UPandOUT documentary film series

Welcome all! FREE admission, FREE door prizes
2013 begins our 8th year of free documentary film screenings!  Please support this effort.

Screenings are every third Thursday of the month; promptly at 7pm (unless otherwise noted); doors open at 6:40pm for mingling, exploring literature ...

Location: 243 Broadway, Cambridge, MA (at the corner of Windsor & Broadway; entrance on Windsor). See google map. Equi-distant from MIT and Central Sq T-stops.

2013

We are Legion takes us inside the world of Anonymous, the radical “hacktivist” collective that has redefined civil disobedience for the digital age. The film explores early hacktivist groups like “Cult of the Dead Cow” and “Electronic Disturbance Theater,” then moves to Anonymous’ raucous beginnings on the website “4chan.” 

Through interviews with current members, people recently returned from prison or facing trial, writers, academics, activists and major players in various “raids,” the documentary traces Anonymous’ evolution from merry pranksters to a full-blown movement with a global reach, the most transformative civil disobedience of our time.

The Truth Game 
John Pilger looks at world-wide propaganda  surrounding the nuclear arms race. "By using reassuring, even soothing language, this new kind of propaganda created acceptable images of war and the illusion that we could live securely with nuclear weapons”. 

Lethal weapons are “modernized systems”. Nuclear weapons are called ”deterrents”. Will it surprise you to know that survival of the people is not even considered in the planning for nuclear war? That everything we’re told to do in the event of such a war is designed to keep us from causing trouble, not to help us survive?

This film examines official ‘truths’ in connection with the bombing of Hiroshima, the build-up of arms by Russia and America, the siting of nuclear bases by the US in Britain and Europe, the $$$ of government money spent on weapons ... a NATO ‘limited’ nuclear and chemical war exercise in West Germany, which Pilger describes as ‘a dry run for the unthinkable’. 

Searching for Steele
This BBC-Guardian exposé reveals how US colonel James Steele, a veteran of US proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, trained and led US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centers in Iraq.

In 1955, Ford built America’s largest auto plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, just up the river from New York City. Between 1967 and 1971, Ford dumped hundreds of tons of toxic waste into mineshafts in northern New Jersey—right in the backyards of communities.

The sludge of lead, arsenic, Freon, paint chemicals and dioxins poisoned the members of the Ramapough Native American community, causing a spate of severe health problems. Mothers started having miscarriages; people started coming down with cancer. 

One member of the Ramapough, Wayne Mann, led the charge against Ford in 2005 with a lawsuit stating that they had deliberately poisoned the land and the people living on it. The class action suit finally carried through in 2008; but with an impending bankruptcy on the horizon (supposedly), the Ramapough took a settlement averaging $8,000 per plaintiff—except for the 30 people in the area who died of cancer while the lawsuit went through the courts. 

This award-winning documentary takes a detailed look at the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli policy of discrimination towards Palestinians.

Narrated by Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple), Roadmap to Apartheid is as much a historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, as it is a film about why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them.

The film compares the many similar laws and tools used by both Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. The audience will see what life is like for Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel. Combined with archival material and anecdotes from South Africans, the film forms a complete picture as to why the analogy is being used with increasing frequency and potency. 

The film won several film festival awards in 2012, including: The Garden State
Film Festival, Best Documentary; The Indie Fest, Excellence in Documentary Film

“Roadmap to Apartheid is a harrowing exposé of Israel’s unique system of official discrimination.” ~Naomi Klein

Genetically modified organisms [GMOs]: Experts expose the SERIOUS THREATS to your health and how corporations like Monsanto hide the facts. Are you and your family on the wrong side of a bet?

New evidence points to genetically engineered foods as a major contributor to rising disease rates in the US population, especially among children. Gastrointestinal disorders, allergies, inflammatory diseases, and infertility are just some of the problems implicated in humans, pets, livestock, and lab animals that eat genetically modified soybeans and corn. (If GMO foods are so safe, why aren't they tested on humans?)

Monsanto’s strong arm tactics, the FDA’s fraudulent policies, and how the USDA ignores a growing health emergency are also laid bare. This sometimes shocking film may change your diet, protect you and your family, and accelerate the consumer tipping point against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) now underway. 

"the most important political assassination of our time" ~Ludo De Witte, Belgian author, The Assassination of Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was assassinated 52 years ago, on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of 2 inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.

This docudrama tells the true story of Lumumba's rise to power and brutal assassination. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of this man with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgium overlords.

Lumumba is led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the US, and the international community -- where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.

2012

Best Film, Ecocinema International - Athens Grand Prix, Festival International du Film d'Environnemen - Paris

Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. 

People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society's standard of living. Our Daily Bread is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn't always easy to digest - and in which we all take part. 

A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas.

This is an extra, special film screening. An expert in the film - from the Institute for Policy Studies [IPS] - will be on hand for Q&A and will have copies of the DVD available for sale - just in time for the XMAS holidays!

An exposé into the secret world of corporate tax dodging

America is in the grip of a societal economic panic. Lawmakers cry “We’re Broke!” as they slash budgets, lay off schoolteachers, police, and firefighters, crumbling our
country’s social fabric and leaving many Americans scrambling to survive. Meanwhile, multibillion-dollar American corporations like Exxon, Google and Bank of America are making record profits. And while the deficit climbs and the cuts go deeper, these corporations—with intimate ties to our political leaders—are concealing colossal profits overseas to avoid paying U.S. income tax.

WE’RE NOT BROKE is the story of how U.S. corporations have been able to hide over a trillion dollars from Uncle Sam, and how seven fed-up Americans from across the country, take their frustration to the streets . . . and vow to make corporations pay their fair share.

On December 7, 1975 with the complicity of many Western governments including the US, the UK, and Australia, Indonesia secretly invaded the small nation of East Timor. 

In 1993, with the Indonesian army still occupying the country, John Pilger and his crew including director David Munro, slipped into East Timor and made this film. In the intervening 18 years, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese – 1/3 of the population – had been slaughtered by the Indonesian military – using US and British planes to bombard the island, while Western defense ministers proclaimed ignorance. 

As John Pilger tapes an Australian diplomat admitting that East Timor was considered “expendable”, no one watching the massacre can excuse the geopolitical machinations that led to this genocide. 

Pilger tells the story using clandestine footage of the countryside, internment camps and even Fretlin guerillas, as well as interviews with Timorese exiles, including Jose Ramos Horta and Jose Gusmao, and Australian, British, and Indonesian diplomats.

[Barak Obama reversed a 12-year-old ban on training an elite unit of the Indonesian military whose members have been convicted of beatings, kidnappings and other abuses. He renewed arms sales to Indonesia in 2012]

This film examines the killers' means, motive and opportunity. High on the motive list is that Senator Paul Wellstone was "sticking his nose into 9/11." Wellstone intimates say he was asking questions about 9/11...and thus was publicly executed as a warning.

They Killed Him at 10:18, the plane is disabled, 7 miles from the airport. The King Air A-100 turbo prop flies treetop level over shocked witnesses, 5 miles out: no lights, crabbed cockeyed, engines spooling down, so low witnesses are amazed it stays airborn. Three more miles and the plane stalls, dropping into the woods, killing all 8 on board. 

Why would anyone go to such trouble to so publicly kill the senior senator from Minnesota? Who benefits? VP Cheney threatened Wellstone shortly after the Senator's No vote on the Iraq War. ‘Go along with the program, if you know what’s good for you and Minnesota. Stop sticking your nose into 9/11.’

Uncovering Ten Years of Deception: the myth of 9/11

Eleven years now have passed since the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001 and there are still many unanswered questions surrounding that fateful day.

In 2011, experts and scientists from around the world gathered at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada to present new and established evidence that questions the official story of 9/11. This evidence was presented to a distinguished panel of experts over a 4 day period.

Through their analysis and scientific investigations, they hope to spark a new investigation into the attacks of September 11, 2001.

We are airing almost 2 hours of testimony; the full DVD has 6 hours of hearings, featuring expert witness testimony from: David Ray Griffin, Richard Gage, David Chandler, Kevin Ryan, Niels Harrit, Barbara Honegger, Peter Dale Scott, Graeme MacQueen, Jonathan Cole, Cynthia McKinney ...and many more!

Though rhetoric about “clean coal” abounds, 36% of US global warming emissions comes from our coal-burning plants. Every 11-1/2 days, the explosive equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb is unleashed on the mountains of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky—for coal.

In Burning the Future, writer/director David Novack examines the explosive forces that have set in motion a groundswell of conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia. Faced with toxic ground water, the obliteration of 1.4 million acres of mountains, and a government that appeases industry, ordinary citizens launch a valiant fight to arouse the nation’s help in protecting their mountains, saving their families and preserving their way of life. 

BURNING THE FUTURE exposes the truth behind mountaintop coal extraction and offers tools for everyone to carve out a cleaner future.

Bloody Thursday tells the story of how West Coast dockworkers overcame huge obstacles to form their union, the ILWU. 

Set in the midst of the Great Depression, the film shows how longshoremen were fighting for their rights at the same time that most of their families weren’t sure where their next meal would come from. The odds were stacked against the longshoremen. 

Mainstream newspaper publishers, fearful of unionization efforts at their own papers, launched brutal attacks against the dockworkers and drove public sympathy against them. In addition, politicians and the police openly used their resources to side with the shipping companies against the striking dockworkers.  Bloody Thursday tells the human stories of the dockworkers who stood up against these odds and changed the course of American labor history.

The modern history of the Congo is a terrifying story of appalling brutality. Beginning with King Leopold II of Belgium's avaricious rape of the country and tracing the impact of this horrifying and often-forgotten crime through to the modern day, this immensely shocking doc is a heart-rending tale of a rich country destroyed by rapacious hands. Leopold's regime slaughtered an estimated 10 million Congolese (1885 - 1908).

In June, 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the first legally elected prime minister, vowing to bring true independence to the Congo. By January 17, 1961, he had been tortured and assassinated in a joint CIA-Belgium venture. The CIA's front man, despot Mobuto Sese Seko, then ruled over a brutal dictatorship for more than 38 years, with support and backing from the US, and enriched by the US with vast wealth.

"Lumumba's assassination is the most important assassination of the 20th century" ~ Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of The Assassination of Lumumba

The US has emerged as the preeminent superpower of the world. Superpower illustrates how the United States has chosen to leverage that position to pursue a grand strategy that will ensure itself unilateral world domination through absolute economic and military superiority. 

Superpower presents a view of US foreign policy that lies in stark contrast to that depicted by corporate media, popular pundits, and US heads of state. It shows a consistent pattern of government deception. 

For decades, U.S. strategists-for-hire have been quietly molding the opinions of voters and the messages of candidates in elections around the world. They have worked for presidential candidates on every continent (in Britain, Israel, India, Korea, South Africa, Venezuela, Brazil, to name a few…) Without the noise of tanks or troops, these Americans have been spreading our brand of "democracy" from the Middle East to the middle of the South American jungle. 

OUR BRAND IS CRISIS is an astounding look at one of their campaigns and its earth-shattering aftermath. With flabbergasting access to think sessions, media training and the making of smear campaigns, we watch how the consultants’ marketing strategies shape the relationship between a leader and his people. And we see a shocking example of how the all-American art of branding can affect the “spreading of democracy” overseas.

NOTE:  This is an extra screening; an UPandOUT collaboration with A&E for 9/11 Truth, and Boston 9/11 Truth. Special guest host Richard Gage will be onsite for introduction and afterwards for Q&A.  Introduction begins at 6:30pm

9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out is a powerful new documentary film by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Richard Gage will be looking for your input and feedback before this powerful documentary is finalized.

Join 23-year architect Richard Gage, AIA, in this feature length documentary with cutting-edge 9/11 evidence from more than 50 top experts in their fields - high-rise architects, structural engineers, physicists, chemical engineers, firefighters, metallurgists, explosives experts, controlled demolition technicians, and more. Each is highly qualified in his/her respective fields. National Medal of Science awardee Lynn Margulis, along with the other experts, exposes the fraud of NIST and discusses how the scientific method should have been applied and acknowledges the "overwhelming" evidence of high temperature incendiaries in all dust samples of the WTC.

Stealing A Nation (2004) is an extraordinary film about the plight of the Chagos Islands, whose indigenous population was secretly and brutally expelled by British Governments in the late 1960s and early 1970s to make way for an American military base. The tragedy, which falls within the remit of the International Criminal Court as "a crime against humanity", is told by Islanders who were dumped in the slums of Mauritius and by British officials who left behind a damning trail of Foreign Office documents.

Before the Americans came, more than 2,000 people lived on the islands in the Indian Ocean, many with roots back to the late 18th century. There were thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a railway and an undisturbed way of life. The islands were, and still are, a British crown colony. In the 1960s, the government of Harold Wilson struck a secret deal with the United States to hand over the main island of Diego Garcia. The Americans demanded that the surrounding islands be "swept" and "sanitized". Unknown to Parliament and to the US Congress and in breach of the United Nations Charter, the British Government plotted with Washington to expel the entire population.

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia. 

Darwin's Nightmare is a tale about humans between the North and the South, about globalization, and about fish.

Forty years ago, a voracious predator was introduced into the waters of Tanzania's Lake Victoria where it quickly extinguished the entire stock of native fish. Its ecological impact aside, the Nile Perch became highly prized for its tender, plump fillets, hardly meeting the demand at elegant 4-star European restaurants.

Huge, empty foreign cargo planes land to export the lake's gourmet bounty, taking out 55 tons of processed fish daily. In their wake, they leave starving villagers to scrounge a meal out of the discarded fish heads and rotting carcasses. 

With massive epidemics, raging civil wars, crime, homelessness, and drug-addicted children, the question becomes: what do the reportedly "empty" planes deliver to this destitute community? The answer is as shocking as it is devastating, and Darwin's Nightmare becomes a nightmare for all mankind.

This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.

January 19, 2012 - 9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out 
< Download flyer >

9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out is a powerful new documentary film by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The documentary premiered the first week of September 2011 in theaters all across the country and around the world. 

Join 23-year architect Richard Gage, AIA, in this feature length documentary with cutting-edge 9/11 evidence from more than 50 top experts in their fields - high-rise architects, structural engineers, physicists, chemical engineers, firefighters, metallurgists, explosives experts, controlled demolition technicians, and more. Each is highly qualified in his/her respective fields. National Medal of Science awardee Lynn Margulis, along with the other experts, exposes the fraud of NIST and discusses how the scientific method should have been applied and acknowledges the "overwhelming" evidence of high temperature incendiaries in all dust samples of the WTC.

9/11 family members and psychologists round out the professional showing and tie it all together in this milestone production.

2011

Hot Coffee, by first-time filmmaker and former public interest lawyer Susan Saladoff, uses the infamous legal battle that began with a spilled cup of coffee to investigate what’s behind America’s zeal for tort reform – which threatens to restrict the legal rights of everyday citizens and undermine the entire civil justice system.

Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts? 

Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.

Nostalgia for the Light - For his new film master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his political documentaries (THE BATTLE OF CHILE, THE PINOCHET CASE), travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe.

The Atacama is also a place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, “disappeared” by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973.

So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families’ histories.

The Most Secret Place on Earth - the CIA's Covert War in Laos

The Vietnam War was the most intensely televised war ever. However, next door in neighboring Laos, the longest and largest air war in human history was underway, which eventually made Laos the most bombed country on earth. The Secret War was the largest operation ever conducted by the CIA, yet to this day, hardly anyone knows anything about it. Critics call it the biggest war crime of the Vietnam War era and point to striking similarities to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; similarities that were tested and set in motion back in Laos in the 1960s. 

In The Most Secret Place On Earth, key players of the Secret War– former CIA agents, American pilots, Laotian fighters and war reporters — take us on a journey into the physical heart of the conflict: Top secret Long Cheng, where the CIA built its headquarters in 1962. It was from this base that the Secret War was largely planned and executed. As the war dragged on, Long Cheng became the busiest airbase in the world and a major center for the global opium and heroin trade. As we journey into Long Cheng for the first time — the site has been off limits to the outside world since the end of the war in 1975 — the film reconstructs the gripping story of the operation and illustrates its relevance to current American conflicts.

Tonight there are 2 events; note times

6:15pm CointelPro 101 - The Sabotage of Dissent dramatically shows that the U.S. government’s COINTELPRO assault on Black and radical political activists wasn’t just a Sixties episode: it is part of the continuity of oppression stretching from the European invasion of the Americas and the slave trade to this very day. American regimes are prepared to deploy COINTELPRO-like repression whenever popular movements threaten the established order. “Assassination, imprisonment, surveillance and encouraged internal strife [are] employed to forcibly dissolve these movements.”

7:30pm SPECIAL EVENT: Sen Mike Gravel will be here to speak on a 9/11 Ballot Initiative. See 9-11cc.org

Will the Real Terrorists Please Stand Up tells the story of the Cuban five - intelligence agents sent to penetrate Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami and now serving long prison sentences. It highlights decades of assassinations and sabotage at first backed then ignored by the very government that launched a war against terrorism. In the film, viewers see leading terrorists, now in their 80s, recounting their deeds, and Cuban state security officials explaining why they infiltrated agents into violent Miami exile groups. 

Burzinski the Movie - Cancer is Serious Business is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration in American history.

His victorious battles with the United States government were centered around Dr. Burzynski's gene-targeted cancer medicines he discovered in the 1970's.

The War You Don’t See, John Pilger’s latest film asks ‘What is the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, and how are the crimes of war reported and justified when they’re our crimes?’

Modern ‘democracies’ don’t leave marks. Elites do not want the public to know what they’re doing. The public is a threat that needs to be countered. 

The lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth. This film is about your right to know.

Inside Job is the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, Inside Job traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships that have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.
"If you're not enraged by the end of the movie, you weren't paying attention." ~Mary and Richard Corliss

The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.

WikiRebels is Sweden’s public service television, SVT, deeply-moving, one-hour documentary chronicling the history of WikiLeaks, after having followed the crew for six months. 

In WikiRebels, we learn about the early hacker life of Julian Assange, and his later decision to form an organization where whistleblowers can anonymously pass information that documents crime and immorality. His stated goal is to expose injustice, and nothing exemplifies this more than the leaked film entitled “Collateral Murder”, the military video that drew global attention for the callous reaction of the US soldiers who shot unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007, even killing a father who happened upon the murder scene while driving his children to school. 

Chris Pratt, filmmaker: “Our opinions and perceptions are being managed by a corporate media; there is no public policy, only corporate policy. How can we reconcile continual war, wiretapping, unanswered 9/11 questions, torture, rendition, terrorism, the loss of freedom, police brutality, news suppression, the bailouts, evaporation of the public option, a toothless financial reform, no real audit of the Fed, BP's constant lies, political bribery, uncharged war criminals and corruption beyond belief? 

Media manipulation is orchestrated by an elite never held accountable. The extent that big money has taken control of the media, of who & how we elect officials, of governmental policies both at home and abroad is a reflection of a public that continually chooses to do nothing. My job is awareness; yours is choice. Before you choose do-nothing, ask why?”

PsyWar - the real battlefield is the mind. This film explores the evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States, with an emphasis on the “elitist theory of democracy” and the relationship between war, propaganda and class.

Includes original interviews with a number of dissident scholars including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips (“Project Censored”), John Stauber (“PR Watch”), Christopher Simpson (“The Science of Coercion”) and others.

2010

Shot in breathtaking 70mm in 24 countries on six continents, BARAKA is a transcendent global tour that explores the sights and sounds of the human condition like nothing you've ever seen or felt before. These are the wonders of a world without words, viewed through man and nature's own prisms of symmetry, savagery, harmony and chaos. 

From Nepal to Kenya, from Australia to Brazil, people try to cope with the changes that have altered their landscape, crowding them together and speeding up daily life. The film shows us these alienated people, but also images of traditions--whirling dervishes and Tibetan monks--that offer different, peaceful ways of existence. 

NOTE: extra 'Sacred Space Denied' starts at 6:30pm 

Explores what the media doesn’t want to talk about – itself.

Orwell rolls in his grave is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Has America entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth? 

Robert Pappas has provocative answers to questions most people will never hear directed to the corporate news media: Are Americans pathologically detached from reality thanks to corporate manipulation and censorship of news? Isn't it ironic that in an era when there are more news sources than ever before, regular folks are less and even misinformed because the "news" is owned and operated by fewer and fewer corporate persons with ever more convergent viewpoints?

BANNED BY SHELL OIL

Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current oil and energy crisis that our world is facing. Whatever measures of ignorance, greed, wishful thinking, we have put ourselves at a crossroads, which offer two paths with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don’t our way of life will collapse.  

“Blind Spot is a fascinating documentary, it draws on some of the most impressive scientific minds to warn us about the dangers of our dependence on oil and educate us about our role in saving the earth and the lives of our children. I was transfixed by it." ~Howard Zinn

The phrase ’the elephant in the room’ is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. This is certainly true when talking of the ’9/11 Truth Movement’ and its handling by the mainstream media. This is by no means the only elephant in the room where the mainstream media is concerned, which is why it is extremely important for documentary filmmakers to tackle topics like this no matter how controversial they seem.

Featuring Cynthia McKinney, William Rodriguez, John Feal, Alex Jones, Scott Forbes, Luke Rudkowski, Richard Gage and many more...

In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level  ... Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.

Blue Gold follows numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water, from court cases to violent revolutions to U.N. conventions to revised constitutions to local protests at grade schools. As Maude Barlow proclaims, “This is our revolution, this is our war”. A line is crossed as water becomes a commodity. Will we survive?

Missing Links exposes the identity of those who were in positions to pull off a conspiracy of the magnitude it took to orchestrate the terrorist attacks of 9/11, 2001. Who had the means and technology? Who controlled airport security, here and abroad? Who benefited from insider trading? Who was/is in charge of computerized systems that could have - but didn't - scramble jets to intercept the highjacked airplanes? What about the dancing 'Arabs?' Who was the director of OEM in building 7? Who was in charge of - and profited from - disposing of crime scene evidence? Who was ultimately responsible for the 3.3 trillion dollars that 'went missing' from the Pentagon budget just before and after 9/11? Who had the depravity to do 9/11?

We invite the curious to come and get the answers to the above questions, and hear all the evidence provided in Missing Links.

The Israeli Lobby is a compilation of two documentaries that expose the influence of the Israeli government on foreign policy in Britain and the US. It includes interviews with former politicians courageous enough to speak out, as well as video segments in which zionist/neocon 'players' - like Richard Perle - brag about how they control who gets elected in the US: if you are not sufficiently pro-zionist, you can forget about running for US congressional (or presidential) office. 

Israel's control over US foreign (& domestic) policy might be in the interests of the US weapons industry, but it certainly is not in the interests of the American public, and the rest of humanity that suffers from US/Israeli aggression.

[This is an extra screening; an UPandOUT collaboration with the Cambridge based Fred Hampton Film Club]

Michael Moore shines the light on the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans. This time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene is far wider than Flint, Michigan.

Moore employs his trademark tactics to make a satirical documentary that functions as a film-based, grassroots political strategy meant to provoke revolt. The film weaves a narrative that underscores Moore's argument that while America is a success because of its democracy, it has been denigrated by capitalism, which he calls "a system of taking and giving, mostly taking." Capitalism: A Love Story is a patriotic call to arms that seeks to ignite rage in the viewer who is tired of political stupidity resulting in poverty and hardship among a dwindling middle class.

WINNER OF 26 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS! 10 Audience Choice Awards including the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, The Corporation explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation is transforming audiences and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis. Taking its status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics - including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

The War on Democracy is a John Pilger award-winning documentary that rebukes the United States' intervention in foreign countries' domestic politics, and its "War on Terrorism". It focuses on US intervention in Latin America. Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq. He investigates the School of the Americas - dubbed the School of Assassins - at Fort Benning, Georgia, where Latin American torture squads were trained. See School of the Americas Watch [SOAW]

Real democracy the US could learn from.

Born out of the US 'War on Drugs', an Aymara Indian named Evo - backed by a troop of coca leaf farmers - travels through Andes and Amazon in jeans and sneakers, leading a historic bid to become Bolivia's first indigenous president. A lively story about geopolitics, people's movements, indigenous culture, and one man's impressive determination. With little money, but through ingenious organizing, the indigenous majority of Bolivia was able to elect a person who represented their interests, and would work to ... distribute the wealth of the country more fairly. All these are radical ideas in the US. ... See trailer.

Cocalero closely follows Evo's campaign, getting up close and personal with the candidate and the union organization backing him. What makes Evo so fascinating is how unlikely a candidate he is. While the burly candidate shrewdly watches for signs of yankee-instigated coups d'état and fields trick questions from right-wing TV personalities ("If you are elected, will we be invaded by Cubans?"), local unions conduct voting rehearsals for the unlettered. 

While the popular movement for Evo grew, there were US political advisors who were working to get the establishment candidate elected. That issue is covered in the film Our Brand Is Crisis which features James Carville as he devises media strategies to frighten people into voting against Morales. "

While Massimo Mazzucco’s first political documentary, Global Deceit (2006), focused on the long list of inconsistencies in the official version of the 9/11 attacks, The New American Century explores the historical, philosophical and economic background that suggests a matrix for such events that is much closer to home than the so-called "Islamic terrorism".

The film provides solid evidence for the true reasons behind the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, whose unfolding is described in chilling detail in a document called "Project for the New American Century", published in the year 2,000, that seems to have served as the actual blueprint for such dramatic events.

"Historically accurate, narratively captivating, The New American Century is one of the best films about the facts behind the 9/11 attacks". ~ Webster G. Tarpley

"The New American Century is a stunning film. It should be seen as widely as possible, in cinemas, bars, clubs, at meetings and, of course, through the internet. I'm sure the film will continue to be a source of debate and political education for many years." ~ Ken Loach.

"In the White House, they weren't thinking of 9/11 as an attack, but as a gift!" ~ Robert Steele, former CIA agent

"Most people take vacations to relax. Karla Hansen went with a mission. The Clive social worker and mental health therapist and her husband, Drake University economics professor Ismael Hossein-zadeh (The Political Economy of US Militarism), took a trip this spring to visit family in his native Iran. 

"... [one night] a dream woke her from sleep. She had seen visions of unmanned US aircraft, called drones, bombing the wedding celebration from a few hours before. The US military developed the drones so operators could attack targets with remote controls, thousands of miles from danger. 

Hansen, a peace activist, knew about the drones from volunteer work back home. She knew about their alleged inaccuracy in nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan. And she knew she wanted to reshape her film project into a more pointed documentary. “I'm not a very patient person. I just want to rant and change things now, but this was my way to say it with a whisper." 

Karla's film, Silent Screams weaves together still shots, satellite maps, newsreel and clips from 24 hours of footage Hansen shot herself. For more on Karla and Ismael's trip, see Drake prof to share his view of Iran after seven-week visit  

NOTE:  Special guest speaker: Ardeshir Ommani

Ardeshir will be here to talk with us and do Q&A after the film. He is co-founder of the American Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC). "Prompted by concern for the consequences of an on-going anti-Iranian U.S. foreign policy, the AIFC takes steps towards creating an atmosphere that can strengthen healthy dialogue and make friendship possible between the people of the two nations. We invite all democratic-minded individuals to join the committee and help in our efforts at building a movement for promoting peace, ending the unjust sanctions, and preventing a U.S.-NATO war on Iran.”

Ardeshir is a "political economist and an activist in the anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle for over 40 years, including against the Vietnam War. He helped launch the successful StopWarOnIran.org campaign. 

2009

“…It was when the Lennons moved to New York in the early '70s and took a more active role in the anti-war movement, making friends with radicals like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Black Panther Party founder Bobby Seale, that the government got interested--and paranoid--and men like President Richard Nixon, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and right-wing Sen. Strom Thurmond began actively looking for ways to silence him.” For music fans, Lennon's solo recordings provide the soundtrack.

"Anybody who sings about love, and harmony, and life, is dangerous to somebody who sings about death. Lennon... was a born enemy of the U.S. He was everything they hated." ~Gore Vidal. "

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.” ~John Lennon

"In Vaccine Nation, award-winning investigative film director Dr. Gary Null challenges the basic health claims by government health agencies and pharmaceutical firms that vaccines are perfectly safe. This is one of the most critical questions facing today's children and future generations to come. If inoculation with a large regimen of vaccines is safe, what can account for the rapid increase in autism and other mental disabilities that are now at epidemic proportions? And why isn't the sudden onset of neurological illnesses in children being treated as an urgent crisis by our government and medical industries?

Weaving together interviews with many of the nations most expert medical researchers, private physicians specializing in autism, parents of children victimized by immunization, congressmen, vaccination activists, legal authorities and more, Vaccine Nation will awaken viewers to one of the continual perils to the health and future of children." ~ Organic Consumer's Association

Part 1 - The assassinations of Kennedy and Oswald as never seen before analyzes the John F. Kennedy assassination by showing archival footage of witnesses, many of which worked for the government. It lets the characters involved explain the story and provides important information to help you understand how the complex struggle for power behind the scenes lead to the assassination of one of America´s favorite presidents. 

"I told the FBI what I had heard [two shots from behind the grassy knoll fence], but they said it couldn't have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family."  ~Ken O'Donnell, former Special Assistant to JFK  

"Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission - on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the guns, you name it..." ~Hale Boggs, Majority Leader and former Warren Commissioner

Financial Crisis. Panic. Bailout. The current crisis appeared to materialize out of nowhere. Even regulators and financial authorities would have us believe that they were taken entirely by surprise. Dire headlines demanded quick action to prevent the collapse of the financial system. Politicians told us that we have to bail out Wall Street to keep Main Street afloat. The same political class tries to convince everyday Americans that the reasons for the bailout are too complicated for us to understand, so we must leave the solutions to the financial experts . . . the same ones that didn't see this coming. At the same time, they give our hard-earned money to Wall Street fat cats, without any strings attached, turning a deaf ear to our intense and vocal opposition. 

Life On The Edge of A Bubble challenges the prevailing view of the sudden, unforeseeable and unique nature of the recent financial crisis by bringing to light the unfamiliar historical pattern; in fact, each generation has found itself precariously perched on the edge of a bubble. While the media focuses on symptoms, this film addresses the root causes that politicians, lobbyists and corporate executives conveniently avoid. The pattern unfolds for the viewer in an entertaining and accessible blend of archival footage, historical vignettes, and snapshots of current events, revealing the story in a sometimes irreverent, often surprising manner.

In View from a Grain of Sand director Meena Nanji combines verite footage, interviews and archival material to fashion a harrowing, thought-provoking, yet intimate portrait of the plight of Afghan women in the last 30 years - from the rule of King Mohammed Zahir Shah to the current Hamid Karzai government to the activist work of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. [This is a MUST SEE for all Americans whose understanding of the Middle East and the role we play in it is completely skewed by a U$/Israeli imperialist agenda.]

"There are VERY few films that approach the issue of Afghanistan, Afghan women's rights, and US policy with a decent level of sensitivity, political maturity, and sophistication. Meena Nanji's film is one of those very rare films that tackles all the important issues with grace, and conviction..." -- Sonali Kolhatkar, Co-Director of Afghan Women's Mission

Evidence of Revision: Part 5, The RFK assassination continued, MK UlTRA, and the Jonestown Massacre ... all related  opens to a short interview with Gore Vidal on Media Matters: “If anybody gets assassinated it's always ‘the lone-crazed killer. The lone-crazed killer; communist lone-crazed killer. These murders have almost always been plots.”

Project MK-ULTRA was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. Begun in the early 1950s and continuing at least through the late 1960s, it used US citizens as its test subjects. The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function. To this day most specific information regarding Project MKULTRA remains highly classified.

"Political murder is a part of our lives. It has been through our history [there were a rash of assassination is the 60's alone].” ~Walter Cronkite.  

For more info on the 5-DVD series, see notes below for June screening.  

Evidence of Revision: the Assassination of America is a 5-part documentary series whose purpose is to present the publicly unavailable and even suppressed historical audio, video, and film recordings largely unseen by the American public relating to the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, the little known classified "Black Ops" actually used to intentionally create the massive war in Viet Nam, the CIA "mind control" programs and their involvement in the RFK assassination and the Jonestown massacre and other important truths of our post-modern time. 

Evidence of Revision: Part 4, The RFK assassination as never seen before walks you through the political life of Robert Kennedy. After setting the stage, the film gives ample evidence to confute the ‘official story’ of RFK’s assassination, which leaves many questions unanswered: Why was RFK rerouted from his original destination in the hotel straight into the path of an assassin's bullet? Who was the girl in the polka dot dress seen fleeing the hotel exclaiming "we shot him, we shot Kennedy"? Was there a CIA presence at the hotel that night? Why were additional bullets recovered but never entered into evidence? Was Sirhan Sirhan a mind-controlled patsy? You be the judge.

Filmed during the massive Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, 33 Days chronicles the lives of four young people working in theatre, media and emergency relief. Through their creativity and commitment, the film tells untold stories that forever marked the lives of those who survived that fateful summer in Beirut. 

“A lot of people think this [assault] was just a small skirmish, but a million people were displaced from their homes, all victims of circumstances,” recalls director Mai Masri. “As one woman says in the documentary, ‘We want dignity, not canned food.’ What was also important about [the 2006 assault] was that it also unified the Lebanese for a while. Political divides were forgotten and when Hezbollah scored some victories, it was celebrated as a Lebanese victory against those who attacked our civillians."

Twenty-five Thousand Tents, Maybe More powerfully documents the lives of Palestinians currently stranded in al-Tanaf detention camp in a no man's land on the Iraq Syria border. These Palestinians first found refuge in Iraq after the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of its people in 1948. Following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, they have been forced to flee and find refuge elsewhere once again. This profoundly moving and instructive film gives voice to the suffering and heroism of Palestinians as they tell of personal experiences, the hardships they endure, what led them to flee Iraq, as well as their aspirations and hopes for the future.

SPECIAL for April: Guest speaker! We are thrilled to announce that Thaer Shafiq Ali will be with us for this film, to tell his own amazing story. 

Thaer’s story is one of incredible courage. In 2005, with violence escalating in Iraq against Palestinian refugees, he begins plans to lead an exodus of threatened Palestinian families to Syria, to ask for refuge. Come and hear Thaer talk about his astounding odyssey. Thaer is also an amazing artist; some of his paintings will be on display for sale.

In Breaking the Silence, award-winning journalist John Pilger investigates the discrepancies between American and British claims for the 'war on terror' and the facts on the ground as he finds them in Afghanistan and Washington, DC.

In 2001, as the bombs began to drop, George W. Bush promised Afghanistan "the generosity of America and its allies". Now, the familiar old warlords are regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing its grip and military skirmishes continue routinely. In "liberated" Afghanistan, America has its military base and pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, says one woman, "in many ways worse than the Taliban". 

MALCOLM X- PRINCE OF ISLAM is the EXPLOSIVE and GRIPPING documentary that shows never before seen footage of al-Hajj Malik Shabazz, a truly Islamic hero.

... we have the example of Brother Malcolm. He courageously stood firm in the midst of his enemies and was ready to sacrifice everything in the pursuit of seeking the pleasure of Allah (swt). In ‘Prince of Islam’ we learn about his childhood struggles through to him joining the heretical group ‘Nation of Islam’ to him finally accepting the true religion of Islam after performing the Hajj in Makkah.

"If we don't stand for something, we may fall for anything." - Malcom X

Children of Shatila:  More than 350,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, 15,000 of them in the refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut. Through the eyes of two children who live in this camp, Issa and Farah, this documentary explores the determination to keep family and dreams thriving in a landscape that has been sculpted by war, poverty, grief and displacement.

Issa, a little boy who lives with his grandfather, sustained severe injuries when he was hit by a speeding car and has trouble learning in school. Farah lives with her parents and two sisters. The children’s memories and history are shaped by the violence that surrounds them. Both have lost family in the massacres and attacks that followed the 1948 Diaspora and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel. An aunt was decapitated, an uncle shot — every family and friend they know has lost someone to the violence. 

2008:

ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11, has one central thesis - that the official version of the events surrounding the attacks on 9/11 can not be true. This brand new feature documentary from Italian production company Telemaco explores the latest scientific evidence and reveals dramatic new witness testimony, which directly conflicts with the US Government's account.

Featuring presentations from intellectual heavy weights; Gore Vidal, and Noble Prize winner Dario Fo, the film challenges assumptions surrounding the attacks. In the words of the Italian daily newspaper, Il Corriere de da Sera, "What results is a sequence of contradictions, gaps, and omissions of stunning gravity."

The importance of this film can not be overstated. If its thesis is correct, the justification for going to war in Iraq is built on a series of outrageous lies. 

A British report on Israeli violence in Gaza against not only Palestinian civilians, but international aid volunteers and foreign reporters as well.

In 2003, Dispatches reporter Sandra Jordan and producer Rodrigo Vasquez risk their lives to reveal the shocking level of daily violence and murderous hate in the Gaza Strip. The Dispatches team reveals what life is like in what has become a fully blown war zone.

Director David Neunuebel grew up in an average American home where the Middle East and the Palestinian/Israel conflict were never part of his world. Yet after his first visit to the area he knew something was terribly wrong. What he saw, after many more trips, went counter to every American instinct he'd been taught growing up. This documentary is an attempt to get "beyond the mirage."

Beyond the Mirage: The Face of an Occupation is an opportunity to hear from people who actually live in the region and goes beyond what we get from the American media.

Mi·rage′ (mi·rähz′) n. a strongly held but false belief: delusion, hallucination, illusion, mirage, phantasm, misconception

Palestine Blues follows the repercussions of the Israeli Security Wall and Settlement expansion in the engulfed/annexed Palestinian farming communities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  Instead of focusing on the Wall as an object, Palestine Blues examines the grassroots resistance movement that has sprung up against it.

Focusing on the village of Jayyous (close to Qalqilia) and its nonviolent campaign against the wall, the film documents the heroic victories and tragic defeats of this farming community’s fight for survival.

This Body Is a Prison is "A look at the psychological impact of the occupation in the West Bank, but there's a lot of layers to it. In the literal sense, its looking at how society is divided with tangible things like the wall, checkpoints and roadblocks, but its also looking at individual people and saying that the same things happening in society as a whole are happening inside individuals. The documentary really focuses on children. Adults fit in to the extent that they discuss children's experiences." ~ Dylan Bergeson

July 3rd, 2008 - Leila Khaled, Hijacker

Leila Khaled, Hijacker documents the life of the PFLP activist Leila Khaled, who achieved notoriety with two airplane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. The film, by Palestinian-Swedish writer Lina Makboul, addresses the distinction between terrorism and the struggle for freedom.

All That Remains is Nada El Yassir's powerful documentary that explores the struggle of Bedouins of the Naqab against Israeli policies that aim to strip them of their land and their way of life.

Palestinian Arab Bedouins once peopled the entire Naqab (Negev) Desert, a region which accounts for 60% of historic Palestine. With the creation of Israel in 1948, the majority of these Palestinians were uprooted. Those who remain are either being forcibly concentrated within one of seven designated townships; or - if they refuse to abandon their lifestyle and economy - end up living in one of 46 "unrecognized villages" lacking water, electricity, schools, roads or medical services. 

Human Rights Watch in a 2008, March 28th report on the situation says the Bedouin are victims of widespread government discrimination. The 130-page report, “Off the Map: Land and Housing Rights Violations in Israel’s Unrecognized Bedouin Villages,” documents how discriminatory Israeli laws and practices force tens of thousands of Bedouin in the south of Israel to live in “unrecognized” shanty towns where they are under constant threat of seeing their homes demolished and their communities torn apart. 

USA vs Al-Arian tells the story of Sami Al-Arian, a  university professor and pro-Palestinian civil rights activist who in February 2003,was arrested in Tampa, Florida and charged with providing material support to a terror organization. For 2 ½ years he was held in solitary confinement, denied basic privileges and given limited access to his attorneys. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he was targeted in an attempt to silence his political views.

The film follows Sami Al-Arian’s wife Nahla and their five children throughout his 6 month-long trial. It is an intimate family portrait that documents the strain brought on by the trial, a battle waged both in court and in the media. In the film a tight-knit family unravels before our very eyes as trial preparations, strategy and spin consume their lives. This is a nightmare come to life, as a man is prosecuted for his beliefs rather than his actions. 

2,000 Terrorists centers on the search for justice of four survivors of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila who are among a group that has initiated legal action against Ariel Sharon and others responsible for the killings.

In 1982, following Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the evacuation of the PLO, Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon declared that '2,000 terrorists' remained in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Monitored by the Israeli army, a Lebanese militia entered the camps to exterminate these remaining 'terrorists'. Two days later more than two thousand civilian inhabitants were killed: men, women and children, in what the United Nations officially declared to be genocide. 

Rachel, An American Conscience contains interviews and footage of Rachel Corrie in Palestine. She was a 23-year-old American student and human rights activist. On March 16th, 2003, an Israeli soldier, driving a US Caterpillar bulldozer 2-stoires high, crushed her to death According to numerous witnesses and photographic documentation, she was killed intentionally.

The US has yet to condemn this atrocity by an "ally" who receives more US funding than any other nation on earth, well over $10 million per day. Congress has yet to pass a resolution condemning this use of American tax money to kill an American citizen. Israel has called this atrocity "regrettable."

The US media have yet to accord this horror the attention it would normally merit. There were virtually NO follow up stories; NO STORIES about the memorial service held the next day in Gaza that was broken up by an Israeli tank, while the bulldozer that killed her drove slowly, exultantly past. NO STORES about Israeli forces blocking the ambulance carrying her remains from exiting Gaza. NO STORES about Rachel's grieving parents and siblings. NO STORES.

MALCOLM X- PRINCE OF ISLAM is the EXPLOSIVE and GRIPPING documentary that shows never before seen footage of al-Hajj Malik Shabazz, a truly Islamic hero.

... we have the example of Brother Malcolm. He courageously stood firm in the midst of his enemies and was ready to sacrifice everything in the pursuit of seeking the pleasure of Allah (swt). In ‘Prince of Islam’ we learn about his childhood struggles through to him joining the heretical group ‘Nation of Islam’ to him finally accepting the true religion of Islam after performing the Hajj in Makkah.

"If we don't stand for something, we may fall for anything." - Malcom X

In the summer of 2002, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, a Palestinian and an Israeli, travelled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in UN Resolution 181 that was to partition Palestine into two states. 

As they travel along this route, they encounter men and women, Israeli and Palestinian, young and old, civilians and soldiers, filming them in their everyday lives. Each of these characters has their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbours: concrete, barbed-wire, cynicism, humour, indifference, suspicion, aggression… 

Frontiers have been built on the hills and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys but above all inside the minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of both societies. 

With Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan take us on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast ramifications.

2007:

Goal Dreams is a wonderful new documentary feature focusing on national and personal identity as experienced by a sports team like none before.

How can a team without a recognized homeland, no permanent domestic league, no place to train and with players and coaches scattered around the globe compete in the world of modern football? Founded in 1928, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) is considered one of the oldest football associations in the Arab World.

Since being recognized by FIFA in 1998, the team has risen 70 places in the international rankings, despite never having been able to play on home soil.

Following the team as they prepare for the 2006 World Cup, Goal Dreams chronicles the suspension of domestic league games after an Israel air strike on Palestine Stadium, while Austrian coach Alfred Riedle makes a heroic effort to mold players from diverse countries such as the USA, Chile, Palestine and Lebanon into a national team unlike any other.

In the summer of 2002, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, a Palestinian and an Israeli, travelled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in UN Resolution 181 that was to partition Palestine into two states. 

As they travel along this route, they encounter men and women, Israeli and Palestinian, young and old, civilians and soldiers, filming them in their everyday lives. Each of these characters has their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbours: concrete, barbed-wire, cynicism, humour, indifference, suspicion, aggression… 

Frontiers have been built on the hills and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys but above all inside the minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of both societies. 

With Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan take us on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast ramifications.

Sucha Normal Thing - A Simple Journey into the Israeli-Occupied West Bank

"We are human beings and we feel," reflects a Palestinian hotel manager. Capturing the voice of individual Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli peace activists, Sucha Normal Thing documents untold stories of ordinary people amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Filmed in the fall of 2003 by American filmmaker Rebecca Glotfelty, Sucha Normal Thing vividly explores visceral moments of life and death under occupation. From the busy cities of Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus, to the villages of Sa'aer and Zbuba, Sucha Normal Thing brings forth stories of Palestinians struggling to maintain a normal existence under Israeli occupation as well as Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals working non-violently toward peace.

Sucha Normal Thing captures the uncertainty of a "normal" day for the filmmaker and the Palestinian farmers, children, doctors, teachers and others living and working in the West Bank. Amidst stories of fear, anger, and hopelessness, exist moving stories of humans determined to persevere, to rise above the situation, to remain hopeful despite the uncertainty of daily life. A Palestinian father declares, "I want my children to be free, think free, not to be caged in the occupational culture." Hopeful for a life of freedom from the occupation.

American documentary filmmaker James Longley traveled to the Gaza Strip in January of 2001, planning to stay for two weeks and collect preliminary material for a film about the Palestinian intifada. He threw away his return ticket and stayed for another 3 months, shooting over 75 hours of material throughout the Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip follows a range of people and events following the election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including the first major armed incursion into "Area A" by IDF forces during this intifada. The film is filmed almost entirely in a verite style, presented without narration and with little explanation, focusing on ordinary Palestinians rather than politicians and pundits. More observation than political argument, Gaza Strip offers a rare look inside the stark realities of Palestinian life and death under Israeli military occupation.

Reviews
"This documentary is vastly revealing ... and it's bigger than a summer blockbuster, more important than all our movie stars or the academy awards ..."
- StaticMultimedia.com

"... well-made and harrowing documentary ... you can understand my desperate desire not to believe what I was seeing."
- Jordan Hiller, www.bangitout.com

"... offering sequences that could rival Bunuel or Fellini ... one of the most important documentaries of recent times."
- Phil Hall, Film Threat

A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.

The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets.

The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy. 

Come early! at 6:45 we will begin with an introductory, documentary short and begin serving pizza. Pick up your free copies of Remember These Children (brochure) and Occupied Living (DVD compilation of youtube videos).

 

Set during the current Intifada, this documentary follows four Palestinian families living in Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. They talk about their past and discuss the future with humor, sorrow, frustration and hope. "until when..." paints an intimate in-depth portrait of Palestinian lives today.

Fadi is 13 and cares for his 4 younger brothers, the Hammashes are a close-knit family who pass on the lessons of life with humor and passion, Sana is a single woman who endures long commutes to do community work, and Emad and Hanan are a young couple trying to shield their daughter from the harsh realities of the occupation. They talk about their past and discuss the future with humor, sorrow, frustration and hope.

"Remaining unashamedly Palestinian and independent in its point of view, this is a valuable and honest documentary offering great insights by way of interviews, archival photographs, and cinematography which presents a vivid sense of place and daily life." Vancouver International Film Festival

When filmmaker Mai Masri returned to her hometown of Nablus after a fourteen year absence, she discovered a new generation of Palestinian fighters: the children of the Intifada.

Winner of the Award of Public at the Freminin Pluriel Festival, Children of Fire captures their courageous story on film and paints a daring portrait of the Palestinian uprising. 

"Dramatic, bravely filmed...if you closed your eyes you could have been witnessing the Nazi occupation of the Warsaw Ghetto." - Daily Express

Come early! at 6:45 we will begin with an introductory, documentary short and begin serving pizza. (We apologize for a slow start in May due to technical glitches; won't happen again.)  Pick up your free copy of Remember These Children.

 

May 3 - Checkpoint - The Palestinians After Oslo (58 min) Download flyer

The signing of the Oslo Peace Accord in 1993 sparked worldwide hope for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Checkpoint takes a critical look at this peace agreement and its aftermath. 

Tom Wright and Therese Saliba lived in the West Bank from 1995 to 1996 and chronicled these events as they unfolded. Checkpoint portrays a side of the story little known to American audiences: the devastating effects of the agreement on Palestinian lives. With an engaging style and offbeat humor, the documentary exposes shallow mass-media interpretations of the conflict and reveals the immense imbalance of power between the two sides. 

Palestinian and Israeli human rights activists, as well as political figures like Hanan Ashrawi, give their views of the major events of the period: Rabin's assassination, the Palestinian Authority takeover of West Bank towns, the first Palestinian elections, the suicide bus bombings, Arafat's abuse of power, Netanyahu's election, and the September 1996 uprising.


Checkpoint takes its title from the innumerable Israeli roadblocks, which ironically have become a permanent feature in the new era of Palestinian "autonomy." In the post-Oslo era, the checkpoint becomes the symbol of Israeli control and domination. In the face of these obstacles, Israelis and Palestinians seek to grapple with these grave injustices and to set forth an alternative vision for a just peace. 

Come early! at 6:45 we show The Easiest Targets: The Israeli Policy of Strip Searching Women and Children (13 min)
Read Alison Weir's column, Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints, Strip-Searching Children at Counterpunch. Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew.

 

April 5th - Dead in the Water  (69 min)  Download flyer

During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats. Israel claimed that the whole affair had been a tragic accident based on mistaken identification of the ship. The American government accepted the explanation.

For more than 30 years many people have disbelieved the official explanation but have been unable to rebut it convincingly. Now, Dead in the Water uses startling new evidence to reveal the truth behind the seemingly inexplicable attack.

April location: 243 Broadway, Cambridge, MA (at the corner of Windsor & Broadway; entrance on Windsor)

Come early! at 6:45 we show The Easiest Targets: The Israeli Policy of Strip Searching Women and Children (13 min)
Read Alison Weir's column, Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints, Strip-Searching Children at Counterpunch. Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew.

after years of toxic dumping, one small community fights for its life

In 1955, Ford built America’s largest auto plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, just up the river from New York City. Between 1967 and 1971, Ford dumped hundreds of tons of toxic waste into mineshafts in northern New Jersey—right in the backyards of communities.

One member of the Ramapough, Wayne Mann, led the charge against Ford in 2005 with a lawsuit stating that they had deliberately poisoned the land and the people living on it. The class action suit finally carried through in 2008; but with an impending bankruptcy on the horizon, the Ramapough took a settlement —except for the 30 people in the area who died of cancer while the lawsuit went through the courts. 

"The Record called this time period a “toxic wild west,” ... The investigation found that Ford repeatedly dumped waste in poor communities, and knowingly dumped sludge into a stream that feeds into the Wanaque Reservoir. This was reportedly done through organized crime and government manipulation, coupled with relaxed environmental regulations and clean-up efforts." ~ Jessica Mazzola, patch.com

"If I poisoned 10 children, I’d go to jail for life; if a corporation poisons hundreds of people, it will get away with it." ~Wayne Mann

prior months and years not listed online....