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