Reviews

Film was very well done as well as engrossing, sad and sometimes hard to watch. But I wonder a bit about films like these zoomed in on the lives of particular troubled people. While watching it I kept hearing these lyrics from the Bob Dylan song "Black Diamond Bay" (from the Desire album): "Seems like every time you turn around There's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear... And there's really nothing anyone can say".

The movie did some good footage and some good moments, including Lyndon Johnson's getting the landmark Civil Rights Legislation passed; and it's heart was in the right place. But the good angels/bad angels analysis is a very superficial approach and doesn't dig very deeply into the structure of the current situation. Particularly it's bland, MOR (middle of the road) approach, where we all need to find common ground and meet in the middle (however laudable in theory) simply doesn't apply to our current situation. The film would seem to show that both sides are equally the cause of the divisiveness, when in fact one side relentlessly and ruthlessly destroys all possibility of unity with an insistence on having its own way. To properly look at our current situation would including going beyond the superficial analysis presented here and looking at things like the creation of a billionaire funded alternative mediasphere built on anger and lies, the right wing movement pushback against civil rights which started with Nixon and built up steam under dog whistle Reagan, and the neoliberal corporatist agenda which gutted the social safety net and produced historically unprecedented levels of inequality. Also, since Meachem is a historian (and some of the historical backdrop was useful, interesting and well done), it would have been helpful if he had looked further back than World War I, to some of the non-civil war divisive eras in the 18th century. The picture of some mythical unified America is more wishful thinking than anything. There have been a lot of good books written about this, in particular American Nations by. Colin Woodard and more recently, Break It Up by Richard Kreitner. We've gone so far down the rabbit hole, I'm not sure what the answer might be (other than practicing your goosestepping), but this kind of facile kumbahaying sure looks like a dead end to me.

While watching this, I though of one of those maps that has a little star showing "You Are Here". It seems that in the US we're right in the middle of that movie and the end is rushing ferociously towards us.

As spot on a depiction of the fascist mentality as you'll find. And extremely well made in every way.

Gene Sharp is often misperceived by the left as a liberatory thinker. In fact, he is more of a neoliberal cold war intellectual (though I'm not sure it's fair to entirely cast his work in that way). Rather than me documenting this myself, I refer people to google the 2 outstanding articles on Gene Sharp by Marcie Smith on the Nonsite website. That said the film is worthwhile because Sharp was undoubtedly a historically highly influential thinker and in particular for it's showing of his links to the uprisings in Egypt and the Berbia. The 6 star rating also reflects some of the films weaknesses such as its hagiographic approach, some overstatement of his direct influence and a lack of analysis as to the shortcomings of the approach and any exploration of revolution for what ends (leading back to the neoliberal attribution).

This is probably the scariest video I've ever watched. While I knew about the mass incarceration camps and general opression of the Uyghurs, I wasn't aware of the level and sophistication of the surveillance systems used to repress the Uyghurs. Worse they are now expanding these technologies to other parts of China and exporting them to other authoritarian regimes. Also, the eye-opening were the details about the brainwashing in the "re-education" camps, and the program where Uyghurs were forced to have government agents live in their homes as "adopted family". Utterly chilling.

While the film description portrays it as a documentary about the Armenian Genocide, about 1/2 the film is about making the film "The Promise". The parts that are strictly about the Genocide are 5 star. However, I found the parts about filming the movie distracting and downright annoying.

Thought that critics were incredibly unfair to this movie, which I thought was quite worthwhile, although not perfect (but what is?). Don't like to write reviews but thought anyone looking into this film might want to know that there is more info about Robert Scully in an Atlantic article about the prison system titled "When They Get Out", dated June 1999; you can google (or bing, as I prefer) it to read it in full. The information on Tully is in the 1st half of the article.

Occasionally I watch shorts as filler. Usually they're a disappointment. This, however, is one of the best shorts I've ever seen. I'm 63 years old and, for what it's worth, once ran a film series featuring foreign and independent films when I was in college.