Valentine Road (2012)

Director: Marta Cunningham
Run Time: 99 min.
Call Number: HV9067.H6 V35 2014

"In February of [2008], a 14-year-old, Brandon McInerney, shot a fellow student named Lawrence King in the head in the school computer lab in front of a room full of classmates. Mr. King, an eighth grader who was openly exploring his sexual identity and had shown unwanted attention toward Mr. McInerney, died two days later. . . . Mr. McInerney is now in prison, but if you’ve forgotten the details of how this matter was resolved, do yourself a favor and don’t look them up, because [Marta] Cunningham has expertly built the narrative of this seemingly open-and-shut case to its uneasy conclusion."

—Neil Genzlinger, New York Times

Young Lakota (2013)

Director: Marion Lipschutz & Rose Rosenblatt
Run Time: 83 min.
Call Number: E99.O3 Y68 2013

"The Pine Ridge Reservation is no stranger to strife and heartbreak, stark realities and inspired idealism. In Young Lakota, we are brought directly into the emotional and often uncertain journey of Sunny Clifford, her twin sister Serena, and their politically ambitious friend Brandon Ferguson . . . . Their political awakening begins when Cecelia Fire Thunder, the first female president of their tribe, defies a proposed South Dakota law criminalizing all abortion by threatening to build a women's clinic on the sovereign territory of the reservation." 

—Film distributor's website

Blueberry Soup (2013)

Director: Eileen Jarrett
Run Time: 77 min.

"Blueberry Soup is an extraordinary documentary about the constitutional change in Iceland following the financial crisis of 2008. This is a not-well-known-story of grassroots constitutionalism, an inspiration to the rest of the world. The film is a deeply touching account of an eclectic group of individuals reinventing democracy through the rewriting of the nation's constitution." 

—Film's website

Out of Print (2013)

Director: Vivienne Roumani
Run Time: 55 min.
Call Number: Z1033.E43 O9 2013

"Out of Print, narrated by Meryl Streep, draws us into the topsy-turvy world of words, illuminating the turbulent and exciting journey from the book through the digital revolution. Jeff Bezos, Ray Bradbury, Scott Turow, Jeffrey Toobin, parents, students, educators, scientists – all highlight how this revolution is changing everything about the printed word – and changing us."

                                                                                        –Film website

I Will be Murdered (2013)

Director: Justin Webster
Run Time: 53 min.
Call Number: F1466.7 .I22 2013

"On a Sunday morning in May, 2009, Rodrigo Rosenberg, a wealthy, charismatic lawyer was gunned down near his home in Guatemala City. Nothing unusual in that, as the country was suffering one of the highest homicide rates in the world. What was extraordinary was that he knew he was going to be killed. . . . Two of Rosenberg’s clients had been murdered a few weeks before. He was driven to investigate a case which, he told his friends, he feared would lead to his death. A video he recorded days before he died accused the president of his murder. Uploaded to YouTube, it nearly brought down the government. Thousands took to the street in protest."

—Filmmaker's website

West of Memphis (2013)

Director: Amy Berg
Music: Nick Cave
Run Time: 147 min.
Call Number: HV6534.W47 W473 2013

"In 1993, three 8-year-old boys . . . were murdered in West Memphis, Ark. Police arrested three teenagers – Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. – and charged them with capital murder based on the theory that Echols, a known reader of Stephen King novels and wearer of black T-shirts, was the ringleader of a homicidal satanic cult, and that Baldwin and Misskelley were his followers. . . . Providing testimony from 'experts' with mail-order diplomas and no direct evidence, the prosecution scared jurors witless with photos of the victims’ mutilated bodies and obtained first-degree convictions in all three cases. Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life in prison, and Echols received the death penalty. . . . Moving and gruesome, West of Memphis is an eloquent disquisition on the banality of evil."

—Leah Churner, Austin Chronicle

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case

Director: Andreas Johnsen
Run Time: 91 min.
Call Number: N7349.A5 A4 2012

"In 1957, the year of Ai's birth, Maoist China began a purge of intellectuals. Ai's poet father was reduced to cleaning toilets. No such obscurity has befallen the subject of 'Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case,' whose large-scale conceptual works have made him a leading figure on the international art scene, albeit one who can no longer travel internationally. . . . Danish filmmaker Andreas Johnsen focuses on the year of probation after Ai's 81-day detention in spring 2011, widely considered government retaliation for his unrelenting criticism."

—Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times

Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (2014)

Directors: Sandrine Orabona & Mark Herzog
Run Time: 84 min.
Call Number: HQ77.8.B43 A3 2014

"In Lady Valor, we see former Navy Seal and transgender activist Kristin Beck rifle through pain medication and apply heat patches, daily reminders of her seven combat deployments. We see her tear up discussing her estranged relationship with her two sons. The wounds are so fresh, one can help but wince. . . . Throughout the film, Beck is misgendered. Her friends give her hurtful if well-meaning advice, explaining away others' hate as a simple matter of opinion. Still, she soldiers on. There is no trace of bitterness, no subtext of resentment. Beck is so matter-of-fact, we forget she’s doing so much heavy lifting.

—Brandon Watson, The Austin Chronicle

Happy Valley (2014)

Director: Amir Bar-Lev
Run Time: 99 min.
Call Number: HV6570.3.S73 H37 2014

"Mr. Bar-Lev includes searching, painful interviews with Paterno’s widow and two of his sons, and with Matt Sandusky, Jerry Sandusky’s adopted son, who offers a harrowing glimpse into the household of a serial pedophile. There are conversations with critics and partisans of Penn State and its football team, including a student who thinks the punishment of the university went much too far and a lawyer who believes it did not go far enough. . . . 'Happy Valley' also records some ugly and disturbing moments, including the campus riot the night after Paterno’s firing, when students knocked down lampposts and upended cars."

—A.O. Scott, New York Times

Sun Kissed (2012)

Directors: Maya Stark & Adi Lavy
Run Time: 85 min.
Call Number: RL247 .S86 2012

"When a Navajo couple discovers that their children have a disorder that makes exposure to sunlight fatal, they learn that their reservation is a hotbed for this rare genetic disease. Why? Sun Kissed follows Dorey and Yolanda Nez as they confront cultural taboos, tribal history and their own unconventional choices to learn the shocking truth: The consequences of the Navajos’ 'Long Walk' — their forced relocation by the U.S. military in 1864 — are far from over."

—Film's website 

Evergreen: The Road to Legalization in Washington (2014)

Director: Riley Morton
Run Time: 86 min.
Call Number: KF3891.M2 E94 2014

"A taut, thorough chronicle of the 2012 campaign to pass Initiative 502 — which proposed legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use — 'Evergreen' is an energetic study of a hard-fought battle. . . . Morton is fair to all parties, and the first thing that strikes a viewer is the array of local leaders and influential voices who participated in the fight. Among the proponents of I-502 were Alison Holcomb, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and I-502’s director, and beloved travel guru Rick Steves, a longtime critic of failed war-on-drugs policies. . . . The brusque opposition is largely represented by medical-marijuana provider Steve Sarich and defense lawyer Douglas Hiatt."

—Tom Keogh, Seattle Times

The Last of the Unjust (2014)

Director: Claude Lanzmann
Run Time: 220 min.
Call Number: DS135.C97 L378 2014

"Claude Lanzmann's monumental Holocaust documentary Shoah (1985) generated enough excess footage for four more stand-alone documentaries; the latest considers Benjamin Murmelstein, a Viennese rabbi who worked with Adolf Eichmann in facilitating the deportation of Austria's Jews and served as the last administrator of the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. 'I am guilty, but I cannot be judged,' Murmelstein says during one of his conversations with Lanzmann (shot over ten days in 1975), and the entire movie seems to grow out of this paradox. . . ."

—Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader

American Winter (2014)

Director: Harry Gantz, Joe Gantz
Run Time: 90 min.
Call Number: HC110.P6 A44 2013

"Years after the recession began, millions of families are struggling to meet their basic needs, and many formerly middle class families are finding themselves in financial crisis, and needing assistance for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, the social safety net that was created to help people in difficult times has been weakened by massive budget cuts, creating a perfect storm of greater need and fewer resources to help families in trouble. . . . Filmed over the course of one winter in Portland, Oregon, American Winter presents an intimate and emotionally evocative snapshot of the state of our economy as it is playing out in many American families."

—Film distributor's website

A People Uncounted (2014)

Director: Aaron Yeger
Run Time: 99 min.

"A People Uncounted is a counterpoint to the mainstream cultural stereotypes about the Roma. It’s a crash course in Romani history, from their ethnic roots to the many ways they have been, and continue to be, subjects of political prejudice and violence in an increasingly unstable EU. Approximately 500,000 Roma were killed during the Holocaust, a statistic driven home by the wrenching testimony of survivors who describe horrors ranging from cannibalism to experiencing the cruelty of Dr. Mengele firsthand. Footage of recent genocides, such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia, are used to demonstrate how easily such brutality can become the norm. The growing marginalization of the Roma as described in A People Uncounted shows just how close the tipping point is."
—Jenni Miller, A.V. Club

Citizen Koch (2014)

Director: Carl Deal and Tia Lessin
Run Time: 86 min.

"In 'Citizen Koch,' the directors’ subject is an entire country that is drowning, metaphorically speaking, in corporate snake oil. The death of democracy ought to be the biggest story in journalism. But dividing the drama between 300 million citizens leaves it lost in a cloud of sleep-inducing defeatism. . . . Most of the movie is a backgrounder on the Citizens United case, in which a deeply divided Supreme Court opened the door to truckloads of campaign cash from tycoons and corporations."

—Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Who is Dayani Cristal? (2013)

Director: Marc Silver
Run Time: 85 min.
Call Number: JV6483 .W46 2013

"The Sonora Desert in Arizona is freezing at night, brutally hot in the day. The documentary Who is Dayani Cristal? reveals that the infrastructure dealing with illegal immigration into the United States from points south is likewise hot, cold, and unnecessarily deadly. . . . We meet Americans dedicated to identifying, even humanizing, the bodies found there. But the system is by design a trap. Director Marc Silver covers one immigrant's journey, starting with his death."

—Daphne Howland, Village Voice

An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story (2013)

Director: Al Reinert
Run Time: 92 min.
Call Number: HV6533.T4 U573 2013

"The prospect of unjust imprisonment is a plight both easily imagined and terrifying, and we all wonder how we might fare in such a grim circumstance. No case in modern America illuminates this condition more completely than the story of Michael Morton. In 1986 his young wife Christine was brutally murdered in front of their only child, and he was accused and convicted of the crime, spending a quarter of a century in Texas prisons. Michael’s son Eric, only three at the time of his mother’s death, was raised by family members and eventually cut off all contact with the father he believed had killed his mother.

An Unreal Dream is Michael’s story: the love he shared with Christine, his despair at her murder followed quickly by his shock at his own arrest, his conviction at the hands of a small-town jury influenced by a legendary sheriff and ambitious DA, the long prison years relieved only by new friendships and a profound spiritual experience, the difficult fight for his freedom."
—Film website

God Loves Uganda (2014)

Director: Roger Ross Williams
Run Time: 83 min.
Call Number: HQ76.3.U33 G633 2014

"A searing look at the role of American evangelical missionaries in the persecution of gay Africans, Roger Ross Williams’s God Loves Uganda approaches this intersection of faith and politics with some fairness and a good deal of outrage. . . . Delving into a political framework that ties United States financing of H.I.V. relief efforts to a radical Christian moral agenda, Mr. Williams uses interviews and hidden-camera footage to expose the egotism, avarice and ignorance that undermine more laudable intentions. There is much here to sicken, including a frothing Ugandan pastor presenting an S-and-M video to his flock as a benchmark of gay behavior, and the powder-keg funeral of David Kato, a gay rights advocate who was fatally beaten with a hammer during filming."

—Jeannette Catsloulis,  New York Times

The Trials Of Muhammad Ali (2013)

Director: Bill Siegel
Run Time: 94 min.
Call Number: GV1132.A45 T75 2013

Ali's life has been recounted so many times that you'd think no one could come up with a fresh angle on it; documentary maker Bill Siegel (The Weather Underground) succeeds, primarily by delving into the religious story, largely downplayed by the mainstream, that's been sitting there in plain sight for 50 years. Siegel mostly dispenses with the fighter's comic pronouncements, his verbal jousting with Howard Cosell, in fact his entire athletic career, choosing instead to explore his great political awakening in the Nation of Islam. "I know the real God!" shouts 22-year-old Cassius Clay after beating Sonny Liston in 1963, and the statement defines him for the rest of the decade as he becomes a vocal advocate of black nationalism and sacrifices his heavyweight title to protest the racism of the Vietnam war."
—J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

Let the Fire Burn (2013)

Director: Jason Osder
Run Time: 95 min.
Call Number: F158.9.N4 L48 2013

"Documentaries don’t come more sparse or more disturbing than 'Let the Fire Burn,' Jason Osder’s examination of the disastrous confrontation between the police and the radical group MOVE in Philadelphia in May 1985. . . . [The film] uses archival footage from sources that include newscasts and community hearings to tell the story of the growing tension between the group and the city, which came to a head on May 13 of that year with tear gas, gunfire and the bombing of the MOVE compound from a police helicopter. The resulting fire destroyed some 60 homes. By the time it was over, 11 people were dead."

—Neil Genzlinger, New York Times

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (2010 Restoration of the 1948 Film)

Director: Stuart Schulberg
Run Time: 78 min.
Call Number: KZ1176.5 .N87 2014

"'Nuremberg' follows the first war-crimes trial in history, convened in November 1945. Standing accused were 24 prominent Nazi officials including such familiar names as Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer. . . . Legendary Hollywood director John Ford's OSS film team assigned Stuart Schulberg (later a movie and television producer) and his brother Budd Schulberg (screenwriter of 'On the Waterfront') the task of finding and compiling hours of footage of Nazi atrocities to show during the courtroom drama. . . . Cameramen also shot 25 hours of the trial. Stuart later assembled 'Nuremberg' from both sources, resulting in a methodical account of the legal proceedings—including the defendants' denials and the sharp oratory of Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson—while incorporating sickening footage of the suffering Hitler's men created."

—Tom Keogh, Seattle Times

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2013)

Director: Sophie Fiennes
Run Time: 136 min.
Call Number: HM641 .P48 2013 

"Your reaction to The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, the latest cine-lecture from Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Zizek, will depend almost entirely upon your response to Zizek himself, a Slovenian philosopher whose appearance suggests a homeless lumberjack on speed. . . . Yoking together disparate topics with critical theory, Zizek's fixation is revealing the social and psychological prejudices latent in pop culture. The film features Zizek parsing a number of films and their relations to history; keeping us visually stimulated, Fiennes has Zizek inhabiting the set of each film as he discusses it. . . . In essence, the film is a lecture, but Zizek's associative thinking and understanding of the applicability of psychoanalysis makes it a lecture like no other."

—Zachary Wigon, The Village Voice

 

The Punk Singer (2014)

Director: Sini Anderson
Run Time: 82 min.
Call Number: ML420.H36 P86 2014

"The documentary chronicles the Portland-born singer’s rise from spoken-word poet to feminist icon by way of her bands Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and the Julie Ruin. It’s a fascinating documentary with commentary from Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Hanna’s husband (and Beastie Boy) Adam Horovitz . . . . Through first-person interviews and a plethora of amazing live footage of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, Anderson is able to tell Hanna’s story and highlight her cause to reinvent feminism through punk music, DIY fanzines and outreach to other women."

—Jeff Albertson, The Seattle Times

Released (2013)

Director: Philip Messina

Run Time: 72 min.

Call Number: HV9276 .R45 2013

"'Released' is adapted from 'The Castle,' a 2008 Off Broadway play that starred four ex-cons speaking of their degradation and eventual redemption. The film has the same cast: Casimiro Torres, Kenneth Harrigan, Angel Ramos and Vilma Ortiz Donovan, all former longtime inmates of New York State prisons. Mr. Ramos alone served 30 years: 'How do I live like a normal human being,' he asks, 'when I have no idea what normal is?'

Performing in front of two audiences, one in a theater, the other in a prison, all four speak of the forces — religion, loved ones, epiphanies — that made them want to change; all four, now taxpaying jobholders, credit their success to the Castle, the 60-bed Manhattan residence run by the Fortune Society. In addition to shelter, the Castle provides career development and social training. Less than 10 percent of those who stayed there have returned to prison, according to the film."

—Daniel M. Gold, New York Times

Sifuna Okwethu (We Want What's Ours) (2011)

Director: Bernadette Atuahene
Run Time: 40 min.
Call Number: HD983 .S54 2011

"Sifuna Okwethu (We Want What's Ours) is a documentary film about loss, resistance, identity and the elusiveness of justice as experienced by the Ndolila family in their quest to get back their family land. Standing in their way are working class black homeowners who purchased portions of the Ndolila's land during apartheid. For the homeowners, the land and houses they have legally purchased are a reward for their hard work. It is the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams for a better life in the new democracy. For the Ndolilas, the land is part of their family legacy and hence deeply intertwined with their identity. Both sides have a legitimate right to the land, but whose rights will prevail?"
—From publisher's website

Come Back, Africa (1959)

Director: Lionel Rogosin
Run Time: 83 min. 
Call Number: DT2405.J6557 C66 2014

"The dateline that opens Lionel Rogosin's Come Back, Africa reads 'Anno Domini 1959'—and the year is significant. Filming his exposé of apartheid in Johannesburg at the end of the '50s, Rogosin was capturing the transition in South African life from a decade that Anthony Sampson, editor of the legendary monthly Drum, called 'a unique period of opportunity and creativity'—and organized resistance—to the crackdown following the African National Congress treason trials, the 1958 prime ministership of Hendrik Verwoerd, and the Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960, during which police opened fire on black demonstrators and killed 69 people. . . . [W]hile filming, Rogosin's cover story for suspicious police was that he was shooting a harmless musical travelogue."
—Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice

The Age of Aluminum (2013)

Director: Bert Ehgartner
Run Time: 90 min.
Call Number: RA1231.A5 A35 2013

"A disturbing environmental doc with particular relevance in Iceland, where aluminum smelting is high on the radar of eco-conscious activists, Bert Ehgartner's Age of Aluminum ties the threats presented by aluminum-manufacturing to the environment with hazards the finished product presents to individual users' health. . . . We're told that an unusually high percentage of breast cancers begin near the armpit, leading some doctors to advise patients to throw out all their aluminum-containing antiperspirant. Later we learn of suspicions that use of aluminum in heartburn treatments and dialysis drugs is connected to conditions ranging from food allergies to Alzheimer's. . . . Ehgartner finds many level-headed doctors and researchers who are completely convinced of the substance's harmful effects."

—John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

Electoral Dysfunction (2012)

Directors: David Deschamps & Leslie D. Farrell 
Run Time: 87 min.
Call Number: JK1976 .E54 2012

"For a film that takes on a serious concern of United States democracy—voting and the effective, if not always overt, encouragement and discouragement of that act as practiced across the nation—'Electoral Dysfunction' pulls off an admirable trick: It’s pleasant. It treats Democrats and Republicans respectfully, and its humor, with the comic Mo Rocca as guide, is closer to Garrison Keillor than to Michael Moore. . . . This lighthearted, colorful, nonpartisan documentary spends most of its time in the Indiana of 2008, following get-out-the-vote efforts there by both major parties. These scenes are the film’s most appealing, with person-to-person, neighbor-to-neighbor examples of principled grass-roots campaigning." 
—David DeWitt, New York Times

  

Pink Ribbons, Inc. (2012)

Run Time: 98 min.
Director: Léa Pool
Call Number: RC280.B8 P56 2012

"According to this 2011 documentary by Lea Pool, a woman's likelihood of contracting breast cancer has almost tripled since 1940, which has prompted private organizations like Susan G. Koman for the Cure to take an active role in funding cancer research. But the film raises the question of whether branding the disease has taken precedence over preventing it. Doctors, writers (including Barbara Ehrenreich, whose 2001 Harper's story related her own experience with cancer), and a support group of terminal patients plainly and coherently critique survivor-centric marketing campaigns as insensitive toward those won't make it and myopic in stressing cure over prevention. In one striking image, actress Elizabeth Hurley pouts at cameras in a skimpy pink dress as an Estee Lauder vice president announces that the Empire State Building will be lit up pink (the company, Pool later reveals, uses suspected carcinogens in some of its products)." 
—Asher Klein, Chicago Reader

Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment (2012)

Director: Toby Perl Freilich
Run Time: 89 min.
Call Number: HX742.2 .I58 2012

"In 1910 a dozen young Eastern European Jews moved to the Jordan Valley, then under Ottoman rule, and began to build an agrarian community based on a utopian socialist vision. Men and women were treated equally, everyone shared all they had, and no one had more than anyone else. 

That collective, called Degania, was a kibbutz, the first of a communal movement that symbolized aspirations for a Jewish homeland and became, after Israel’s statehood, an influential force that eventually was overwhelmed by the capitalistic society that it had helped to foster. 

As 'Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment,' an engrossing documentary by Toby Perl Freilich, shows, the kibbutz movement, now more than 100 years old, has been under constant siege of one form or another. The film meshes interviews with first-, second- and third-generation kibbutzniks— including those from Sasa, the first kibbutz founded by Americans—and commentary from Israeli scholars with tours of numerous kibbutzim today and vintage footage from as far back as the 1920s."

—Daniel M. Gold, New York Times

Of Two Minds (2013)

Director: Lisa Klein & Doug Blush
Run Time: 89 min.
Call Number: RC516 .O326 2013
  
"More than 5 million Americans are affected by bipolar disorder, but it was one person in particular who influenced co-director Lisa Klein to make the documentary 'Of Two Minds.' That would be Klein's older sister Tina, who died at age 42. The personal connection gives 'Of Two Minds' (co-directed with Doug Blush) its greatest strength, the intimate bond it establishes with a trio of people coping with the manic-depressive nature of the illness.
. . . These bright, lively people who tend to feel the necessity to 'play sane every day' are completely candid with the filmmakers. They talk about the black depressions, suicide attempts and difficult relationships that can be business as usual for anyone living with the affliction." 
—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

The Island President (2012)

Director: Jon Shenk
Run Time: 101 min.
Call Number: QC903.2.M415 I85 2012

"The title refers to former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, whose country—actually 2,000 islands in the Indian Ocean—is quite literally disappearing as he walks the eroding beaches and discusses the devastation caused by the 2004 tsunami. That was a turning point, both in awareness of the islands' geographical vulnerability and in its political impact. Maldives' torture-addicted previous president was ousted and a more democratic government was established. . . . [T]hat changed again, when right-wing elements forced Nasheed to resign, making him essentially a man without a country.  Directed by veteran filmmaker Jon Shenk ('Lost Boys of Sudan,' 'The Rape of Europa'), the movie mostly concentrates on Nasheed's ability to reach political consensus when dealing with such heavyweights as China, India and the United States."
 —John Hartl, Seattle Times

The Untold History of the United States (2014)

Director: Oliver Stone
Run Time: 796 min.
Call Number: E741 .U58 2014

"History is a record of what happened and, perhaps, why. But, implicitly, it can also be about what could have happened but didn't. If Lincoln hadn't gone to the theater that night in April, for example, he might have died of old age.

Once events happen, they can't 'unhappen,' yet it is human nature for us to ask, 'What if?' Oliver Stone has asked the question through much of his film work over the years, and asks it again in the first four films in his 10-part documentary series, 'The Untold History of the United States' . . .

In fact, 'What If' might have been a more accurate title for the series . . . because much of their content isn't untold, per se, but, rather, retold with Stone's interpretation and emphasis."

—David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle

Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve (2013)

Director: Jim Bruce
Run Time: 104 min.
Call Number: HG2563 .M665 2013

"The documentary is especially compelling when it explains how the easy-money policies embraced by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sowed the seeds for the financial collapse of 2008. In his early years as Fed chairman, Greenspan was admired as a monetary superhero who had engineered remarkable gains in the stock market through artificially low interest rates . . . Greenspan was brought before Congress after the dot com bubble burst.  Instead of renouncing the easy money policies that had injured the economy, Greenspan displays apathy towards the stock market crash by essentially saying our economy had a great run, the bust was not terrible, so that wasn’t so bad … was it? Greenspan then blew a new bubble with housing prices. Its collapse (in the fall of 2008) was far more devastating . . . Perhaps the most compelling feature of this documentary is the exceptional coverage of the actions which led to the financial collapse in 2008."

—Jon Decker, Forbes

Stories We Tell (2013)

Director: Sarah Polley
Run Time: 108 min.
Call Number: HQ503 .S76 2013

"Who owns a family’s stories? Do we shape our lore—the anecdotes of how our parents met, the tales of sibling betrayals and truces—as a clan, or do we agree on the outlines while parting ways on the particulars? Is it possible to be anything but subjective when it comes to the legends in our own homes? This is the endlessly complicated subject of Sarah Polley’s 'Stories We Tell,' a documentary inquiry into her past that ingeniously widens in scope until director and audience stand at the edge of the abyss."
—Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Bidder 70 (2013)

Director: Beth Gage & George Gage
Run Time: 73 min.
Call Number: QH77.3.C57 B53 2012

"Bidder 70 tells a uniquely American story. Only in the United States would the president auction off protected wilderness to energy and mining companies to help the government turn a profit. Only in the U.S. would a college student show up to the auction and outbid the companies, then be taken to court and ultimately thrown in federal prison for falsifying his bids. That president was George W. Bush, of course. The wilderness was in Utah. And the college kid, Tim DeChristopher, proves a fascinating subject for Beth and George Gage's new documentary." 
—Diana Clarke, The Village Voice

Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary (2013)

Director: Stephen Vittoria
Run Time: 120 min.
Call Number: HV8701.A28 L66 2013
 
"[T]he movie begins rather bravely with a montage of right-wing pundits who object to Abu-Jamal being described as a 'political prisoner' and want to see him executed. But it quickly takes a detour from the haters to the fans, lining up such famous backers as Alice Walker, Cornel West, Angela Davis and Peter Coyote . . . Mumia gradually becomes a persuasive attempt to celebrate the content of his character, not the violence that apparently led to his imprisonment. Indicting the 'police state' created by Philadelphia’s leaders during the late 1970s/early 1980s, Vittoria creates a context that suggests how easily innocents could be railroaded."
—John Hartl, The Seattle Times

Freedom Riders (2011)

Director: Stanley Nelson
Run Time: 120 min.
Call Number:  E185.61 .F74 2011

"The filmmaker Stanley Nelson has a stunning accomplishment in 'Freedom Riders,' a documentary that chronicles a crucial, devastating episode of the civil rights movement, an episode whose gruesome visuals impinged on the perception of American liberty around the world. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the freedom rides, the film . . . is a story of ennobled youth and noxious hatred, of decided courage and inexplicable brutality. In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality sought to challenge the segregation of interstate travel on public transport and sent forth activists, both black and white, and many of them students, on a bus journey through the South, where they were received with violence that law enforcers refused to tame. . . . It is hard to imagine a feature film conveying the events with a more vivid sense of drama or suspense."
—Ginia Bellafante, New York Times

Nothing Like Chocolate (2013)

Director: Kum-Kum Bhavnani
Run Time: 68 min.
Call Number:  HD9200.G76 N68 2013

"Smartly directed by UCSB Sociology professor Kum-Kum Bhavnani, the film fleshes out the opening line supplied by one Susan Sarandon: 'Who doesn’t love chocolate? But there’s more to this decadent product than we know.' Actually, news has been spreading, if not fast or wide enough, about the inhumane child slave labor deployed in key West African cocoa-growing regions, especially the Ivory Coast. . . . But [Bhavnani] has wisely chosen to personalize her tale and give it a face by focusing on one particular 'ethical chocolate' company, the Grenada Chocolate Factory, run by the charismatic NYC émigré Mott Green, a self-described 'political activist version of Willie Wonka.'”
—Joseph Woodard, Santa Barbara Independent

Spies of Mississippi (2014)

Director: Dawn Porter
Run Time: 60 min. 
Call Number: E185.93.M6 S65 2014

"Founded in the 1950s as Supreme Court rulings began to chip away at Jim Crow, the Sovereignty Commission was an instrument of domestic intelligence-gathering whose stated mission was to preserve segregation. From a few operatives working under the governor, it grew into 'the Stasi of Mississippi,' generating upward of 160,000 pages of reports. It gave information to the police, many of whose officers belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. If the commission might have considered its activities technically, if whimsically, 'legal,' the Klan did not bother with such fine points; its tactics included bombings, kidnappings and murder, among other more run-of-the-mill forms of terrorism."
—Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

Portrait of Wally (2012)

Director: Andrew Shea
Run Time: 90 min.
Call Number: N8795.3.A8 P67 2012

"As detailed in Andrew Shea's fascinating documentary 'Portrait of Wally,' Egon Schiele's haunting 1912 painting of his mistress and favorite model Wally Neuzil had a complicated, extremely dramatic history as well as a legal and cultural significance that can't be overestimated. The battle to return this heartfelt painting . . . to the family of the woman who originally owned it jump-started the current international art restitution movement that reunites misappropriated objects with their original owners. . . . On one level, the story of this painting should have been the simple one of a great work of art returned to its rightful owners. By showing how difficult and problematic righting a wrong can turn out to be, 'Portrait of Wally' does itself proud."
 —Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

Dirty Wars (2013)

Director: Richard Rowley
Time: 86 min.
Call Number: UB251.U5 D57 2013

"The subject and narrator of this documentary, Jeremy Scahill, is a journalist who’s always on the lookout for unreported or underreported stories. . . . While in Kabul, Afghanistan, investigating the war on terror, the growing number of mysterious night raids on civilian targets started to pique his interest. The nightly raids listed in the NATO press releases seemed to him like 'a map of a hidden war.' . . . As Scahill pulled at this thread and followed other leads, he discovered the supersecret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a unit formed in 1980 to conduct airstrikes and targeted killing anywhere in the world at the command of the United States president."

—Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

Fire in the Blood (2013)

Director: Dylan Mohan Gray
Run Time: 86 min.
Call Number: RC607.A26 F5455 2013

"This infuriating documentary by Dylan Mohan Gray chronicles the long battle to make generic ARVs available to poor African countries, which big pharma resisted because cheap drugs would undermine their bloated pricing here in the U.S. Of course the federal government supported this unconscionable arrangement—though, as the documentary points out, Washington was more than willing to suspend patents on drugs needed during the post-9/11 anthrax scares. The Clinton Foundation gets a few points for its scheme of pooling poor nations' resources to bargain with the pharmas, but the genuine hero here is Peter Mugyenyi, a Ugandan physician who managed to break the industry's blockade against generic drugs from India."
 —J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

More Than Honey (2013)

Director:  Markus Imhoof
Run Time:  91 min.
Call Number: SF538.5.C65 M67 2012

"In recent years, bee-farming statistics have been frightening. For some yet undetermined reason bee-farming has been diminishing around the world as bees have been dying dreadfully, and now an Austrian film-maker, Markus Imhoof, also a bee-farmer, has made this picture—not as an attack on the danger but as a general illuminator. Bee farming has been around for 15,000 years, and a lot of notable minds—Einstein among them—have said that if bees were to disappear, human beings would disappear within four years. Imhoof makes bees more important than they have previously seemed."

War on Whistleblowers (2013)

Director: Robert Greenwald
Run Time: 66 min.
Call Number: JF1525.W45 W37 2013
 
"You don't have to be a rightwing wacko or naive lefty to be chilled by some policies and practices of the Obama administration. Nothing illustrates that better than the administration's treatment of whistleblowers who take on the federal government. Robert Greenwald's latest documentary focuses on the brutal fallout faced by four people—Michael DeKort, Thomas Drake, Franz Gayl, and Thomas Tamm—who exposed corruption in branches of the government or corporations working with the government. . . . Fast-moving and sleekly crafted, the film packages its dire warnings about the ways truth-speakers are penalized, and what that portends for the country, in a way that is accessible without sacrificing nuance or intelligence."
—Ernest Hardy, Village Voice