Human Rights

The Agronomist – 2003

Jonathan Demme’s documentary of Jean Dominique, a Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist. Read more at IMDB or support this site and the filmmaker by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Murder on a Sunday Morning – 2001

The Academy Award-winning documentary Murder on a Sunday Afternoon, which originally aired on HBO as part of its America Undercover series, is a troubling look at modern police investigation that unfolds in a story as compelling and suspenseful as any fictional drama. French director Jean-Xavier De Lestrade’s intimate camerawork pulls viewers into the jury box to help decide the fate of 15-year-old Brenton Butler, a black resident of Jacksonville, Florida, who becomes the prime suspect in the shooting death of an elderly white woman simply because he was seen in the vicinity of the crime. Butler’s attorney, a magnetic public defender named Patrick McGuinness, must pit his legal skills against a mountain of shoddy investigative work and corruption to save his client from life in prison. Similar in intent to HBO’s Paradise Lost, Murder’s white-knuckled pacing and a wealth of courtroom fireworks should leave true-crime and documentary fans breathless–and angry. Read more at IMDB or support this site and the filmmaker by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

8: The Mormon Proposition – 2010

A scorching indictment of the Mormon Church’s historic involvement in the promotion & passage of California’s Proposition 8 and the Mormon religion’s secretive, decades-long campaign against LGBT human rights. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Presumed Guilty – 2008

Two young Mexican attorneys attempt to exonerate a wrongly convicted man by making a documentary. In the process, they expose the contradictions of a judicial system that presumes suspects guilty until proven innocent. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Which Way Home – 2009

Which Way Home is a feature documentary film that follows unaccompanied child migrants, on their journey through Mexico, as they try to reach the United States. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Zeitgeist – 2007

Extremely controversial documentary split into three parts, first producing information discrediting religion, particularly Christianity through showing the similarities of major religious figures. Part 2 describes the problems with what was told to us about the events surrounding Sept. 11 and and provides evidence to show who the writers believe really was responsible for the attacks. The third part deals with banks and resulting theories of World leaders plans to create one world bank. Also touches on the people responsible for the Great Depression.

Human Rights

Shut Up & Sing – 2006

In 2003, the female country band, The Dixie Chicks, are at the top of their game being one of the most successful bands of all time. However with the US invasion of Iraq about to begin over frustrated worldwide objections about this needless war, one of the Chick vents off the cuff in concert about being ashamed of US President George W. Bush. This statement sparks a firestorm of organized and personal right wing attacks against the Chicks for daring to think they have the right to express a negative personal opinion about the President. This film covers the band’s effort to ride out the turmoil that would leave their careers under a cloud, but would eventually give them a opportunity to grow as great artists who bow to no one. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Why We Fight – 2005

He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning “military industrial complex,” foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Balseros – 2002

The story of Cuban refugees who risked their lives in homemade rafts to reach the United States, and what life is like for those who succeed. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Children Underground – 2001

Children Underground shows how the Romanian government has yet to find a way to deal with these children, who are difficult to rehabilitate. The film follows the kids everywhere, and is a silent witness of all the violence and abuse they have to deal with on a daily basis. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy – 2000

A look at the infamous “Scottsboro Boys” case that occurred in Alabama in 1931, in which nine young black men were arrested, tried and quickly convicted in the rape of two white women, despite overwhelming evidence that showed their accusers had falsely accused them and the fact that one of the women later admitted that no rape had in fact occurred. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Dark Days – 2000

Near Penn Station, next to the Amtrak tracks, squatters have been living for years. Marc Singer goes underground to live with them, and films this “family.” A dozen or so men and one woman talk about their lives horrors of childhood, jail time, losing children, being coke-heads. They scavenge, they’ve built themselves sturdy one-room shacks; they have pets, cook, chat, argue, give each other haircuts. A bucket is their toilet.

Human Rights

4 Little Girls – 1997

This film recounts the people and events leading up to the one of the most despicable hate-crimes during the height of the civil-rights movement, the bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In that attack, four little African-American girls lost their lives and a nation was simultaneously revolted, angered and galvanized to push the fight for equality and justice on. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Paradise Lost – 1996

Berlinger and Sinofsky’s documentary of a gruesome triple murder in West Memphis, Arkansas and the subsequent trials of three suspects, takes a hard look at both the occult and the American justice system in ‘small-town’ America. Three teenagers are accused of this horrific crime of killing three children, supposedly as a result of involvement in Satanism. As in their previous documentary, things turn out to be more complex than initial appearances and this film presents the real-life courtroom drama to the viewer, as it unfolds. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.

Human Rights

Streetwise – 1984

Portrays the lives of nine desperate teenagers. Thrown too young into a seedy grown up world, these runaways and castaways survive, but just barely. Rat, the dumpster diver. Tiny, the teen prostitute. Shellie, the baby-faced blonde.

Human Rights

Harlan County U.S.A. – 1976

This film documents the coal miners’ strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Read more at IMDB or support this site by buying it at Amazon.