited from his American backing to systematically kill and torture ethnic groups throughout his country. He fled to Senegal in 1990, where he lived in peaceful luxury enjoying the spoils of his brutal reign. Peaceful luxury, that is, until his victims began to speak – and team up with one of the most extraordinary lawyers alive today.
Read the full review here.
How to Write a Science Fiction Story in 7 Easy Steps
Science fiction stories are easily done badly. UFOs can be seen dangling from strings, characters blurt out stiff, mechanical lines, and the action can turn upon the thinnest of plot points. You’ve seen them – you may even have a poster of Robot Jox (1990) stuffed somewhere in your old college hamper. But a good science fiction story can recast your assumptions about the way you live, about our purpose, and make you reconsider your own faith. Human rights issues can be placed in a new light, rendering them more accessible outside the parameters of the ‘real’ world. Sci-fi stories can also be inspiring. Consider Michio Kaku, an acclaimed inventor of the ‘theory of everything’ known as string theory. Kaku is a life-long sci-fi lover who credits sci-fi for his inspiriation. A good science fiction story can change your life. It can give you everything, like Kaku, or nothing but a cramp.
What’s the difference between the good and the bad? The Imagine Science Film Festival kicked off with an illuminating panel by leading scientists, filmmakers, and screenwriters who specialize in understanding the role of science in fiction. The panel was moderated by National Public Radio host Ira Flatow at the futuristic office of the New York Academy of Sciences. Ari Handel, neuroscientist and screenwriter of The Fountain (2006), Darcy Kelley, neuroscience professor at Columbia, Sidney Perkowitz, a physics professor and film buff, and screenwriter Billy Shebar all joined in an impassioned discussion about “Science in Fiction”. The panel was as much concerned about the valid depiction of scientists as it was about the quality of the entertainment.
Flatow steered the four experts – between silly puns – into educating us about science’s role in film. But the lessons learned are easily attributable beyond film into fiction in general. Read below on how to write a sci-fi story in seven easy steps.** Read the steps here.
MGM Pictures, 1961. 186 minutes.
Produced and Directed by Stanley Kramer
Written by Abby Mann
And here are all these things that pass in the night. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something beyond that? Just simply to help people. And to be remembered for that. You know, time humbles all of us, and all of us are defeated in one way or another in the end. And I wanted something that I wouldn’t be defeated at. And if I help people, if I help people change the world just a molecule, then that would be something worth having.
–Abby Mann, writer
The current President of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes against humanity. How did this come to be? Nuremberg. Slobadan Milosevic, former president of Serbia? Nuremberg. Josheph Kony of the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda? Nuremberg? Saddam Hussein? Nuremberg.
Any serious advocate for international justice and human rights will eventually grow to appreciate the legacy of Nuremberg. These historic trials occurred immediately after the close of World War II and held Nazi officials accountable for their actions. Goering, Hess, Streicher, and over a dozen others were all tried under an international tribunal. The charges were conspiracy, waging aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Some were found guilty and hanged. Others received milder sentences. But what was groundbreaking was the fact that a trial occurred at all. The Soviet Union, Winston Churchill, and American leaders wanted swift retribution: summary execution of the Nazi leaders. Only the forward thinking U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson prevented this from happening. After prolonged negotiations, he convinced the Allied powers to hold a fair trial at Nuremberg, Germany with the presumption of innocence for all charged. It would have been easier to execute indiscriminately, and it was desired by the survivors of millions of victims of the German war machine around the world. Justice Jackson ensured a fair trial, preserving the vital record of Nazi war time atrocities, and temporarily vacated his spot on the Supreme Court to serve as chief prosecutor in the first trial.
The film Judgment at Nuremberg takes up where Jackson left off. The first trial concluded, Jackson flew home to resume his duties on the Supreme Court, ushering in a new era of desegregation with landmark decisions. Many more perpetrators remained to be tried, this time not by an international tribunal of Allies but solely by Americans. Judgment at Nuremberg depicts the trial of Nazi judges in 1949. It is a layered, thoughtful work with moving performances and penetrating ruminations on the nature of justice — and the value of a single human life in a world of billions.
