Swaziland is Africa’s last absolute monarchy. It has the world’s highest HIV infection rate and its citizens have a life expectancy of 31 years. King Mswati III, who was installed in 1986, appears to be out of touch with his people who live lives of devastating poverty. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/o37iJhBo7VU” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] This documentary […]
The children depicted in this movie are remarkable. They are internally displaced refugees in northern Uganda who have made their way to a national music festival in Kampala. As directors Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine follow the students of the Patongo Primary School, they spend time letting the audience get to know them. [kml_flashembed […]
This movie will make the viewer grateful for even the worst pair of shoes. This Iranian film is a drama set in a poor neighborhood. Ali (Amir Farrokh Hashemian) and his sister Zhara (Bahare Seddiqi) concoct a scheme whereby she will wear a pair of sneakers in the morning and give them to her brother […]
Because Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi uses non-actor children in this movie, the viewer is given a sense of watching a documentary. The film takes place in Iraqi Kurdistan near the border with Turkey. It is set right before the American invasion in 2003. One of the main characters is called Satellite because he sets up […]
Of the seven new films reviewed in this space in the past year, the best by far is “Sin Nombre”. It is a harrowing tale of desperation and consequences. The movie follows the lives of a Honduran woman named Sayra who rides on top of trains hoping to reach Texas through Mexico and Casper (a.k.a. […]
This film is solid. Not amazing, not incredible, but solid. It is about newly elected South African President Nelson Mandela and his relationship with the country’s rugby team captain. Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) understands that post-apartheid South Africa needs to rally – black and white – behind a common cause. And that cause is […]
At first glance, this is a classic science fiction film. However, it is much more. “District 9” is a study in xenophobia and intolerance. Stranded on Earth, aliens are confined to a ghetto in modern South Africa. The suspicion of and hostility toward the aliens is reminiscent of the attitudes held by many whites about […]
Danny Schechter does his best to dissect the mainstream media’s treatment of the approach to war with Iraq in 2003. By poring over hundreds of broadcasts, it is Schechter’s conclusion that the mainstream media merely regurgitates what the government feeds them. However, that is not the case worldwide. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/kVrobidTnoo” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Take […]
This documentary focuses on three young men – Daniel, John, and Panther – who escaped civil war in their native Sudan. In the late 1980s, as many as 27,000 young men – known as “The Lost Boys” – trekked across the desert into Ethiopia. When that government failed they were forced to walk again, this […]
In late November 2008, 10 armed Pakistani men – little more than boys – went on a killing spree in the Indian city of Mumbai. Members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, or “Army of the Righteous,” the youths carried out the attacks in order to spur the “liberation” of Muslims living under Indian rule in Kashmir. Fareed Zakaria, […]
Here is a post from climate change blogger Bill Hewitt: “I wrote about The Earth here a while back. It was really about soil and focused on a fantastic article in National Geographic Magazine. I’ve become more and more interested in ‘cool farming,’ teach this stuff in my climate change classes, and have even had […]
“Time never dies – the circle is not round.” That is the thread that unites the three parts of this story. Set in Macedonia during the time of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, “Before the Rain” is a study in how ethnic strife can appear in a place that is apparently at peace. [kml_flashembed […]
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