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Oct 5 - 7
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Politics of
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Upcoming Events - Film Fest

Politics of Dissent: Human Stories For Our Times
October 5, 6, 7, 2007
Bijou Art Cinemas in Eugene

Each show costs $5.00.
Tickets for specific shows will be sold
in advance at the Bijou Arts Cinemas only.

This special slate of five international, American contemporary and classic 35mm films was presented by Eugene Weekly in conjunction with the University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, which is sponsoring a two-year examination of Democracy and Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century 2007-09.


Medium Cool
(1969, U.S., 110 min.)

Friday, October 5,  8:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 6,  5:00 p.m.

Haskell Wexler’s fictional film includes scenes set at what was to be a peaceful anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the site of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago. Instead, the director, actors, and crew were swept up in the street riots that ensued when Mayor Richard Daley’s police and the Illinois National Guard used brutal force to quell the action. Print condition is scratchy, but this rarely shown film captures the violence of government-sponsored savagery against citizen political dissent. Rated R.

 

Road To Guantánamo
(2006, U.K., 95 min.)

Saturday, October 6,  9:20 p.m.
Sunday, October 7,  2:00 p.m.

Michael Winterbottom’s film straddles the great divide between documentary and drama, based on the testimony of three young British Muslim men captured in Afghanistan and accused of being Al Qaeda fighters. Graphically illustrating the two years the men were interrogated and tortured at Guantánamo before being released, the film is a powerful indictment of state-sponsored prisoner abuse in a democracy. Rated R.

 

OSAMA (2004, Afghanistan, 83 min.)

Saturday, October 6,  1:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 7,  4:00 p.m.

Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak’s humanistic story of a young girl was the first film produced in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban. Set during Taliban rule, the film shows the girl witnessing violence against demonstrators for women’s rights. Later she is disguised as a boy and sent out to work to help her impoverished female household. But she is not safe, and fanaticism and vigilantism reach her. Not rated.

 

Iraq in Fragments (2006, U.S., 94 min.)

Friday, October 5,  6:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 6,  7:20 p.m.

James Longley’s cinema-verite documentary shot in Iraq 2002-5 creates poetic, intimate
portraits of ordinary people—an eleven year old Sunni boy in Baghdad; militant Shiites raiding local alcohol sellers in Naseriyah; and a father and son living in the farmland of Kurdish Northern Iraq. This film took awards for best director, best editing, and best cinematography at Sundance 2006.
Not rated.

 

12 Angry Men (1957, U.S., 95 min.)

Saturday, October 6,  3:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 7,  6:00 p.m.

An American classic, Sidney Lumet’s jury-room drama stars Henry Fonda as the lone juror whose first-ballot vote in a capital case expresses reasonable doubt about a Puerto Rican youth’s guilt. He reminds the other jurors that under the law an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. He persuades them to examine the evidence despite personal prejudices and emotions and to talk to each other to find a verdict. Not rated.

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Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics
1221 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1221
Phone: (541) 346-3700, Fax: (541) 346-1564