About 1960's Montgomery, Alabama, specifically a KKK bombing of a black church there in which 4 young girls were killed. Very good.

A slice of life from the late 1960s

This movie is a dramatization of the first really successful black union drive of railroad porters at the Pullman company during the early 1900s. The porters were paid shoddy wages, worked too hard, and humiliated by the passengers. It was company policy for every black porter to be called George, after George Pullman, the first to employ emancipated slaves. Like many a union, its organizing drive had to resist violence, smear campaigns, firings, scabs, and spies in order to make the workers lives better.

About the Black Panthers and FBI harassment.

A terrifying look at Nazi Germany, about SS Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein who developed techniques to purify water, and was given a promotion to help streamline the death camp chemicals. He tried to alert various governments and the Vatican, but no on e was particularly interested in acting on that information. Based on Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play The Representative, which was based on Gerstein's true story. See www.auschwitz.dk/Gerstein.htm for a brief biography of Gerstein, and some references.

From the director of Breaker Morant, this follows the making of a wartime movie bolstering the image of rebel leader Poncho Villa against the ruling aristocracy of Mexico in the early 1900s, which was one of the earliest uses of movies to try to sway public opinion. Nowadays, it would probably be a video news release produced by a multimillion dollar PR firm that no one's heard of other than corporate executives.

From Egoyan, director of such films as The Adjuster, and Felicia's Journey. Follows the making of a film about the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people in 1915 in which several hundred thousand Armenians were killed, which the Turkish government to this day denies having happened.

Full of footage of nuclear bombs and hysteria, even with footage of the natives of Bikini Atoll. Good documentary, and what is most surprising is that Rafferty is apparently a cousin of George W. Bush! And he taught documentary making to the young Michael Moore!

Chronicles the turmoil in Algeria during 1954-62, which led to the expulsion of the French. After 100 years of colonial exploitation, rebels emerge and enact a program of attacks on French police, and terrorist bombing of French cafes and sports events. Elite French paratroopers are called in to keep the peace, which they do with their own bombings, and most forms of torture to extract information, The soldier in charge justifies that by stating that the real question is whether France must be in Algeria, and if the answer is yes, then France must accept the consequences. Apparently the Pentagon had a showing of it in 2003 for its employees announced in part this way: "... The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."

Centers on a Palestinian and an american who team up to blow up the Super Bowl by flying a blimp over it and blowing up. The Palestine-Isreal turmoil as briefly portrayed here is just about the same today, except perhaps that the Palestinians are more desperate and crushed now.

Dramatized account ot Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland on Sunday, January 30th, 1971 when the British forces open fire on a march killing 13 and wounding another 14, one of which died soon after. Shows very clearly the difficulties organizing for peace while surrounded by guns, and I don't mean Al-Qaeda. You might look up www.bloodysundaytrust.org or www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk for more info.

One the the best, darkest, twisted movies of all time. Watch a faschist state clamp down on terrorists, and the fantasy life of a bureaucrat. Required viewing.

Based on a true story about 3 Australian soldiers fighting for the British in the Boer war in South Africa around the end of the 19th century, who ere court marshalled and two were put to death for conducting war as the empire wanted. Crisp dialogue, Required viewing for anyone looking to be a commando.

Quite and excellent move taking place in the Antilles in the mid 1800s. Brando plays a CIA/PR type of man working for the British to properly subjugate the Antilles for the benefit of Civilization and the British Economy. Highly recommended.

Dramatized non-fiction about Mendes, who was a Brazilian rubber tapper in the jungle who became a very effective non-violent organizer against the destruction of the amazon which was destroying the livelihoods of many families of his community.

With Lemmon as a nuclear plant manager, Jane Fonda as a tv reporter, and Douglas as a radical cameraman for Fonda, this movie was released just 12 days before the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979. Fonda and Douglas serendipitously capture a nearly catastrophic accident at a nuclear plant while filming footage for a generic see-what-great-power-nukes-provide special. Neither the TV executives nor the nuclear plant execs want any word of the accident out in the public eye, espcially as hearings about the approval of a new nuclear plant were just days away. Lemmon finally takes matters into his own hands when no one heeds his warnings of the terrible imminent danger. Speaking of execs versus engineers, any one remember the Space Shuttle blowing up?

Two Suleiman movies proving that humanity exists in Palestine. In 1991, he also co-made An Introduction to the End of an Argument, which is a kind of video montage of western stereotypes of Arabs.

A very interesting movie from the director of Startup.com following the trials and tribulations of al-Jazeera reporters covering the war in Iraq. These al-Jazeera reporters left Iraq after US planes bombed two buildings killing reporters from al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. Has many interviews with various al-Jazeera reporters, US military representatives, and people from other news outlets.

Terry Jones presents this 4 part documentary about the various European crusades which ransacked the Middle East in the name of God between about 1100 and 1300. Many of the people and events then are still discussed today, such as Jihad and Saladin, who in the late 1100s led a mostly successful revolt against the occupying crusaders. More visually elaborate than most historical documentaries.

Documentary about many people who lived in train tunnels as it was the most viable way to survive. The expenses from making the movie were so much that even the director became homeless for a while.

An excellent portrayal of what can happen when war crazed so-called conservative groups such as the Project for a New American Century are allowed to run rampant across the planet, inflicting blindness and terror as they go. Based on the book of the same name.

About Day nad Catholic advocates for the poor. She sure showed her pedantic communist friends a thing or two about the people! Day started many homeless shelters and also the newspaper National Catholic Reporter.

A half real/half reenacted movie of stories aboard one man's Ford Transit, one of many vehicles Isreali police used in Palestinian areas, but which are now taxis that take people from one checkpoint to the next. There are quite a few of these Fords, and there are quite a few checkpoints. Everyone uses these, young, old, poor, rich (that is, less poor). Gives an interesting cross section of Palestinian society under Israeli occupation.

Docudrama about Wallace who was governor of Alabama during the time of the bombing in Spike Lees's 4 Little Girls (which has an interview with the real Wallace)

Tells the tale of Harry Hoxsey (1901-1974), whose grandfather stumbled onto an herbal remedy somewhat effective against cancer. Hoxsey was a former coal miner and Texas oil man, who insisted that his remedy passed down to him be made available to all who needed it whether or not they could afford it. The AMA and specifically AMA Journal editor Morris Fishbein relentlessly hounded Hoxsey as a dangerous, greey quack, to the poin that finally Hoxsey sued Fishbein and Hearst Publications for telling lies about him and his remedy. The court ruled in Hoxsey's favor. At some point Fishbein admitted in court that the treatment did have some merit, and even an AMA test case of the treatement succeeded, but was hushed up after Hoxsey refused to sell all rights for the formula to the AMA when they insisted they could refuse to give treatment if the patient couldn't pay. Ultimately after constant hounding and arrests, though he was always released, the FDA finally shut down all Hoxsey operations saying false labeling and interstate commerce violations, though no real testing was ever done. The clinic moved to Tijuana in 1963, and was renamed the Bio-Medical Center, where the current (in 1987) head claims an 80% cure rate (cure being living for at least another 5 years). Compare that to chemotherapy, which has only a 33% "cure" rate.

About the American Indian Movement, specifically at Pine Ridge where 2 FBI agents were killed, eventually leading to the questionable incarceration of Leonard Peltier.

About the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, Ft. Benning, Georgia.

From Mann, famous for Miami Vice and also the movie Heat, comes a dramatized account of the true story of a tobacco executive played by Crowe who burns a hole right through the tobacco industry's decades long carefully tended PR facade, with the aid of a 60 minutes producer played by Pacino, who had to fight the money grubbing CBS lawyers and to a lesser extent Mike Wallace to get the story aired.

About how some western Journalists souped up pictures to make it look like the serbs were operating vicious concentration camps in Bosnia at Trnopolje and Omarska. The narrator kind of labors the point, but he shows film footage from those journalists, and another set of film from a serbian film crew that was there atthe same time, who filmed the same things the westerners did as well as the westerners themselves. It is quite damning of the westerners. It shows the blatant methods of creative photo cropping and setting up your cameras in strange places that can turn a humanitarian refugee camp into a supposed vicious serb concentration camp. Quite interesting to watch.

Movie from Iranian director Makhmalbaf, about a woman outside Afghanistan trying to reach her sister who is in Kandahar, Afghanistan under Taliban rule, and who wrote that she would soon kill herself in despair. Depicts a land in desperate poverty, and governed by corruption and brutal doctrine.

Kind of a goofy movie about rebels-turned-yuppies who try to relive their youthful idealism by trying to stage a media event wherein they blindly coerce one of their friends, who they thought was trying to kill himself, into a plot to light himself on fire at the millenium address by the Pope.

Based on interviews with hundreds of people in Laramie about the brutal beating and murder of Mathew Shepard on October 12, 1998 simply because he was gay. First made into a play portraying the interviews, and then made into a movie, this is a powerful look at the undercurrent of violence, bigotry, and general intolerance in America.

This is a very interesting documentary about how globalization has touched Jamaica. Looks at the claims of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, and shows what people who actually live there think of them.

Docudrama about Patrice Lumumba and the Congo. Lumumba was the first elected leader of the supposedly newly independent Congo who was assassinated 2 after 2 months in office after which Mobutu Sese Seko siezed power with tthe aid of the Belgian colonialists and the CIA.

Travolta with a shotgun takes over the museum where he worked as a guard until he was laid off. Hoffman, a reporter, suddenly finds himself in a position to tell Travolta's story to the world, while Alda, another reporter, attempts to highjack Hoffman's scoop, while the police get ready to rumble.

This premier conspiracy movie has Sinatra as a former POW who was brainwashed to be an assassin.

About Richard Millhouse Nixon, made before Watergate.

Dramatized account of the true story of the arrest and murder of Americans Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, during the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973 against the democratically elected Salvador Allende, and the fight of Charles' wife and father to uncover the truth. The movie is based on the book The Execution of Charles Horman by Thomas Hauser, and some details of the actual events are in the pile of several thousand formerly secret documents released by the US in 1999 about the US shenanigans in Chile. Horman's wife and father were steadfastly lied to and obstructed from finding the truth about Charles, until finally they could not hide that the Chilean military, who the US supported wholeheartedly, picked him up and murdered him.

About de Antonio's experiences with the FBI and its former boss J. Edgar Hoover.

About the possible framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black journalist now on death row for shooting a cop.

An awesome war movie about Gosnia in which 2 serbs and 2 bosnians get caught in a ditch between the lines. One bosnian is wounded, and a serb (soon shot dead) puts a mine under the bosnian so it will explode when the guy is moved. Each side accuses the other of starting everything. The NATO troops (refered to as Smurfs) show up and leave according generally to obscure politics. This is a very good movie.

Hour long documentary about gentrification in northeast Portland, Oregon. How do you make a neighborhood better without pushing out the current residents with ridiculous ever increasing rents? Is fresh paint and new trimming really so great?

This is told by several Sioux people about their land the Black HIlls. It's a story of treaties broken by the white man, gold mining, president's faces carved on the earth. In 1980 and since, the Sioux have refused monetary compensation from the US Government as compensation for having stolen their land.

About the U.S. invading Panama with 27000 troops in 1989, losing 23 soldiers, and killing some 1500 Panamanians, ostensibly to Nab the drug fiend Noriega, a graduate of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, and to protect American lives and property. Iraq, here we come!

The tale of pianist Wladyslaw Spilman during World War II, based on his book The Pianist, the Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 (Piladon, NY 1999). If you think you've got problems......

Composed of footage from the Army-McCarthy herarings in the 1950s.

Another bosnian war movie, which shows with cynical zest two guys who grew up together that get whipped up in the war hysteria, and thrash at each other for no terribly good reason.

Based on the true story of 3 girls who escaped from a compulsory school for so called half caste children-- mainly children with a white parent (usually the man) and an aboriginal person (usually woman). From the early 1900s to as late as 1970, Australia had a policy of taking these children away from their families, and forcing them into these schools to try to stamp out any traces of aboriginal culture. These children are known as the lost generation. The girls, after escaping the school in south west Australia, walked all the way back to their home in north west Australia by following the alleged Rabbit Proof Fence, a fence across the whole of Australia that was supposed to keep the invasive rabbit species from spreading. The movie is based on the book by the daughter of one of those girls.

Composed of women from both sides who lost someone in the Vietnam war. Very good.

About the coup in Venezuela that ousted for two days the twice democratically elected President Hugo Chavez (elected with 58% of the vote, a majority, unlike George W. Bush who only got 47.9% of votes cast) and which the United States government was very quicvk to praise, and blame on Chavez;s allegedly anti-democratic leanings- that said by Colin Powell, who didn't seem to find the Mai Lai Massacre in Vietnam all that much to make a fuss about at the time. Has footage from a team of Irish film makers who happened to be in Venezuela at the time of the coup. Shows democracy at work in better form than for instance Florida in 2000. The coup plotters just happened to own almost all the media in Venzuela, which just happens to persistently broadcase such enlightening things like saying that Chavez has a homosexual fascination of Fidel Castro! You'd have to go all the way to Rush Limbaugh to get such insights in this country. Highly recommended.

Dramatized account of Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated in a church in El Salvador in 1980, apparently by graduates of the US Army's School of the Americas, for unexpectedly taking the side of the poor, whowere routinely killed and brutalized by El Salvador's military. Romero always stressed non-violence and peace.

Forget the splashy JFK by Oliver Stone. Watch Mark Lane try to track down the actual events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Documentary about the killings of women in Ciudad Juarez, a maquilladora area of Mexico. Many women have been lured under very false pretenses, only to be sexually abused, beaten, mutilated and left to die in the desert. The cops do nothing, and some are murderes and rapists themselves. Despite reassurances at the national level that the matter is being looked into, nothing changes, and more women disappear. The murderers are protected by the corruption of the police, factory owners, and especially the drug runners. You can see more about this and Portillo's other movies at her website www.lourdesportillo.com.

Watch a military coup unfold in the USA, and try not to think about all the military types at the White House now, or the consolidation of power into George the Lesser and law enforcement under John Ashcroft.

Reasonable coverage of the WTO protests in Seattle, Nov 1999.

See a thoroughly privatized US, New York as a third world enclave, and hungry protestors scooped up with garbage trucks with scoops on the front.

Recently re-released on a 30th anniversary DVD with interviews with Robert Townsend and Sam Greenlee. Tells the tale of a black man who becomes the first black CIA man after the CIA is accused of being a whites only establishment. This man learns the tricks of the trade, then quits the CIA to become a social worker on the one hand, and a ruthless underground revolutionary for black power, subscribing to tactics of violent insurrection in the face of unrelenting institutional racism.

Dramatization of a few of the many gulf war syndrome sufferers, a congressional aide played by Danson, who investigates Gulf War Syndrom, and the long time knee jerk insistence of various government entities, including thte Verteran's Administration, that it doesn't exist except as a psychological abnormality in the minds of the vets and their spouses, kind of like sickness from Agent Orange and nuclear tests. The movie is interspersed with clips of the actual people portrayed in the film talking about their experiences.

About the protests at the WTO ministerial in Seattle late 1999.

From the director to Tootsie, based on the novel Six days of the Condor by James Grady, a story of a CIA research office that reads book published all over the world in which one researcher sees the wrong thing, and his whole office gets gunned down, but he accidentally escapes death and looks for answers, demands justice, dodges hit men and sorts through lies. The book is a little more gritty, and the movie little more heroic, yet with a grimmer ending, and neither present a very pretty picture of the alleged Intelligence Community.

This is the 6 part British TV series on which Steven Soderbergh based his hue saturated movie which, while a noble attempt for a Hollywood movie, doesn't even mention Colombia and gives questionable statistics about drug seizures. I found the series far more gripping and telling than the movie. It takes place in England, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and centers around opium and heroin trafficking.

A big interview with the Weather Underground, who attempted to blow up the White House in the hope that it would help usher in the Revolution.

Clear, cut-to-the-chase documentary about how Gore, who really did win the election, didn't. Talks about the 57700 purged alleged ex-cons, about 90% who were falsely kept on the list, as well as a look at the voting machines used, and the corrupt behind the scenes scamming by the Republicans, as well as the Democrats to a much lesser extent, to get the tally going their way in this great democracy which only had 51% voter turnout in 2000, but I digress. Witness, for instance, the crowds of angry citizens calling for an end of the recount, which just coincidentally happened to be chock full of prominent Republican party staffers. Hold on to your hats for this November. It'll be a long summer and fall.

About the Vietnam War.

Witness frontier justice at Waco against the Branch Davidians.

Portrays the unfolding of a military coup in a European country strikingly like Greece, where Costa-Gavras is from, which suffered a CIA supported military coup and subsequent military dictatorship. Very good. This is the movie from which Z Magazine takes its name. One of the stars, Jaques Perrin, has gone on to make the nature documentaries Microcosmos and Winged Migration, which have some very nice footage indeed, though I could do without the little snippets of human voice over.

Looks at Zapatistas and conditions in Southern Mexico. Informative movie, but the directors must shy away from goofy digital effects, in my opinion.