Belarus, one of the nations formed in 1991 from the breakup of the Soviet Union, is a strange and little-known country in a region of growing strategic importance, a country that's been called "Europe's last dictatorship." In filmmaker Andrezj Fidyk's Belarusian Waltz, one man — post-modern performance artist Alexander Pushkin — is determined to challenge dictator Alexander Lukashenko's power through wheelbarrows of dung, mock patriotic displays and portraits of condemned Nazi collaborators.
Pushkin is determined to get Belarusians to talk about what is happening in their country. But if there's one thing Belarusians seem to agree on, it's that they should keep quiet about history, politics and culture — which makes Pushkin's avant-garde street theater perhaps less of a challenge to the regime than a continuing irritant to Pushkin's family, neighbors, old girlfriend (and mother of his child) and a series of nonplussed policemen and passersby.
While we see Pushkin fighting against the totalitarian system in Belarusian Waltz, we also seehis cruelty to his ex-girlfriend, and his abandonment of his daughter. Is it possible to reconcile the brave artist with the man who seems indifferent to the hurt he has caused to his ex-girlfriend and daughter?
Filmmaker Fidyk says "Pushkin is a complicated man. On the one hand, he is a hero, fighting for freedom in Belarus. On the other hand, he is not as good a person as everyone wants him to be...He has destroyed his former lover, and he doesn't feel sorry for her at all. He never wanted to meet his daughter and acts like his daughter doesn't exist. That scene reveals that as a man, he turned out to be a different person than he was as a political hero."
Is Alexander Pushkin a hero or a cad? Were you surprised by this glimpse of contemporary Belarus? Do you think that performance art is an effective way to fight totalitarianism?
Campaign is a whimsical look at Japanese electoral politics from filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda, whose friend Yamauchi "Yama-San" Kazuhiko is plucked from obscurity by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to run for a critical seat on the Kawasaki city council. Soda films his friend, and along the way, manages to provide a startling insider's view of Japanese electoral politics.
Yamauchi Kazuhiko seems an unlikely choice to run for office. A newcomer to the city, he has zero political experience, no charisma, no supporters and no time to prepare. According to the candidate, he has never even owner a suit before. What he does have is the institutional power of Japan's modern version of Tammany Hall pushing him forward. Yamauchi allows his life to be turned upside down by party bosses as he pursues the rituals of Japanese electioneering.
Watching Campaign from an American perspective is fascinating. The similarities and differences between the democratic process in the U.S. and Japan reveal themselves in a myriad of ways. For example, Yama-San calls himself a "parachute" candidate because he moved from Tokyo to Kawasaki to run for the open city council seat. This kind of term exists in American politics as well — in the form of the "carpetbagger" candidate. On the other hand, American candidates are encouraged to always be confident while Yama-San showed a lot of deference to the party elders during the campaign.
Yama-San's wife, Sayuri, objects to the role that she has to take in the campaign. She is told that she must refer to herself as a "housewife" instead of a "wife" to appeal to the conservative supporters of the LDP. Do you think Sayuri was right to be upset? What roles do candidates' spouses play in the American political process?
Filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda is also mystified by parts of the American political process. He says that in Japan, "election law prohibits candidates from spending too much money," and he feels uneasy because in America, "only people who are rich can be elected." Do you agree with him? Should American politics have more restrictive laws on how much money candidates can spend on their campaigns?
Filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda was born and raised in Japan. While attending the University of Tokyo, he met and befriended Yamauchi Kazuhiko, or "Yama-san." Almost twenty years later, Kazuhiro was surprised to find out that his old friend was running for a critical city council seat in the city of Kawasaki as part of the Liberal Democratic Party. Sensing that Yama-san's campaign might prove interesting, Kazuhiro asked him if he could shoot a film about the process. Five days later, Kazuhiro was in Kawasaki and rolling.
Parts of the Japanese political process in Campaign might seem quite strange and unfamiliar to the American viewer. Yama-san has to repeat his name as often as possible while he goes around the city district, and his wife, Sayuri, has to refer to herself as a "housewife" instead of a "wife" even though she is an independent career woman. Kazuhiro spoke about some of the differences between American and Japanese elections in his filmmaker interview:
In Japanese culture people should not look too proud or confident; if you look too confident people may think that you are arrogant and cannot be trusted. In American culture, on the other hand, political candidates have to look like they know what they're doing, and they have to act like they are the best. So those differences go a long way to explain why the Japanese election looks so different from an American campaign.
Read more from Kazuhiro Soda's interview and find out what Yama-san was like in college, and what aspects of the American political process Kauzhiro feels uneasy with.
Do you want to ask Kazuhiro Soda a question? Enter them in the comment field below, and he will select a few and answer them the week of July 28, 2008.
9 Star Hotel is the facetious name that Palestinian construction workers give to the pile of rocks that marks their clandestine nightly abode — a group of cardboard enclosures and tin-covered huts hidden in the brush-covered hills above the Israeli town of Modi'in. It is also the name of this week's P.O.V. film about the daily travails of these "illegals" as they hide from police at night so that they can work in Modi'in during the day.
The Palestinian men are neither militants nor activists, but ordinary youths placed by history in extraordinary circumstances who emerge as fully human — flawed and sympathetic. Caught in a strange and dangerous no-man's land between an Israel that must enforce laws to protect its citizens and a Palestinian Authority that can't or won't help them, they must risk capture and live in makeshift shelters simply to survive.
As a film made by an Israeli that takes the point of view of its young Palestinian subjects, 9 Star Hotel holds out a model for understanding, even across significant divides. The vérité-style documentary reminds viewers that behind all the political contention that so often defines regions like the West Bank, there are human stories. The film's subjects face universal struggles to make a living, care for family and prove their manhood. Individual tragedy is counterbalanced by resilience as the young men dream of a brighter future, despite the uncertainties that define their current situation.
Ahmed has no hope of fulfilling his dream of becoming police officer because he can't read and write. How is the experience of the men in the film like or unlike the experiences of day laborers or undocumented workers in other places? How is their situation like or unlike other places where borders divide areas of wealth and poverty?
Reflecting on Israel's treatment of Palestinians, Muhammad says, "If you shut a cat in a room, won't it jump at you?" If you could recommend to the Israeli government one policy change that would improve the lives of the men in the film, what would you recommend and why? Assume that the Palestinian Authority was not constrained politically. Similarly, what one policy change would you recommend to the Palestinian Authority?
Katy Chevigny is the director of Election Day. After the film aired on P.O.V., viewers wrote in with questions for Katy on the P.O.V. Blog. Read on as she answers questions about Nader and Gore in 2000, Ohio in 2004 and more.
Mit asks: In the 2000 election, a lot of people blamed Nader for causing Gore to lose. However, Nader defenders blame the election process, particularly noting the thousands of uncounted votes due to errors in polling — illegal, non-handicapped-accessible booths, or absurdly long lines in poor neighborhoods. Based on what this film is about, does the Nader defense hold water that he wasn't responsible for Gore losing? Was it more likely the lack of proper election facilities?
Katy Chevigny: The ultimate findings in the poll count for Florida in the 2000 election, as summarized in the Election FAQ on the P.O.V. website for Election Day, shows that even with Nader in the race, Gore won the popular vote in the state of Florida. If those ballots had been counted properly and in a timely fashion, Gore would have won the election despite Nader being in the race.
David asks: In Election Day you combine 11 different stories of citizens determined to vote in the November 2004 election. Four years later, we are in the midst of another election season. That being said, I was wondering if you have kept in touch and kept up with the stories of the individuals from Election Day. If so, do you plan to do any follow-up filming this coming November?
Katy: I don't have any plans on filming this November, but my guess is that many, many other people will, and I look forward to seeing what they discover! We have kept up with many of the characters and you can see what they are up to here on the Film Update page.
Jacquinette asks: I am still enjoying this wonderful film; it gives a varied perspective on the election experience in America. I was captivated by your focus on ex-felon voting rights.
I would like to know if you are working on a film that focuses more closely with this particular issue. Furthermore, how can I get involved with this issue and help? I'm also wondering if you will be touring with this film in the near future.
Katy: I'm glad you took special note of the issue of felon disenfranchisement. This was an issue that we were particularly interested in highlighting in the film, in part because we think it is very important, and I have the sense that the public does not have great awareness of the issue.
That's great that you'd like to do more! The experts on the P.O.V. website have many great suggestions for getting more involved. One of the key ways is to volunteer to be a pollworker. Rosemary Rodriquez at the Election Assistance Commission explains a bit more about it.
We are touring with the film this fall. You can learn more about the schedule at electiondaythemovie.com.
John asks: Why doesn't your film mention the horrible disenfranchisment that took place in Ohio in 2004? Hundreds of thousands of voters were knocked off of the voter registration rolls in Ohio, and there were major problems that occured with electronic voting machines and vote flipping.
Katy: In response to viewers' concerns that Election Day did not cover the controversy in Ohio regarding the election in 2004, that is due in part to the fact that we had the made the decision before Election Day to film the events that were happening to these particular people we were following. So therefore, any events in the aftermath of the election were not covered. We were also aware that there were several other films also being filmed about the 2004 election, and we assumed that many of them would cover the details in Ohio.
Susan asks: Great film, Katy. How did you and your team decide who to follow for all of the stories in the film?
Katy: It was a massive undertaking to find all the "characters" we followed in Election Day and to gain permissions to film with all of them. Our producers Maggie Bowman and Dallas Brennan Rexer, along with our Associate Producer Christy King, each spent many weeks researching possible storylines and locations. We reached out to several nonprofit organizations working on various election issues, and they put us in touch with groups working on felon disenfranchisement, election protection, and alerted us to the fact that there were international monitors working on the elections. In addition, we sent out email blasts to hundreds of people all over the country, seeking ideas for characters or stories that were not generally covered in the mainstream new media, and chose characters based on that research.
The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández tells a frightening and cautionary tale about the dangers of using military as domestic law enforcement — a role that the military, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, had been prohibited from taking. In 1997, U.S. Marines patrolling the Texas-Mexican border as part of the U.S. war on drugs shot and killed Esequiel Hernández Jr. Mistaken for a drug runner, the 18 year old was, in fact, a U.S. citizen tending his family's goats. The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández, a 90-minute documentary, explores this tragedy and its aftermath from multiple points of view, including Esequiel's parents, siblings, and friends, the Marines on patrol and FBI investigators.
As the story unfolds the film raises as many questions as it answers.
TV personality Bill O'Reilly dismisses the incident saying "accidents will happen in any military deployment," and challenges viewers asking, "What is the harm in giving us more protection by using the military the way they should be used? If you read the Constitution, the military's primary mandate is to protect the borders of the United States!"
Congressman Tom Tancredo says of the shooting that such accidents have to be balanced against the need for national security. In what ways does drug interdiction contribute to national security? Is there a difference between "national interest" and "national security"?
FBI Case Agent Jane Kelly says "If [the Marines] had been any domestic law enforcement personnel, sheriff's deputy, Texas Rangers, FBI, they would have gone to jail." What are the differences between law enforcement and the military? Which is better suited to patrol the border and why?
The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández raises critical public policy issues related to the militarization of the border, the human cost of the war on drugs, the blurring of lines between the military and law enforcement and finding justice for an American family who has lost a son. What lessons does the death of Esequiel Hernández offer regarding the current deployment of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border?
Why are voting laws so different from state to state? What's a poll watcher, and how can you become one? Derek Cressman of Common Cause, a voting watchdog organization, answered some frequently asked questions about the U.S. election system on the P.O.V. companion website for Election Day, a film that chronicles the 2004 presidential election in 11 cities and towns across America. Election Day premieres this week on PBS (check local listings).
The good news in Election Day is that more and more Americans are bringing their passion for democracy to the polls, drawing unprecedented numbers of voters eager to make the most of their right to cast a ballot and have it counted. Taking place in the long shadow of 2000's bitterly contested presidential vote, the 2004 election also brought more scrutiny of polling-place practices from citizens as well as international observers. The bad news in Election Day is that close scrutiny of American elections finds a surprisingly antiquated system, which often works as much to frustrate voter participation as to encourage it and which harbors wide disparities in access between rich and poor neighborhoods.
If you have a question about voting, check out our FAQ, and if your question isn't there, submit it in the comments below. At the end of this week, we'll pick one (or two), Derek will answer it, and we will add it to the Election Day FAQ feature.
Added July 15, 2008: Derek has answered two of the questions posed in the comments on the Election Day FAQ. Visit the FAQ to find out why he thinks voting is a duty, and how much your vote really matters.
On October 7, 2008, P.O.V. will air Joanna Rudnick's In the Family. When Joanna tested positive for the "breast cancer gene" at age 27, she knew the information could save her life. She also knew that she would have to make heart-wrenching decisions about whether or not to remove her breasts and ovaries, or risk developing cancer. In the Family is a moving document of one young woman's struggles, and her efforts to reach out to other women while facing her deepest fears.
On May 1st, Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) bill. On this momentous occasion, Joanna writes in to talk about why the GINA bill is so important, and to introduce us to In the Familiy.
Watch the trailer for the film:
In 2001, at the age of 27, I decided to take a genetic test to find out my odds of getting breast and ovarian cancer. As I pondered what a positive test result would mean to my future, one of my main concerns was the potential for losing my health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
Even though a positive test result is only a predictor of risk and not a diagnosis of disease, I wasn't confident that the insurance companies would see it the same way. So I tested anonymously, paying out of pocket for the blood test.
It came back "positive for a deleterious mutation," and I worked hard to keep the information out of my medical records, often leading to confused and uninformed conversations with doctors about my future care. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be living in fear solely because I inherited some bad DNA.
During the process of making In the Family, I hooked up with an incredible group called The Coalition for Genetic Fairness that was working tirelessly to try and pass legislation to protect individuals from genetic discrimination by insurers and employers. This legislation, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), would offer more than just legal protections; it would conquer the culture of fear that had grown around genetic testing.
After a nearly 13-year battle to pass GINA in some form of another, the bill passed both houses of Congress a few weeks ago and President Bush has promised to sign it into law.
I cried as I watched two hours of the Senate hearings on C-SPAN, during which Senator Ted Kennedy referred to the bill as the most important civil rights legislation passed in the new century. I could see the hundreds of faces of all the women and their families I encountered on the road the last few years and know that they no longer had to live in fear that their genetic information would be used against them.
Instead, we can now focus our energies on early detection and prevention, and living full lives despite our predispositions.
In the Family airs on P.O.V. on Wednesday, October 1. You can sign up to be reminded of the film's broadcast on its preview page.
Irene Villaseñor is P.O.V.'s Youth Views manager. Youth Views is a project that works with youth, educators, and youth-serving organizations to use P.O.V. films as a tool for youth engagement. Irene writes in today to talk about how communities can organize around the 2008 P.O.V. filmElection Dayto reduce voter disenfranchisement, and her own experiences on Super Tuesday with the Asian Pacific American community.
On July 1, P.O.V. will broadcast Election Day, a film by Katy Chevigny that combines 11 stories that were shot around the country on November 2, 2004. The film focuses on how incredibly varied our voting experiences are across the country — we see stories of activists on the Pine Ridge Reservation as they mobilize Native voters, advocates in New York City that want to unleash the voting power of ex-convicts, and a Republican committee man in Chicago that wants to ensure that Republican voters aren't intimidated at polling stations, among other scenes from election day 2004.
This wide-angle view reveals the barriers to civic participation that some communities must overcome in order to have their votes count. The film can be a powerful eye-opener, especially for citizens who blame voters for the electoral scandals in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004.
Working with this film inspired me to reflect on how my own community, Asian Pacific Americans, struggles with voter disenfranchisement. Since May is Asian Pacific Heritage month, this is one of the best times to delve deeper into our legacies and assess how much progress has been made.
We still have a way to go.
Since 1988, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) has been monitoring our community's participation in local and national elections. In a 2006 report to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which was created to eliminate literacy tests, poll taxes and other barriers to voting), AALDEF identified that Asian Americans continue to experience racial discrimination, harassment, and institutional barriers at polls.
AALDEF's latest report, Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections, cites incidents of anti-Asian voter disenfranchisement in 25 cities across the nation. These statistics called me forth to get involved. On Super Tuesday, I volunteered to survey Asian American voters about their experience, ensure that translators and translated materials were available, refer people to AALDEF's complaint hotline, and speak to the press about the situation.
During my shift, I discussed with the other volunteers how Election Day could be an incredible resource for people who wanted to mobilize communities for the 2008 elections and examine what deters individuals and communities from political life.
If you want to borrow Election Day for a community or classroom screening, sign up on P.O.V.'s Community Events Planner. For information on a range of election-year issues, check out P.O.V.'s Why Vote? website. And if you would like to get involved with AALDEF's Asian American Democracy Project, visit their website for more information.
One of the things that always strikes me as I watch documentaries is that the stories don't end as the credits start to roll. After they've given us a glimpse into their lives, documentary subjects go on living, usually out of the spotlight — and we, the viewers who have come to care about them, are often left wondering: "What happened next?"
At P.O.V., we face this question again and again. The most popular part of our websites for our films are the "Update" sections, where we check in with the films' subjects to see what they've been up to since the production wrapped up. Updates find many of the characters conquering personal demons or returning to a private life after being documented in a film. Yesterday, however, saw one of the characters in the 2005 P.O.V. film Street Fight, in the news: Sharpe James, the former mayor of Newark, New Jersey was convicted on five counts of fraud and faces up to eight years in prison.
Street Fight was director Marshall Curry's first feature-length film.
The Academy Award-nominated Street Fight, by Marshall Curry, is a riveting look at the 2002 mayoral elections in Newark, New Jersey. Cory Booker, then a 32-year-old upstart challenger full of youthful energy and ideals, ran against four-time Mayor Sharpe James. The fast pace of the film shows the campaigns as they devolve into dirty tricks and intimidation. One of the most dramatic moments in the film comes when the film crew — and director Marshall Curry himself — becomes a target of Mayor James' supporters: the mayor himself approaches the camera and has his security shut down the filming.
Booker lost the 2002 mayoral election to James, who served his fifth term as mayor of Newark from 2002-2006. Both men entered the 2006 race, but James soon dropped out. Later in 2006, newspapers reported that he was the target of a federal investigation for corruption and spending city money on personal entertainment.
The news came yesterday that the former mayor has been convicted of fraud for conspiring to sell city property to his then-girlfriend, who quickly flipped the city lots for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. Both James and his former girlfriend were convicted, and the sentencing is scheduled for July 29, 2008. It was a stunning blow for James, who had been the mayor of Newark for 20 years.
For more about Sharpe James' conviction and his tarnished legacy in Newark, watch and read the coverage from The Star Ledger.
Having watched the acrimony of the 2002 mayoral elections in Street Fight, I can only wonder what Cory Booker thinks of his predecessor now. Does he finally feel vindicated because James' misuse of power in office has been brought to light and justice has been served? Or does he have more understanding of the ways in which power can corrupt, now that he has served as mayor for two years? Cory Booker is serving as the 36th mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He is up for reelection in 2010.
The Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen chronicles the anti-war protests outside the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and the conspiracy trial of the demonstrators that followed a year later. Morgen, who also made The Kid Stays in the Picture, takes an audacious approach to The Chicago 10 by re-creating the trial through motion-capture animation, and using music by the likes of Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, and the Beastie Boys. In a rave review, The Washington Post says "Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America." The Chicago Tribune, however, says it's "inconsistent," praising the film for its use of news footage and resisting the urge to provide "outright commentary," while admonishing it for not taking its subject seriously enough. (See the trailer on YouTube.)
ON DVD
The documentary The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, showed at a number of documentary film festivals and was nominated for various awards. The film follows Mr. Vig, a never-married 82-year-old man living alone in a ramshackle castle in Denmark who wants to donate his home to the Russian Orthodox Church so that it can become a monastery. A young Russian nun arrives to supervise the extensive repairs on the castle, and their contest of wills take unexpected turns as Mr. Vig and the nun begin to find common ground. The Village Voice praises the film as a "fantastic little character portrait... [which pays] prudent attention ...to aesthetic nuances." TV Guide says that despite the strangeness of the subject, filmmaker Grønkjær has crafted "a fascinating picture" and calls The Monastery a "remarkable film."
Earlier this month, I attended the Film Your Issue launch party at the United Nations. I first heard about Film Your Issue (FYI) from our partners at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. For the past five years we've worked with their American Democracy Project, to support them in accomplishing the goal of educating undergraduates in public higher education on global issues. Why? So students are ready to wisely practice their civic responsibilities as thoughtful and engaged citizens.
The concept behind FYI is beautifully clear and direct. They ask 14-24 year olds to "film their issue" because they want young people to contribute to the public discussion on pressing issues — and even influence policy. We are in fantastic company on this project — the United Nations, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NAACP, USA TODAY, Associated Press, MTV, the Humane Society of the United States, the NRDC, Starz, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Association of Student Councils, AFI Silverdocs and AFI Screen Nation, International Documentary Association, MySpace, the American Association of University Professors, the University Film and Video Association and the Association of American Colleges and Universities are some of the other sponsors. Plus, we are offering this year a summer internship at P.O.V. as one of the special prizes. For our prize, the winning film will be selected for illuminating issues relevant in the 2008 Presidential election, including education, election reform, environment, foreign policy and the war, healthcare and immigration.The winning film will be posted on the P.O.V. site and broadcast in full or excerpted on Starz.
Over on the Moyers Blog this week, there is a lively debate about what one book the next occupant of the White House should bring along when he or she moves in next January. The post generated over 2,400 suggestions — and it is worth a look. The recommendations make up an eclectic list of books by authors as wide-ranging as Aristotle, Howard Zinn and Dr. Seuss, to name just a few.
At any rate, it got me thinking (and apparently also Rex Reed, although I'm not sure he was also inspired by the Moyers Blog): There's a screening room in the White House. What documentary do you think the next President should bring to the White House?
This year, there are so many sites that feature political coverage that it can be almost as overwhelming to wade through the coverage as it is to figure out who really stands for what. Here are a few sites that do a nice job of rounding up audio and video — from news, interviews with the candidates, and thorough analysis — that will help you understand the candidates and their stance on the issues that mean most to you.
The Online NewsHour Vote 2008 We are loyal PBS viewers and Web surfers here at P.O.V, so we've been looking at the NewsHour's comprehensive primary coverage for months now. We're impressed with their site, particularly the Reporters' Blogs, which are updated around the clock by reporters following each candidate as they crisscross the country in the few hours before Super Tuesday. Even more impressive is the Primary Election Map, which allows you to choose your state for stories from the NewsHour, NPR and local PBS stations about campaigning and issues on the local level. In terms of video, check out the NewsHour's Candidate Interview Series (see the bottom right-hand link on the main Vote 2008 page), for great one-on-one interviews with the candidates on hot-button issues.
Yahoo! News - Election '08
Yahoo rounds up news from all over to provide comprehensive coverage of the candidates and the issues. The election coverage section features a roundup of video clips from a range of sites, from CNN to the BBC and Fox News. Also, check out the Democratic Debates mashup: While the field's narrowed to two by this point, this interactive "mashup" debate, hosted by Charlie Rose, is still a very interesting way to see the candidates speak about their positions. Users select two candidates, pick one of four issues, and then see a short video of each candidate explaining his or her position.
Election Podcasts on iTunes:
Apple gathers a variety of podcasts, audiobooks, and video downloads for easy access through the iTunes portal. Check out the New Yorker's "On the Campaign Trail" podcast, commentary from Slate.com, and Vote 2008 from the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
"Third, has anyone outside of the WGA seen the top doc vote-getter, The Camden 28? The film was release [sic] by First Look in July on 1 screen and earned under $10,000. How in God's name did this movie end up being the biggest vote getter at the Guild?"
He raises a number of issues that trouble me. First, in the spirit of full disclosure, The Camden 28 was included in P.O.V.'s 20th anniversary season with a broadcast premiere on 9/11/2007 — and I like the film! I don't need to spend too much space here defending the film despite Poland's snide dismissal. For that, check out the review in The New York Times which says: "The Camden 28 is a brilliant merger of political outrage and filmmaking chops, and the most suspenseful movie in theaters right now." A simple Google search comes up with dozens of other notices both praising and criticizing the film — including the Grand Jury Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The film has been featured in dozens of other festivals internationally and had a limited theatrical run through the first class distributor First Run Features.
What Poland's post raises, I believe, is the more problematic issue of equating box office success with the importance of a documentary — a crude measurement. Let's get real here, the vast majority of docs have a very limited box office appeal. I can't believe that other WGA nominees made millions at the box office — despite how much I might admire The Rape of Europa and the excellent No End In Sight. Most of them make little or no money. (As far as I'm aware, the WGA does not take box office in account in their awards, God bless them.)
Sure, there is a terrific festival circuit that has evolved so that filmmakers can reach hundreds, and occasionally thousands of people. Theatrically, a tiny percentage of docs will reach major audiences. At P.O.V., we wholeheartedly support filmmakers who want to pursue these options through festivals and theatrical releases. It's an important part of the whole life of a film. But that's not where the major audience is for most films. So, where is that big audience and where does that leave doc filmmakers? Well, it may sound old fashioned, but television is still where doc filmmakers are going to reach their biggest audience, and it means that doc filmmakers (as most do) need to seek out all their audiences — not just the hyper-engaged festival and theatrical audiences.
Case in point: The Camden 28. The film has had a long festival life, and a modest but acclaimed theatrical life. But the real audience was television — over 700,000 people watched its premiere on the P.O.V. broadcast on PBS. Thousands more have watched and will watch re-broadcasts of the film. So, it seems to me that The Camden 28 is, in fact, pretty successful.
From now until New Year's day, the P.O.V. Blog will be posting about great documentaries from the P.O.V. archives. Rent one at the local video store or via Netflix to watch with your friends and family during the holiday season.
Every Mothers Son recalls accusations of police brutality during New York's Giuliani years
When Amadou Diallo died in a hail of police gunfire in his New York apartment building's vestibule while reaching for his wallet, there was widespread public outrage. Many New Yorkers believed Diallo's death was an egregious example of police negligence or criminal misconduct aimed at poor and minority communities. Others, including then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the police leadership, suggested the killing was a tragic yet unavoidable accident in the dangerous job of policing the city's mean streets. Despite differing accounts of police actions and motives, one thing was certain: the young Amadou, a West African studying in the U.S., was guilty of nothing more than coming home at the same moment a squad from the NYPD's Street Crimes Unit happened to be passing his building.
I thought of Every Mother's Son a few weeks ago while listening to NPR's excellent "On the Media" program. On their November 30 broadcast, a reporter from Arkansas talked about his frustration with the national media and their coverage of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Arkansas Times reporter Max Brantley complained that "Huckabee's ethical history isn't making the news as much as his folksy conservative bona-fides," saying that he and other local reporters "have some insights that the rest of the world maybe hasn't tuned into yet."
As we approach the primary phase of the 2008 presidential election starting later this week in Iowa, I want to recommend this film that aired on P.O.V. in 2004 that recalls the history of another presidential hopeful. Every Mother's Son takes a look at events that occurred during Rudolph Guiliani's term as mayor of New York City, before he became "America's mayor."
Last week, P.O.V. aired Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock's latest film, Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Viewers wrote in with questions about the film for Ms. Mock via email and via blog comments. She'll be answering a selection of those questions on the P.O.V. Blog this week.
Question: Wrestling With Angels is about the life and work of Tony Kushner, a playwright who addresses topics like war and peace, gay rights, terrorism, American foreign policy and race relations in his plays and screenplays. How do you see Kushner's political point of view play out in his work? How do you express your political views in your documentary films?
Freida Lee Mock: The question of art and politics has come up often in the discussions surrounding the film. A recent project I worked on demonstrates some of the ways I think about the connection between the two.
Adel Hamad is a Sudanese man who had been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly 5 years without a court hearing. I heard about Adel's case, and I worked together with actor Martin Sheen on a video about Adel's case, and about the need for transparency and open hearings for detainees.
I'm happy to report that Adel Hamad was released in December 2007, and has been reunited with his family in Sudan. You can watch a video of Adel being reunited with his daughter at the Project Hamad Blog (footage courtesy of Al Jazeera). This is the result of all that hard work — a good man goes home to his family. However, Adel was only one of the many detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and many others are still in custody, still in legal limbo. You can find out more about Adel Hamad and the necessity of habeas corpas at Project Hamad.
Other viewers of Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner have also asked me about the relationship between art and politics in Tony Kushner's work, and in my work. You can watch me talk about this topic in the video below.
Read Part II of Freida Lee Mock's response to viewer questions.
Next Wednesday, December 12th, Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock'sWrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner airs on P.O.V. at 9 PM (check your local listings).
If you don't know Tony Kushner and his work in the theater, here's your opportunity to meet the man who has been called "the most charming dissident around." Since the breakthrough of his epic play Angels in America — subsequently made into a hit miniseries — in the early 1990s, Kushner has emerged as one of America's leading playwrights. Kushner's award-winning, ambitious plays tackle issues like AIDS, race and terrorism with sensitivity and humor, and they challenge us to engage with the moral and political issues of our times. In Wrestling with Angels, Mock follows Kushner for three tumultuous years, from September 11, 2001, up to the 2004 presidential election, to delve into the passions that keep him reaching for the great American play.
In honor of Thanksgiving, I took a spin around YouTube this weekend to see whether there were any good cooking or food-related videos worth watching.
The first video I stumbled across was produced by a group called Cooking Up a Story. They have been producing videos and posting them on YouTube since May of last year. They want to tell "stories about real people and their special connections to food and sustainable living." The videos have a D-I-Y ethos to them, but actually showcase some solid editing, good storytelling sensibility and charming interviewees who are clearly unscripted. I watched a video about urban fruit gleaning in Portland, Oregon and I was hooked. I ended up watching five more in the same sitting.
Freida Lee Mock's Academy Award® winning documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision premiered on P.O.V. in 1996. It was 25 years ago today that the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was dedicated in Washington D.C. On this anniversary date, we take a look back at the film, which follows a decade in the life of this visionary artist. Freida Lee Mock returns to P.O.V. on December 12th, 2007 with her new film about another extraordinary artist: Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
Visionary artist Maya Lin. By Adam Stoltman
On November 13, 1982, the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. It was one of the most bitterly disputed public monuments in American history. Only 21 when her design for the Washington, D.C. Vietnam Veterans Memorial was chosen in 1981, Maya Lin has never shied away from controversy.
Her starkly simple slash of polished black granite inscribed with the 57,661 names of those who died in Vietnam was viciously attacked as "dishonorable," "a scar," and "a black hole," but Lin remained committed to her vision, and the Memorial, a moving tribute to sacrifice and quiet heroism, was built as planned. Since then, Lin has completed a succession of eloquent, startlingly original monuments and sculptures that confront vital American social issues.
Read more and watch an interview with filmmaker Freida Lee Mock after the jump...
August 24, 2 pm Calavera Highway
San Diego, CA
Come to a screening of Calavera Highway, and look at one family's legacy of living on the US-Mexico border by following brothers as they search for answers to their family's shattered history. Find out more about the screening!
While we see Pushkin fighting against the totalitarian system in Belarusian Waltz, we also seehis cruelty to his ex-girlfriend, and his abandonment of his daughter. Is it possible to reconcile the brave artist with the man who seems indifferent to the hurt he has caused to his ex-girlfriend and daughter?
Filmmaker Fidyk says "Pushkin is a complicated man. On the one hand, he is a hero, fighting for freedom in Belarus. On the other hand, he is not as good a person as everyone wants him to be...He has destroyed his former lover, and he doesn't feel sorry for her at all. He never wanted to meet his daughter and acts like his daughter doesn't exist. That scene reveals that as a man, he turned out to be a different person than he was as a political hero."
Yama-San's wife, Sayuri, objects to the role that she has to take in the campaign. She is told that she must refer to herself as a "housewife" instead of a "wife" to appeal to the conservative supporters of the LDP. Do you think Sayuri was right to be upset? What roles do candidates' spouses play in the American political process?
Filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda is also mystified by parts of the American political process. He says that in Japan, "election law prohibits candidates from spending too much money," and he feels uneasy because in America, "only people who are rich can be elected." Do you agree with him? Should American politics have more restrictive laws on how much money candidates can spend on their campaigns?
Ahmed has no hope of fulfilling his dream of becoming police officer because he can't read and write. How is the experience of the men in the film like or unlike the experiences of day laborers or undocumented workers in other places? How is their situation like or unlike other places where borders divide areas of wealth and poverty?
Reflecting on Israel's treatment of Palestinians, Muhammad says, "If you shut a cat in a room, won't it jump at you?" If you could recommend to the Israeli government one policy change that would improve the lives of the men in the film, what would you recommend and why? Assume that the Palestinian Authority was not constrained politically. Similarly, what one policy change would you recommend to the Palestinian Authority? 
Katy Chevigny is the director of 
TV personality Bill O'Reilly dismisses the incident saying "accidents will happen in any military deployment," and challenges viewers asking, "What is the harm in giving us more protection by using the military the way they should be used? If you read the Constitution, the military's primary mandate is to protect the borders of the United States!" 
Congressman Tom Tancredo says of the shooting that such accidents have to be balanced against the need for national security. In what ways does drug interdiction contribute to national security? Is there a difference between "national interest" and "national security"? 
FBI Case Agent Jane Kelly says "If [the Marines] had been any domestic law enforcement personnel, sheriff's deputy, Texas Rangers, FBI, they would have gone to jail." What are the differences between law enforcement and the military? Which is better suited to patrol the border and why?
On October 7, 2008, P.O.V. will air Joanna Rudnick's 
Irene Villaseñor is P.O.V.'s Youth Views manager. 
The concept behind FYI is beautifully clear and direct. They ask 14-24 year olds to "film their issue" because they want young people to contribute to the public discussion on pressing issues — and even influence policy. We are in fantastic company on this project — the United Nations, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NAACP, USA TODAY, Associated Press, MTV, the Humane Society of the United States, the NRDC, Starz, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Association of Student Councils, AFI Silverdocs and AFI Screen Nation, International Documentary Association, MySpace, the American Association of University Professors, the University Film and Video Association and the Association of American Colleges and Universities are some of the other sponsors. Plus, we are offering this year a summer internship at P.O.V. as one of the special prizes. For our prize, the 
I was intrigued and troubled by David Poland's 
Last week, P.O.V. aired Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock's latest film, Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Viewers wrote in with questions about the film for Ms. Mock via email and via blog comments. She'll be answering a selection of those questions on the P.O.V. Blog this week.
If you live in Milwaukee, you have two chances to catch 
The first video I stumbled across was produced by a group called 
