Skip to main content

Social Justice Film Picks

Dear Reader, a more mundane post this time, less poetic and less sweeping. I simply wanted to give you my picks for films that touch on the subjects at hand in this blog.  These are not necessarily the "best films" but are the ones appropriate to the issues at hand.

1. Wall Street.  This film shows what has been wrong with run away capitalism in the post Vietnam War America.
2. Sugar Can Alley. French with English subtitles, from the caribean island of Martinique.  The story of a boy growing up living by the cane fields, living with his grandmother, who is determined he will rise above their poverty through education.
3. Our Daily Bread.  One of the New York Times 10 best films in 1934. A depressions ear look at attempts at Utopian community.
4. Of Mice and Men, from the Steinbeck novel.  A look at the dreams and hopes of those who labor as farmworkers.
5. Enron, The Smartest Guys in then Room.  A documentary on the canary in the mine that was ignored, leading to our present situation.
6. There Will Be Blood. A more brutally honest film about greed even than Wall Street. Staring Daniel Day Lewis. Brilliant.
7. Fleabag. A rare documentary on an old hotel for the destitute.
8. The City, or La Cuidad.  Three shots together about the problems of hispanic immigrants in the United States.
9. Entertaining Angels.  A dramatization of the life of Dorothy Day, of the Catholic Workers.
10.Grapes of Wrath, the winner of 2 Academy Awards in 1940. From Stienbecks novel with Henry Fonda.  An enduring classic.
11. Matewan.  By director John Sayles, about the struggles of coal miners.
12. Jean de Florette. French in subtitles.  A film G.K. Chesterton would have loved because it shows that equality and rural property are not necessarily opposed.  A case for distributist economics can be made from this film.
13. Manon of the Spring.  The sequel to the preceding film.
14. Amistad. A great film about the aftermath of a rebellion on a slave ship in the middle passage.
15. Salt of the Earth.  The only film every blacklisted in the United States. About a strike in a New Mexican mining town in 1953.
16. The Wobblies, a film about the first major industrial union in the United States, the IWW.
17 Francesco. With Mickey Rouke.   A film about St Francis, which I include here for it's scenes of St. Francis caring for the lepers
18. Molakai.  A film about Fr. Damien caring for the lepers.
19. On the Nickel.  About down and out alcoholics in LA's skidrow.
20. The Long Walk Home.  A film about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
21. El Norte. A great film about the struggles of undocumented workers.  I first saw it in a roomful of undocumented workers who appreciated it very much.

If you want to know more about what this blogger thinks about film go to my arts blog, Notes, Jots, Flicks at
http://notesjotsflics.blogspot.com/

I hope some of you have your own picks , especially films about the unemployed about the Catholic take on social justice. Please post suggestions in the comments. Thank you.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Just War and Just a War

One of the thorniest problems man face is when, if every is war justified.  The bible says there is a time for war and a time for peace, but that could be just a bow to the inevitability of war in the fallen world.  If also says that they will beat there swords into plough shares and study war no more.  Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, William Miller and other Catholic Workers often ascribed to pacifism or near total pacifism face with the near impossibility of every untangling the moral consequences of violence from the ends desired in undertaking it. But St. Augustine, faced with a world where Christians were starting to replace pagans as political leaders and Christians we soldiers in obedience to the leaders tried to come up with criteria by which war could be measured.   Augustine knew that the Gospel question on it was complex.  One the one hand Jesus told people to turn the other  cheek and also told Peter to put away his sword and not defe...

Alone but not Lonely

It seems that I am tied into interlocking conversations with people on all sides of me and with my blog readership.  Yesterday I wrote Many Things I Have Been #2  ( http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2011/04/many-things-i-have-been-2.html ) in the morning. .  I wrote other things and did the tasks and errands of my day, including job searches. then in the evening I went to a "Mercy Night" a communal penance service (with private confession of course) in my parish.  I came home near the end of my roommate Scott's Bible study. Scott goes to Mars Hill, a conservative evangelical youth oriented church, and his perspective on some aspects of the bible is very different than my Catholic one, yet we focus more on what we have in common.   After the bible study Scott and KJ, who stayed, got into a conversation on various things.  I told them a little of what happened at Mercy Night. Then KJ asked a question.  I guess he...