I have the opportunity to screen movies to a somewhat sizeable audience quite regularly, and I need some recommendations, because my knowledge only extends so much. The audience will go from somewhat politically engaged to extremely radicalized, knowledgeable people (as much politically as with movies).
Be it an experimental documentary which subverts a whole political question, an astute analysis of a geopolitical situation, an emotionally devastating (or potentially hopeful) fiction, or just a very sensible poetic essay in the Chris Marker style or documentary like Paris is Burning, I need it all.
Preferably not something mainstream as that kind would already be widely available to watch for most and the goal is to widen the audience of lesser known movies that need to be shown just as much. Like really very obscure stuff preferably.
Thank you comrades.
edit : here's your list:
spoiler
Come and see
Tender Comrade
The North Star
Reds
My Brothers and Sisters to the North
The Spook Who Sat By The Door
Harlan County, USA
Matewan
Robocop
Z
Stop Filming Us
Gaza Fights for Freedom
Nuit et Brouillard
Der Fall Gleiwitz
Network
Dog Day Afternoon
The Unknown War
Weekend
La Chinoise
Blue Gold
Syriana
Dominion
Earthlings
Carnage
Okja
Lucio
The Act of Killing
The Look of Silence
The planet of the Humans
Seaspiracy
Hypernormalization
Hotel Terminus
Man With A Movie Camera
The Organizer (i compagni)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Property is No Longer a Theft
The Working Class Goes to Heaven
Hara-Kiri
The Human Condition
Pitfall
Woman in the dunes
Good Morning
Night and Fog in Japan
Three Resurrected Drunkards
Death by Hanging
Canoa: A Shameful Memory
Xala
Sorry to Bother You
Black Gold
Barry
The Times of Harvey Milk
Las Sandinistas
I have been too timid to watch “Come and See”, but am told that it is very powerful.
It is ! I love it, its reputation is well worth.
Tender Comrade, The North Star, Reds
thank you !
I found it overwrought and overly dramatic. Like, what the Nazis did in the Soviet Union was horrific enough, you don't have to make shit up.
That's possibly the dumbest take I've ever heard about this movie. How is a kid with PTSD who gets sad when he finds out his whole family has been exterminated overly dramatic?
Have you actually watched it? It's overdone, and I've since come to know that most Russian war films are totally overdone. The subject matter is compelling enough if they just stick to the facts. But no, they have to go off the rails and invent ridiculous stuff in an attempt to get even more of an emotional reaction. When you've got to exaggerate the crimes of historical Nazis in order to make your point, you may have crossed a line somewhere.
I don't follow. What crimes were exaggerated? The worst crimes depicted in the movie; rape, the holocaust by bullet, packing non-combatants into buildings and burning them to the ground, all happened. Führer Directive No. 46 instructed the SS to do exactly those things in occupied territory. There are numerous first hand accounts from Belarus and elsewhere of the Nazis committing these crimes. Am I just misunderstanding what you mean?
What is the "ridiculous stuff" they "invented"?
The scene where all the Germans are having a party and laughing sticks out in my mind. It's just dumb. They performed enough real atrocities without the filmmakers having to exaggerate and going over the top.
I love the film and somewhat agree with you, but I just don't appreciate the conceptual ending. Feels a bit overlong.
I get it though, between this and the overly dramatic representation of the nazis laughing and partying and stuff : you can't represent atrocities, it will only be a bastardization.
That's why the film relies on the perspective of the child : the war IS overdramatic, is traumatizing, and he has to cope with it. By imagining any of this never happening, by viewing the nazis as pure evil. It's a necessary mechanism to not become completely mad. And it fails, I guess. War will get through you and hollow your bones to the core.