The Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in August 1968 to choose their presidential candidate in a tumultuous year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Prague Spring, and growing protests in cities around the world against the escalation of the Vietnam War. Although…
Winner of two major awards at the 2014 Venice Film Festival and India’s official entry for Best Foreign Film at the 2016 Oscars, 28-year-old Chaitanya Tamhane’s first feature, Court, is not a typical courtroom drama but a devastating look at the failings of the judicial system in India. Portrayed by mostly non-professional actors, the film…
Governed by strict religious rules, there are no civil courts for divorce proceedings for Jews in Israel. Even though women over age eighteen can vote and must, like everyone else, undergo compulsory military training, Israel is still a male-dominated society and wives are considered to be the property of the husband. This means that a…
The disturbing case of the West Memphis Three has been covered extensively in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost” trilogy, along with Amy Berg’s 2012 documentary “West of Memphis.” So what additional information can be brought to the table with the 114 minutes of Devil’s Knot? Answer: Not much. Director Atom Egoyan’s foray into…
Martin Luther King said, “The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.” Justice has been a long-time coming for Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, three marginalized teenagers wrongfully convicted of the 1993 murders of three eight-year-olds: Steven Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers, found dead in a creek in West…
