89-year-old filmmaker Agnès Varda (“The Beaches of Agnès”) said, “I have a nice relationship with time, because the past is here, you know? I’ve spent time, if I have something of my past, I’ll just make it, nowadays, I make it now and here.” Varda makes both past and present come alive in Faces Places…
When writing about the death of Abraham Lincoln, poet Carl Sandburg said, “A tree is best measured when it’s down.” These words more than apply to the life of photojournalist Chris Hondros, a Getty war photographer and two-time Pulitzer finalist, who left a gaping hole in the world of journalism when he was killed by…
In 1968, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, ushered in a program of reforms that he called “Socialism with a human face.” The new “Action Programme” allowed greater freedom of speech, press, and travel, limited the power of the secret police, and raised the possibility of democratic elections. The achievement…
In 2016, the Freedom in the World report named Tibet as one of the most repressed countries in the world. Since China occupied Tibet over sixty years ago, hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured and imprisoned. Although the political conflict between China and Tibet plays a part, Moon Chang-Yong and Jin Jeon’s documentary…
Philosophers throughout history have wrestled with the question of ends and means, right and wrong, and good or bad. Socrates said, “It is never right to do wrong.” Others maintain that it is right to act in such a way that it produces the most desirable consequences whether or not it follows society’s rules. For…
Bullying normally leads to lasting enmity between the perpetrator and the victim. Only occasionally does it lead to friendship. Rarely does it lead to love, but such is the case in André Téchiné’s (“In the Name of My Daughter”) masterful coming of age drama, Being 17 (Quand on a 17 ans), his best film since…
The great American poet Emily Dickinson wrote: “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality.” Whether or not Dickinson stopped for life, it kindly stopped for her and her immortality is enshrined in the legacy of the 1800 exquisite poems she left, only…
