VIDEO CATALOGUE, H-P

HARVEST OF SHAME
Presented by Dan Rather, Edward R. Murrow's HARVEST OF SHAME is among the most famous television documentaries of all time. Richly photographed and arrestingly poignant, this long-acclaimed 1960 exposé on the plight of migrant farm workers resonated deeply for a nation unfamiliar with such brutally honest depictions of living conditions that, as Murrow remarks, "wrong the dignity of man." Smartly televised to millions of Americans the day after Thanksgiving to better tap into their emotions, Murrow's indispensable classic led to permanent changes in the laws protecting workers' rights.  Yet, how much have conditions really changed now nearly a half century later?
"Harvest of Shame," (1960) Edward R. Murrow, DVD, 55 min.
http://www.docurama.com/productdetail.html?productid=NV-NVG-9718

HIJACKING CATASTROPHE: 9/11, FEAR AND THE SELLING OF AMERICAN EMPIRE 
True or False?  The plan to invade Iraq and establish U.S. military dominance in the Middle East was made in the days immediately after September 11.
False!  In fact, it was made nearly 10 years earlier at the end of the first Gulf War when the first Bush administration refused to topple the Saddam Hussein regime.  It was then that Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and their fellow neocons advocated that the U.S. take advantage of the post Cold War opportunity to flex its military muscle and establish worldwide dominance.  They only had to wait until the "new Pearl Harbor" (their phrase) of September 11 gave them the political opportunity they needed to press forward with their agenda.
That is the thesis of the film "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire" being shown this week in the Snowbird Symposium.  And you don't have to believe in conspiracies to believe that.  It's all right there on the neocon's own website at www.newamericancentury.org.  It's the smoking gun.  There you will find their own documents, their policy recommendations and reports made throughout the years of the Clinton administration.  It wasn't until they came back into power with the presidency of Bush the Younger, that they were able to hijack U.S. foreign policy following the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.  Now their ideas are embedded in official National Security Strategy doctrine and written in the blood of thousands. 
Narrated by Julian Bond, "Hijacking Catastrophe" examines how a radical fringe of the Republican Party used the trauma of the 9/11 terror attacks to advance a pre-existing agenda to radically transform American foreign policy while rolling back civil liberties and social programs at home.  Sobering and provocative, this documentary includes interviews with Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, Daniel Ellsberg, Chalmers Johnson, Mark Crispin Miller, Norman Mailer, Benjamin Barber, Scott Ritter, Immanuel Wallerstein and others.
Don't miss this powerful expose of the cabal that now controls the most powerful state in history.  You'll never be able to view the Bush administration the same way again. 
"Hijacking Catastrophe" (2004), directed by by Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally, 64 min. DVD or VHS, http://www.hijackingcatastrophe.org/

HOWARD ZINN: YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN
"I had a modest goal when I became a teacher. I wanted to change the World." - Howard Zinn.
This film documents the life and times of Howard Zinn: historian, activist, and author of several classics including "A Peoples History of the United States". Archival footage, and commentary by friend, colleagues and Zinn himself.
"Howard Zinn: You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train" (2004) 78 minutes. By by Deb Ellis & Denis Mueller.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
f that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom -- think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his "traveling global warming show," Gore also proves himself to be one of the most misunderstood characters in modern American public life. Here he is seen as never before in the media - funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our "planetary emergency" out to ordinary citizens before it's too late.
Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation. Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore's personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young Senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective, to the man who almost became President but instead returned to the most important cause of his life - convinced that there is still time to make a difference.
With wit, smarts and hope, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH ultimately brings home Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.
"An Inconvenient Truth " (2006) 100 mins. directed by Davis Guggenheim
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

EL INMIGRANTE
"El Inmigrante" is a documentary film that examines the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. The film presents a distinct humanitarian focus in which story and character take precedent over policy and empiricism. Towards this end "El Inmigrante" examines the perspectives of a diverse cast of players in this border narrative. A cast which includes the de Haro family, the community of Brackettville, Texas–where Eusebio was shot, members of vigilante border militias in Arizona, the horseback border patrol in El Paso, and migrants en route to an uncertain future in the United States.
"El Inmigrante" (2005) 90 mins. Dave Eckenrode  John Eckenrode  & John Sheedy
http://www.elinmigrantemovie.com

INVISIBLE BALLOTS
Governments are installing computerized voting systems with no paper record to verify accuracy. Elections will be controlled by companies that do not allow voters to inspect their software. If vote counting becomes privatized, there may be no way to get it back. Hightech vote fraud is already a reality.
"Invisible Ballots: A Temptation for Electronic Vote Fraud" (2004) 90 mins. DVD William Gazecki
http://www.invisibleballots.com 

IRAQ FOR SALE: THE WAR PROFITEERS
This is the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
Greenwald’s film exposes the long-time personal connections between the Bush administration and the profiteers as it investigates Blackwater Security Consulting, a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, and CACI International, finding such travesties as truck drivers—told they would be kept out of harm’s way—forced to drive into battle zones unprotected; the use of mercenaries for combat operations and interrogations; and soldiers training civilians to, ultimately, outsource their own jobs at much higher salaries so that friends of the administration can rake in obscene profits.
"Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers" (2006) 75 mins. Robert Greenwald
http://iraqforsale.org/index.php

LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE (Cartas del Otro Lado) - Spanish with English subtitles
a documentary film by Heather Courtney
"He said he would only go for a year. The morning he left, he hugged and kissed me and the children ... I never heard from him again. We found out through the television."
In May of 2003, Carmela Rico and Laura Almanza Cruz, of Pozos, Guanajuato, watched with horror the news story about the worst smuggling accident in U.S. history - their husbands, along with 17 other undocumented immigrants, suffocated in the back of a semi-trailer truck in Victoria, Texas.
In the film "Letters from the Other Side" director Heather Courtney sensitively interweaves the personal stories of four women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico by husbands and sons working in the U.S., an aspect of the immigration issue rarely touched upon by the media or in national debates.
"After a few months of filming several families, I was about to drive back to the U.S. for a visit," says Courtney, "when one of the women asked if I would show the videos I filmed of her to her sons, undocumented immigrants working in the U.S. When I offered to shoot and bring back videos of them, I realized how messed up it was - I could visit the sons she couldn't, and shepherd messages over a border she wasn't allowed to cross."
In addition to Carmela and Laura, two other Guanajuato women, Eugenia González and María Yañez send and receive video "letters" via Courtney. The result is a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics; hopes and dreams fulfilled then broken or found empty; communities and traditions dying at the hands of globalization; and governments incapable or unwilling to do anything about it.
Carmela and Laura: The young widows send a "letter" to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking: "How many more deaths does it take for the U.S. government to do something? Let it be on your conscience that since our tragedy many more have died and many more will die." The U.S. bureaucrat who replies to their anguished cry delivers the usual political rhetoric. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is when Carmela flies to Houston for the trial of the smuggler, gliding through the clouds in an airplane across the border that cost her husband his life.
In an attempt to make ends meet as single mothers, the two women struggle to start a bakery but they are shell-shocked from their tragedy and frustrated with government band-aid approaches on both sides of the border. Immediately after the accident, the Mexican government donated a large oven and other heavy equipment, but they have no money to invest in supplies, and no training on the use of the machines. In the end, they bake their cakes in their family kitchen "the old-fashioned way," stepping around the hulks of the unused equipment which simply take up space.
Eugenia: Her husband left for the U.S. eight years ago and has never returned; one by one, her sons have left "for the other side," seeking work and their father. Her youngest son, Enrique, reports back that his father is living with another woman, and that he himself is afraid to return because of the increasing danger in crossing the border. At home in Apaseo, Guanajuato with her two daughters, Eugenia has tried to make a new life for herself and her two daughters, making soap and jam from nopal cactus.
In her video letter, Eugenia says to her son: "If you invite your father to watch this video, please tell him that I am very happy to have accomplished everything I have accomplished without having to rely on him at all." When she receives a video response in which he promises to return, she has conflicting feelings. She wonders who will "wear the pants," and how 7-year-old Jessica will react to the father she has never known. Yet she also knows how much it would mean to her teenaged daughter Maricruz, who hopes against hope that her father will return in time for her quinceañera (15th birthday) celebration.
María: like many campesinos, she and her husband eke out a living from their small parcel of land while their sons leave for the U.S. each year. Hers is a relentlessly hard life, made even more precarious by the decreasing prices for farm products due to the influx of cheap imports from the U.S. since NAFTA. As María and her husband grow older, it is more and more difficult for them to do the backbreaking physical labor of planting and harvesting, and they hope to leave their land to their youngest son, Julio, who is in his last year of high-school. But, like so many young men in the campo, he too is drawn by the promise of well-paying work in the U.S.
In order to make a little extra cash, María embroiders pillows which are sold at the Mujeres Productoras cooperative store in San Miguel (in the Center for Global Justice office, Calzada de la Luz #42, between Animas and Loreto). As Yolanda Millan, legal representative of Mujeres Productoras, puts it, "We hope we can create sources of income within the communities through productive projects, so that there is no need to seek work on 'the other side.'" María's video letter begins by following one of her pillows over the border into the U.S. with the American retiree who purchased it.
UPDATE NOTE:  One of Maria's sons was robbed and died while crossing the border in August 2006.
"Letters from the Other Side"  (2006) 74 mins. Heather Courtney
http://www.sidestreetfilms.com/

LIFE AND DEBT
If you come to Jamaica as a tourist, what you will see is the breathtaking natural beauty of the island.  What you might fail to see is how the strategies for survival by individual Jamaicans are conditioned by the structural adjustment lending policies of the IMF and corporate domination through free trade.  It is this post-colonial landscape that is revealed to us in the film "Life and Debt."  Based on Jamaica Kincaid's award-winning book "A Small Place", the film takes us inside the day-to-day realities of the lives of not only these people on a little Caribbean island, but through them we see the lives of millions throughout the global South. 
In a voice-over using lines from Ms. Kincaid's book, a subversive tour guide informs potential tourists in a soothing tone of the things that will be hidden from sight should they visit Jamaica: the sweatshops where workers make garments for the U.S. market for $30 a week and no unions are allowed and small banana farmers are forced to compete with corporate giants like Chiquita and Dole due to a U.S. complaint to the World Trade Organization.  Such stories are counterpoised to scenes of overweight American tourists in a beer drinking contest.  This is a reality tour that reminds you that you haven't seen a country just because you had a good time as a tourist at a five star hotel. 
Yet, this film does not preach to its audience.  It simply and in a calm voice shows you the effect of the crushing debt burden that has been imposed on this beautiful island and its vibrant people (there's a lot of Bob Marley music on the soundtrack to prove it).  Poverty may be a familiar sight to experiences travelers.  But putting it in the context of a globalization directed by the wealthy countries of the North, deepens our understanding of global injustice and why many in the South are looking for an alternative economic order. 
"Life and Debt" (2001) 80 mins. Stephanie Black
http://www.lifeanddebt.org/

EL NORTE
''El Norte'' has something of the manner of a wonderful and terrible fable, being a record of the adventures of two young Guatemalan Indians, a brother and sister who must flee their mountain village after their father is murdered for antigovernment activities and their mother is imprisoned. Believing in the pictures they've seen in old copies of Good Housekeeping, which report that even the lowliest United States peons have flush toilets and TV sets and that no one is too poor not to own an automobile, they walk and ride their way north through Mexico to Tijuana and, finally, to Los Angeles.
"El Norte" (1983) 139 mins. Gregory Nava

MADE IN INDIA
Depicting a country fraught with unemployment, poverty, and the perils of liberalizing markets, this video tells the story of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), an Indian project helping poor women organize a trade union, a bank, and social welfare services. This pioneering project, defying India's male-dominated and economically rigid society, has grown into an internationally acclaimed model for rural development and women's empowerment. Plattner's powerful documentary interviews SEWA founder, Ela Bhat, and follows the development of the organization and the women who have joined it. (Includes interviews with English subtitles)
"Made in India" (1998) 52 min. Patricia Plattner
http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c488.shtml

MAQUILA: A TALE OF TWO MEXICOS
A post-NAFTA world of unrestrained economic global liberalization offers tough choices to contemporary Mexican peasants. This film tells of the confrontation in Chiapas between the Mexican army and poor farmers trying to cling to their land and Mayan culture. Some of these besieged peasants, like millions of other poor Mexicans, have migrated to Juarez, Tijuana, and other northern border cities to take low paying jobs in foreign-owned factories. In Juarez, they encounter more than poor working conditions--environmental pollution, a high cost of living, horrifying rapes and murders of young women maquila workers, and the loss of cultural roots, family, and community. This innovative documentary by award-winning filmmaker Saul Landau allows its subjects to speak for themselves, with little narration. (In Spanish, with English subtitles)
"Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos" (2000) 55 mins, Saul Landau and Sonia Angulo  To order call: Cinema Guild, (800) 723-5522.
http://www.cinemaguild.com/catalog/catalog_latin_caribbean_studies.htm

MAQUILAPOLIS
Maquilapolis tells the story of a border city where it takes an hour of drudgework inside a poisonous factory to earn enough to buy a jug of potable water. Where it takes about two hours to earn a gallon of milk. Where factory workers find bathroom breaks are few, toxins are many, and the pressure — and intimidation — are always on. It's a place where poverty is so deep that workers are expected to be grateful for the high-end $11 a day they might earn, to give up hope of ever earning more or of ever seeking better working conditions. This daily $11 does not buy them the protection and aid of their local and national governments. Under-taxed and under-regulated factories operated by multinational corporations — usually through local middlemen — pollute residential neighborhoods with seeming impunity.
This powerful and unique film brought American and Mexican-American filmmakers together with Tijuana factory workers and community organizers to tell the story of globalization through the eyes and voices of the workers themselves — overwhelmingly women — who have borne the costs but reaped few of the benefits. The workers did not just testify on camera, they became an integral part of creating their stories on film. Two women in particular, Carmen Durán and Lourdes Luján, armed with cameras for video diaries, chronicle their struggles. The result is not only an informative and disturbing film, but also an evocative and poetic one.
"Maquilapolis" (City of Factories), 68 minutes, 2006, by Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre, http://www.maquilapolis.com/

MURDER ON A SUNDAY MORNING
Winner of the Academy Award for best documentary, this extraordinary French-made feature concerns a black teenager on trial for a murder he did not commit. In May 2000, Mary Ann Stephens, a sixty-five year old white tourist, was leaving a Ramada Inn in Jacksonville, Florida, with her husband when a black assailant stole her purse and shot her dead. The Jacksonville police picked up the first black youth they saw in the area -- fifteen-year-old Brenton Butler, who was out walking his dog. Everything was against Butler: the grieving husband immediately identified him as the killer, and by that evening Butler had signed a confession. Butler told his court-appointed defense attorneys, Ann Finnell and Patrick McGuinness, that he was innocent and that the confession had literally been beaten out of him by the police. Within a short time, the public defenders discovered their young client was telling the truth, and they proceeded to mount the most vigorous defense they could muster. The prosecutor and police officers who walked into court believing they had an open-and-shut case were in for a surprise. The 111-minute movie is not only riveting -- it would have taken a great dramatist to write the courtroom scenes, particularly the confrontations between police detectives and the brash, chain-smoking McGuinness -- but important. It illustrates how easily innocent people can be indicted for capital crimes, and is essential viewing for anyone interested in the fallibility of American justice.
"Murder on a Sunday Morning" (2001) DVD or VHS, 111 min., Jean-Xavier de Lestrade
http://www.docurama.com/productdetail.html?productid=NV-NVG-5603-NVG-9540

NOAM CHOMSKY: REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE
Called "the most important intellectual alive" by The New York Times, and "a rebel without a pause" by rock-star Bono, Noam Chomsky is one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century and the world's leading voice of dissent.
In a post 9-11 world, Noam Chomsky speaks openly about the U.S. war on terrorism, media manipulation, and social activism to intimate seminar groups and crowded venues. Chomsky analyzes the roots of anti-American sentiment, defines terrorism in the new millennium, and examines the after-effects of 9-11 in honest and forthright terms, providing a critical voice that many audiences feel is missing in the world today.
Featuring candid interviews with his wife and tour manager, Carol Chomsky, as well as activists, fans, and critics REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE is a timely, must-see film that offers an alternative voice and explores the truths and myths about the most important intellectual of our time.
"Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without A Pause" (2003) DVD, 75 min. + 40 min. extra Will Pascoe
http://www.docurama.com/productdetail.html?productid=NV-NVG-9699

OUTFOXED
"Outfoxed" examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know.
The film explores Murdoch's burgeoning kingdom and the impact on society when a broad swath of media is controlled by one person.
Media experts, including Jeff Cohen (FAIR) Bob McChesney (Free Press), Chellie Pingree (Common Cause), Jeff Chester (Center for Digital Democracy) and David Brock (Media Matters) provide context and guidance for the story of Fox News and its effect on society.
This documentary also reveals the secrets of Former Fox news producers, reporters, bookers and writers who expose what it's like to work for Fox News.  These former Fox employees talk about how they were forced to push a "right-wing" point of view or risk their jobs. Some have even chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect their current livelihoods. As one employee said "There's no sense of integrity as far as having a line that can't be crossed."
"Outfoxed"  (2004) 77 min. Robert Greenwald
http://www.outfoxed.org

THE PANAMA DECEPTION
The 1989 invasion of Panama was touted as a swift and successful military action to remove a "narcoterrorist," General Noriega, from power and to restore democracy to this strategically important country. But what was the real U.S. agenda? Winner of the 1993 Academy Award for best documentary, this film recounts the untold story of the invasion, the enormity of death and destruction, and the collaborative efforts by Washington and the mainstream media to suppress information about this foreign policy disaster. The documentary includes never-before-seen footage and brilliantly juxtaposes factual historical analysis with statements by both proponents and opponents. (Includes sections in Spanish, with English subtitles)
"The Panama Deception" (1992) 120 min. Barbara Trent, Empowerment Project
http://www.empowermentproject.org/pages/panama.html

THE POWER OF COMMUNITY: HOW CUBA SURVIVED PEAK OIL
When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990s, the country faced an immediate crisis –feeding the population – and an on-going challenge: how to create a new low-energy society.  Cuba transitioned from large, fossil fuel intensive farming to small, less energy-intensive organic farms and urban gardens, and from a highly industrial society to a more sustainable one – a transition we may all have to make as the world reaches peak oil.
"The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" (2006) 53 min., DVD or VHS, Community Solution
www.communitysolution.org/cuba