MAPJ Monthly Film Series - Coming Soon & Recent Past
MAPJ brings good, new, progressive, independent films to Manhattan every month. Most are shown on the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30 at Manhattan Public Library (although days, locations, and times will sometimes vary). All showings include opportunity for discussion of the film.
- March, 2010 - THE ANATOMY OF HATE: A DIALOG FOR HOPE
- February, 2010 - AMERICAN CASINO
- January, 2010 - THE AGE OF STUPID
- November, 2009 - DIRT! THE MOVIE
- October, 2009 - WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?
- September, 2009 - ANTHRAX WAR
- August, 2009 - FOOD, INC.
- July, 2009 - BUNKER HILL
- April, 2009 - RETHINK AFGHANISTAN
March, 2010: THE ANATOMY OF HATE: A DIALOG FOR HOPE
For its March installation, the Monthly Film Series presents Mike Ramsdell’s “The Anatomy of Hate: A Dialogue for Hope.” Winner of the Best Political Documentary at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, it was also show at the Carter Center as part of Atlanta’s 2009 Docufest Independent Film Festival where it won the Audience Choice Award. The film reveals the shared narratives found in individual and collective ideologies of hate, and how we as a species can overcome them.
For six years Ramsdell worked with unprecedented access to some of the most venomous ideologies and violent conflicts of our time including the White Supremacist movement, Christian Fundamentalism as an anti-gay platform, Muslim Extremism, the Palestinian Intifada, Israeli Settlers and Soldiers, and US Forces in Iraq.
By juxtaposing this verite footage with interviews from leading sociological, psychological, and neurological experts, and interspersing stories of redemption told by former “combatants,” the film weaves a tapestry that reveals both the emotional and biological mechanisms which make all of us susceptible to acts and ideologies of hate, and demonstrates how these very same traits make us equally capable of overcoming them.
“What I found was, for me, life changing,” stated Ramsdell. “There was no boogieman, no devil, nor any single person or group of evil at the center of all this violence, war, and hate. Instead I found a planet full of creatures doing their best to fill the void of existence with limited psychological tools, and emotional shortcomings – myself included. And instead of embracing these shortcomings and using them as empathetic links to our fellow men, I discovered that our psyche turns them into mythological monsters that we can project onto others, declaring those ‘others’ as inferior, evil, or deserving of death.”
Ramsdell had only recently finished film school when the attacks of 9/11 threw America's sense of security upside down. A native of Michigan, he grappled with the horror of what happened to the country that day just as he paid attention to people's reactions. When he heard President Bush's declaration of war on terrorism, he thought to himself: "A lot of people are going to die."
Henry Richards of the Ernest Becker Foundation writes: “The film does not spare us the brutal facts and images of violence and hate, from the holocausts in Europe and Rwanda to lynchings and gay bashing in America. But this is not the pornography of war and hate. The viewer's need for a safe distance to consider these nightmare realities and the hunger for hope and meaning that they engender are met with, in exquisite timing, by the authoritative voices and surprisingly warm presence of scholars and scientists such as philosopher Sam Keen, and social psychologist Sheldon Solomon, who show us that there is a possible escape from the dismal trajectory of human history.”
“It’s a film that challenges, informs, and inspires. An invaluable tool for anyone who believes that the path to peace is through a deeper understanding of our common humanity”, said Michael Bochenek, Amnesty International, Director of Policy.
Anatomy of Hate’s run time is 86 minutes. It is released by Underhood Productions. For more information, visit the website at theanatomyofhate.com
February, 2010: AMERICAN CASINO
“I don’t think most people really understood that they were in a casino” says award-winning financial reporter Mark Pittman. “When you’re in the Street’s casino, you’ve got to play by their rules.” This film finally explains how and why over $12 trillion of our money vanished into the American Casino.
For chips, the casino used real people, like the ones we meet in Baltimore. These are not the heedless spendthrifts of Wall Street legend, but a high school teacher, a therapist, a minister of the church. They were sold on the American Dream as a safe investment. Too late, they discovered the truth. Cruelly, as African – Americans, they and other minorities were the prime targets for the subprime loans that powered the casino. According to the Federal Reserve, African-Americans were four times more likely than whites to be sold subprime loans.
We meet the players. A banker explains that the complex securities he designed were “fourth dimensional” and sold to “idiots.” A senior Wall Street ratings agency executive describes being ordered to “guess” the worth of billion dollar securities. A mortgage loan salesman explains how borrowers’ incomes were inflated to justify a loan. A billionaire describes how he made a massive bet that people would lose their homes and has won $500 million, so far.
Finally, as the global financial system crumbles and outraged but impotent lawmakers fume at Wall Street titans, we see the casino’s endgame: Riverside, California a foreclosure wasteland given over to colonies of rats and methamphetamine labs, where disease-bearing mosquitoes breed in their millions on the stagnant swimming pools of yesterday’s dreams.
Filmed over twelve months in 2008, American Casino takes you inside a game that our grandchildren never wanted to play.
Watch American Casino movie trailer from Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on Vimeo.
January, 2010: THE AGE OF STUPID
The Age Of Stupid is the new cinema documentary from the Director of McLibel and the Producer of the Oscar-winning One Day In September. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching “archive” footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?
See the film's website (with trailers) at http://www.ageofstupid.net/
November, 2009: DIRT! THE MOVIE
The story of soil -- the source of life -- DIRT! THE MOVIE features Dr. Vandana Shiva, who recently visited K-State, and Dr. Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute in Salina. From the film's website:
DIRT! The Movie--directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow--takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.
The opening scenes of the film dive into the wonderment of the soil. Made from the same elements as the stars, plants and animals, and us, "dirt is very much alive." Though, in modern industrial pursuits and clamor for both profit and natural resources, our human connection to and respect for soil has been disrupted. "Drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way we are treating dirt."
DIRT! the Movie--narrated by Jaime Lee Curtis--brings to life the environmental, economic, social and political impact that the soil has. It shares the stories of experts from all over the world who study and are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil.
DIRT! the Movie is simply a movie about dirt. The real change lies in our notion of what dirt is. The movie teaches us: "When humans arrived 2 million years ago, everything changed for dirt. And from that moment on, the fate of dirt and humans has been intimately linked." But more than the film and the lessons that it teaches, DIRT the Movie is a call to action.
"The only remedy for disconnecting people from the natural world is connecting them to it again."
What we've destroyed, we can heal.
The MAPJ Film Series will show DIRT! THE MOVIE on Tuesday, November 10 at Manhattan Public Library at 6:30. As always, there is no charge for admission, and all are welcome to attend. There will be time for discussion after the film.
October, 2009: WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?
Manhattan Public Library is downtown at Poyntz and Juliette. The auditorium is on the second floor of the east addition. There is no charge for admission.
September, 2009: ANTHRAX WAR
MAPJ's Monthly Film Series continues with ANTHRAX WAR, showing at Manhattan Public Library on Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 6:30pm. The program will feature Eric Nadler, one of the filmmakers, for an introduction and discussion after the film (SEE FLIER).
ANTHRAX WAR is a provocative new investigative documentary by filmmakers Bob Coen and Eric Nadler that examines the 2001 Anthrax Attacks and offers a frightening glimpse into today’s secret and dangerous world of germ weapons. DEAD SILENCE is the accompanying book that fills out the story of the global investigation that the documentary could only outline.
The story begins in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks when anthrax-laced letters, mailed to media offices in New York and to the U.S. Senate in Washington, spread fear and panic across the United States and beyond. The filmmakers probe troubling questions surrounding the FBI’s investigation of the 21st Century’s first act of biological terrorism.
The search for answers takes them from the United States to the United Kingdom, then to the edge of Siberia and to Southern Africa and leads them into an underworld in which leading scientists working with germs die under mysterious circumstances. The growing list includes Bruce Ivins, who the FBI claims was the only person behind the U.S. anthrax murders; Dr. David Kelly, the former head of UK bio-defense; and Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, the mastermind behind the Soviet Union’s vast and illegal bio-weapons complex who defected to the West.
The filmmakers penetrate what they come to call the “international biological warfare mafia” and uncover the development of terrifying new weapons – genetically mutated germs, some with the ability to target specific ethnic groups. In a rare interview, the man known as “Doctor Death”, who headed South Africa’s apartheid-era biological warfare program that developed germs aimed at the country’s black population, reveals that he received help from the U.S. and U.K. The filmmakers also learn that some of these germs may be for sale on the black market today.
ANTHRAX WAR goes on to reveal how the 2001 Anthrax Attacks have spawned a $57 billion dollar “Bio-defense” boom in which germ weapons research is now being conducted, with little oversight, by corporations and private labs – the new ‘Bio-Terrorism Military Industrial Complex’.
The investigation underscores how fear of terrorism combined with the lure of extraordinary profits may be leading to a global germ war arms race that could be hurtling the planet toward catastrophe.
SEE TRAILERS FOR THE FILM AT VIMEO
Eric Nadler is an author, TV producer and filmmaker. His has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Harpers and the New Republic and his films been been featured on PBS, the Sundance Channel and Court TV in the United States and broadcast internationally. He has produced several PBS Frontline programs, including BCCI- Bank of Crooks and Criminals and The Secret Arming of Saudi Arabia. His theatrical film Stealing The Fire (2002), on the nuclear weapons black market was nominated for Feature Documentary of The Year by the International Documentary Association.
August, 2009: FOOD, INC.
In FOOD, INC., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Click on the image below to visit the film's website and to support more nutritional food in our public schools:
July, 2009: BUNKER HILL
MAPJ offers the first Manhattan showing of Kevin Wilmott's BUNKER HILL beginning at 6:30 pm in the Manhattan Library Auditorium (see film website).
BUNKER HILL is the story of a former Wall Street executive who leaves prison and heads for the small town of Bunker Hill, Kansas, where his ex-wife and their children have started a new life. Soon after he arrives, an apparent massive terrorist attack against America darkens the town. Cut off from the world, the town’s militant past is reawakened and forces coalesce to protect citizens from an unseen enemy. The town’s fear leads to the creation of a posse of gunmen, resulting in torture, illegal searches and eventually, murder.
BUNKER HILL stars Emmy and Peabody Award winner James McDaniel (NYPD Blue), has wrapped production. Principal photography was shot over a five-week period in several Kansas locations. McDaniel, who has starred in such films as Sunshine State and Edge of America, is also Executive Producer.
Appearing alongside McDaniel are: Saeed Jaffrey the legendary actor from India who has starred in more than 150 films, including Gandhi, Passage to India, My Beautiful Launderette and The Man Who Would Be King; Laura Kirk, star and co-writer of the acclaimed feature film Lisa Picard is Famous; Broadway; television and film star Kevin Geer (The Contender); Blake Robbins, from the HBO series Oz and FOX‘s 24; Scott Allegrucci, (Chicago Hope, The Feud); singer / songwriter Kelley Hunt; Wendy Thompson (CSA); Ranjit Arab; and Chris Wheatley. Kelley Hunt, renowned blues singer Queen Bey, indie rock band Trucker, The Americana Music Academy and others will contribute music to the soundtrack.
After returning to Kansas from NYU Film School, Kevin Willmott began writing, first for the stage, and then for television and film. CSA: Confederate States Of America, written and directed by Willmott and produced by Rick Cowan, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Presented by Spike Lee and IFC Films, the movie has generated critical acclaim during its theatrical run this year. Willmott’s screenplays have been commissioned by Oliver Stone, 20th Century Fox and others. He co-wrote the NBC miniseries The 70’s with Mitch Brian. Ninth Street, a feature film starring Martin Sheen and Isaac Hayes, co-starred and was written, produced and co-directed by Willmott.
April, 2009: Rethink Afghanistan
From the filmmakers: "Rethink Afghanistan is a ground-breaking, full-length documentary focusing on the key issues surrounding this war. By releasing this film in parts for free online, we are able to stay on top of news of the war as it continues to unfold. We hope to raise critical questions regarding Afghanistan that Congress must address in oversight hearings, which inform the public and challenge policymakers. We strive for more discussion among experts on Afghanistan, like the debates seen below released in conjunction with our documentary campaign."
Director: Robert Greenwald - Executive Director: Jim Miller - Producer: Jason Zaro - Associate Producer: Dallas Dunn, Jonathan Kim, and Kim Huynh - Researcher: Greg Wishnev - Editor: Phillip Cruess - Political Director: Leighton Woodhouse - VP Marketing & Distribution: Laura Beatty - Production Assistant: Monique Hairston
You can order copies at this website.
