Just Us Film Fest
Films for political and intellectual curiosity and curriculum
Spring 2007
Descriptions from Movie Listings
Wednesdays,
6pm: January 24– April 11
Locke Hall, Room 105
January 24 - Why We Fight
Director: Eugene Jarecki
Runtime 99 minutes
Filmed during the Iraq War, this documentary dissects America's military machine with a keen eye to answering the question: Why does America engage in war? Through personal stories of soldiers, government officials, scholars, journalists and innocent victims, the film examines the political and economic interests and ideological factors, past and present, behind American militarism. Winner of the 2005 Sundance Grand Jury Award.
January 31 - Wal-mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Director: Robert Greenwald
Runtime: 95 minutes
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is the documentary film sensation that's changing the largest company on earth. The film features the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to survive in a Wal-Mart world. It's an emotional journey that will challenge the way you think, feel... and shop.
Released simultaneously in theaters and DVD in November 2005, the film has been seen by millions worldwide. Families, churches, schools, and small busineses owners have screened the film over 10,000 times and the world is taking notice. See the film, share it, and become part of the movement forcing companies to act responsibly.
February 7 - American Dream
Director:
Barbara Kopple & Cathy
Caplan
Runtime: 98 minutes
Director Barbara Kopple's Oscar-winning rendering of a crippling strike at a Minnesota meat-packing plant may look dated, but the underlying theme of individuals crushed by big business remains all too timely. Using a briskly engrossing combination of first-person interviews, news broadcasts, and fly-on-the-wall encounters, Kopple creates an indelible document of a community's dissolution at the hands of larger forces. (The film is clearly on the side of the workers, but at the same time it refuses to ignore the petty infighting that eventually helped contribute to their ruin.) An alternately depressing, uplifting, and often profanely funny film that, at times, echoes Michael Moore's Roger and Me, but without that movie's distancing smarm. A movie's title has never seemed quite so bitterly apt. The director, who had previously won an Oscar for the equally arresting Harlan County USA, would later go on to document yet another traumatic event with Woody Allen's Wild Man Blues. --Andrew Wright
February 14 - Gaza Strip (Palestine)
Director: James Longley
Runtime: 74 Minutes
GAZA STRIP (map with filming locations) was filmed during the first four months of 2001, a period that covers the election of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and extends to the first major armed incursion into "Area A" by the Israeli military. It was my first trip to the Middle East; all of my previous international filmmaking experience took place in Russia. The idea to make a documentary about Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip was mainly a reaction to what I perceived as a lack of good media coverage of that area: it was difficult for me to find intimate material of the Palestinian struggle in the mainstream US media. More than anything, it was a desire to satisfy my own curiosity about what was really taking place inside the Occupied Territories that induced me to take matters into my own hands and produce the project.
February 21 - Born into Brothels
Directors: Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman
Runtime: USA:85 minutes
Amidst
the apparent growing prosperity of India, there is a dark underbelly of
poverty of another side of the nation that is little known. This film
is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's efforts to show
that world of Calcutta's red light district. To do that, they inspired a
special group of children of the prostitutes of the area to photograph the
most reluctant subjects of it. As the kids excel in their new found art,
the filmmakers struggle to help them have a chance for a better life away
from the miserable poverty that threatens to crush their dreams
Darwin’s
Nightmare
February 28 - Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Director: Alex Gibney
Runtime: 109 min
Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a multidimensional study of one of the biggest business scandals in American history. The chronicle takes a look at one of the greatest corporate disasters in history, in which top executives from the 7th largest company in this country walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film features insider accounts and rare corporate audio and video tapes that reveal colossal personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The human drama that unfolds within Enron's walls resembles a Greek tragedy and produces a domino effect that could shape the face of our economy and ethical code for years to come.
March 7 - Letter to the President (Hip Hop History)
Directors: Thomas Gibson
Run Time: 90 min (original theatrical or airing runtime)
Narrated By Snoop Dogg- Letter To the President is a feature documentary that showcases the close-knit ties between the Hip Hop Music community and America's social and political policy in the last 30 years.
March 14 - An Inconvenient Truth
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Runtime: 100 Minutes
If 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.
March 28 - When the Levees Broke
Director: Spike Lee
Runtime: 240 Minutes
This intimate, heart-rending portrait of New Orleans in the wake of the destruction tells the heartbreaking personal stories of those who endured this harrowing ordeal and survived to tell the tale of misery, despair and triumph.
The film also looks at a community that has been through hell and back, surviving death, devastation and disease at every turn. Yet, somehow, amidst the ruins, the people of New Orleans are finding new hope and strength as the city rises from the ashes, buoyed by their own resilience and a rich cultural legacy.
"New Orleans is fighting for its life," says Lee. "These are not people who will disappear quietly - they're accustomed to hardship and slights, and they'll fight for New Orleans. This film will showcase the struggle for New Orleans by focusing on the profound loss, as well as the indomitable spirit of New Orleaneans."
April 4 - Super Size Me
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Runtime: 1hr 36min
Why are Americans so fat? Two words: fast food. What would happen if you
ate nothing but fast food for an entire month? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock
does just that and embarks on the most perilous journey of his life. The
rules? For 30 days he can't eat or drink anything that isn't on McDonald's
menu; he must wolf three squares a day; he must consume everything on the
menu at least once and supersize his meal if asked. Spurlock treks across
the country interviewing a host of experts on fast food and an equal number
of regular folk while chowing down at the Golden Arches. Spurlock's grueling
drive-through diet spirals him into a physical and emotional metamorphosis
that will make you think twice about picking up another Big Mac.