Tag Archives: American

Israelism

Two young American Jews – Simone Zimmerman and Eitan – are raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs. Eitan joins the Israeli military. Simone supports Israel on ‘the other battlefield:’ America’s college campuses. When they witness Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinian people with their own eyes, they are horrified and heartbroken.

They join the movement of young American Jews battling the old guard over Israel’s centrality in American Judaism, and demanding freedom for the Palestinian people. Their stories reveal a generational divide in the American Jewish community as more young Jews question the narratives their synagogues and Hebrew school teachers fed them as children.

Non Western

We join Thaddeus and Nanci, a Native / Non Native Montanan couple, in the lead up to their wedding, as they face their biggest challenge yet. Thaddeus wants Nanci to convert to his Cheyenne way of life even if it forces Nanci into a subordinate role.

Both Nanci and Thaddeus were adopted as teenagers by families with different ethnicities: Thaddeus by a white Christian family, and Nanci by the Lakota tribe. It’s no coincidence they have sought shared experience and understanding in one another.

Thaddeus believes in returning to his Cheyenne culture and through running sweats he finds peace from the PTSD he suffers. Nanci wants to please him, to find a balance between life in the modern world and her Native traditions even if that means denying her independence.

Under the strain of trying to co-habit and survive together, we see the cracks in their values showing through. Cracks which reveal not just the trauma they suffered growing up, but the chain of oppression endemic in Montana.

Eminent Monsters

Eminent Monsters traces the roots of western governments love affair with torture.

In  1950s Montreal Scottish born psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron experimented on his patients, using sensory deprivation, forced comas and LSD injections. Covertly funded by the Canadian government and the CIA, his techniques have been used in Northern Ireland, Guantánamo and 27 countries around the world.

Including extraordinary first hand testimony from Guantanamo survivors, the Hooded Men from Northern Ireland and senior American psychologists and military personnel, Eminent Monsters shows how the collusion of doctors to aid and abet torture began in the 1950s and continues to this day.

J Street: The Art of the Possible

J Street is on the frontlines of the world’s most “intractable” problem. An upstart lobby group in Washington, D.C., J Street dares to assert what to many seems obvious: that a two-state solution is Israel’s only future, and any peace deal will require robust American participation. It sees itself playing David to AIPAC, the Israel Lobby’s Goliath, and, less than five years old, has been making surprising gains.

With full access to the inside workings of a lobby group struggling to represent the centre ground of Jewish American thought, this documentary tracks J Street as it attempts to change what it means to be pro-Israel in America. We see their missteps and their triumphs as they push the Obama administration to take an active role in negotiating a two-state solution, fend off accusations of harbouring ‘anti-Israel’ objectives and gain influence among America’s Jewish population.

In this urgent political story told with the intimacy of cinema vérité, we feel the pulse of an organization, taking viewers to high-level strategy meetings, and long nights on the road. It is here that our characters come to life and the J Street story unfolds. J Street: The Art of the Possible is at once a gripping story about the desperate need for a two-state solution, and a captivating glimpse at the role of Lobbyists in the American political process.

Facing the Fat

Kenny Saylors, after years of being healthy and athletic, became severely overweight and after trying various diets decided to do something drastic about it. With the support of his Doctor, he decided to stop eating for 55 days, drinking only water.

Facing the Fat documents his journey, from the realisation that he had a physical and mental addiction to the chemicals in junk food, to the detox and repair that his body goes through during this record-breaking fast. It also looks at the wider implications of over-eating for the individual, society and the world at large.

Obesity has become one of the most overwhelming diseases in modern society costing American taxpayers $99 billion every year, while the number of overweight people has surpassed the number of people suffering from malnutrition by 200 million.

Facing the Fat presents an entertaining and inspiring challenge but also makes the serious point, that obesity is not just a personal struggle, but one that has far reaching implications for us all.

Kano: An American & His Harem

In 1969, an American Vietnam war hero relocates to a remote village in the Philippines and invites hundreds of women to live with him in his compound. Through money and violence, he was able to rule as a king. “It was like having a vacation everyday”, he recalls proudly.

In 2002 he was charged with over 80 counts of rape.

Victor Pearson is now in jail serving two life sentences, but many of the women remain by his side. Pearson and his harem form an extended family bound together with codependency and power issues. Although still behind bars, he has since married five of the women who testified against him in court keeping them in apartments in the neighbourhood.

Unrepentant, Victor Pearson is undoubtedly a charismatic character who lived his dream. When confronted with his abuse of girls as young as fourteen, he claims that the lifestyle and education he provided these women with, outweigh the charges leveled at him.

“Kano” is the fascinating story of a convicted rapist and the women who come together to form a most dysfunctional family.