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Natalie Portman on "V for Vendetta" I think this film takes you to look at terrorism from a new perspective. It puts it into new shoes, so that you can see reasons where the methods of terrorism might be justifiable... I think when you make any kind of art you’re trying to open a conversation - you’re not trying to tell someone what to think. [Vanity Fair, April 2006]

I really think it's an action movie and a graphic novel that talk, that make you think a lot about violence, how we categorize violence, how we differentiate between state violence and individual violence, and how we define terrorism... [from Comic Book Resources interview] > the film is based on the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, David Lloyd

excerpt from Revolutionary ideas are afoot - "The Big Picture" column by Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, March 14 2006 Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad offers an unsentimental portrait of the politics of extremism in "Paradise Now" [photo] which earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. "As a filmmaker, if you feel politics is failing to do anything, you have to be a witness when the politicians' eyes are closed," Abu-Assad told me. "The artist can step back and allow people to see the world in a different way."

That, of course, is what we have today in America — a conflict inside our own culture, debating the merits of freedom vs. security and a host of other issues. As the polls are finding, we don't have much faith in the answers coming from our president or politicians of either party. Perhaps we're at a moment in history when our artists are better equipped to confront the messy issues of the moment than people who have to run for election for a living. So if filmmakers want to join our big national debate, I say bring it on. Paradise Now [dvd]

Spike Lee has made 18 films in more than two decades, aimed at issues like police brutality, racism, black nationalism and interracial sex.  In his new book, "That's My Story and I'm Sticking Too It," he describes the "blood, sweat and tears" needed to turn such topics into movies. "I don't like the term 'controversial,' he said. "I like 'provocateur.’”        ew.com / Reuters Oct 13 2005

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If you care about the lives of women in America, go see Searching for Angela Shelton [dvd] - a fascinating, one-of-a-kind documentary about one woman's search for all the other women in the country who share her name. The combined portrait of all the Angela Sheltons in America wakes us up to the realization that 50% of the Angelas.. have been abused, battered or raped at some time in their lives.  Despite this alarming statistic, Searching for Angela Shelton leaves us not in despair, but in awe of the resilience and strength of women who have had the cards stacked against them. Laura Davis - author of book The Courage to Heal - quoted in Angela Shelton's newsletter, 10.15.04 > more about the film on page: abuse & creative expression

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There are no rules in making cinema - there is only good cinema or soulless cinema. ... What is happening to the world lies, at the moment, just outside the realm of common understanding.  The only revenge is to work, to make cinema that illuminates this common understanding, that destabilizes the dull competence of most of what is produced, that infuses life with idiosyncracy, whimsy, brutality, and like life, that captures the rare but fabulous energy that sometimes emerges from the juxtaposition of tragic and comic. Mira Nair**[from lecture delivered at the Netherlands Film Festival on September 29, 2002, reported in Variety]

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If we could make less violent films, if somehow this [the terrotist attacks] would help us grow up a little bit, that would be good. As a society, if we could focus a little bit more on humanity, that would be good.  I think that people have and should have a different focus on films with this shadow hanging over us. ...  Maybe this situation is going to change that system and we're not going to have so many explosions and guns and all that crap in our movies. Maybe it will soften society a bit.    Australian director Ray Lawrence [photo and quote from Toronto SUN Sept. 15 2001]

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Director Gurinder Chadha Basically all my films are about racism and prejudice. They might be dressed up as comedy but everything I've ever done is always about making whoever's watching it think differently about the person on the screen.  That's not to say that they're all big anti-racist statements, they're just about humanising people who are different and showing you people in a different light and showing you people that you thought were different to you but actually were very similar to you.  That's what drives my work, it's the engine behind everything and the reason why it moves.  I use humour a lot because humour is a great equaliser. Everyone laughs at the same things if you set them up properly, and that makes everybody equal. At the end of the day, I see my job as being there to entertain as well as inform and provoke. //

[So would that be your advice to young filmmakers?  To find something worth writing about?] Yes absolutely, even when it's not "political" with a capital "P". I would emphasise how important it is to have an idea. You must have a big idea of what you're trying to say underneath it all because people WILL get it, whether they want to admit it subconsciously or consciously.  Whether you do it covertly or overtly, people will go away with an ideology, and with every film they go away with something, no matter how crass it is.  So as a filmmaker I think you have to know what it is you;re trying to say and I think that the great thing about doing it my way is that you can do it gently, it's a very inclusive style of film-making.  Someone described me once as being "genially subversive" and I think that's exactly it. It's about being genial whilst being subversive and political, and that works for me. Director Gurinder Chadha  - [femalefirst.co.uk interview] - her films include Bend It Like Beckham [dvd], Bride and Prejudice; I Dream of Jeannie

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"Outfoxed" examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know.     ~ ~  "There are some wonderful media activist groups working to change things. My most passionate wish is that you will see the film and then decide which groups to work with, support, or start your own, in order to effect change. We must change the media, to get the kind of country we want."  Producer/Director Robert Greenwald // quotes from the documentary site outfoxed.org

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.. .. Jehane Noujaim on making  her documentary "Control Room" The two characters that I dealt with at Al-Jazeera were very open-minded people. When you're dealing with people that don't make the [professional] differentiation between being a woman and being a man, obviously it doesn't make a difference.  There were sexist people that, I'm sure, questioned my abilities as a filmmaker.  But that may have actually helped, because they took me a little less seriously.

They gave me a little more access because they didn't think that my film would go anywhere. But we had an ideal situation. I shot the film with Hani Salama, who is a Bosnian Egyptian filmmaker and a guy.  Al-Jazeera has a mosque on its premises, and we wanted to film people praying. Hani is Muslim, and a male, so it was much easier for him to go and do that.  I could never have done that. But, I could go into the make-up room where all of the young female correspondents were.  So it definitely helped to have a mixed gender team when working in the Arab world. But I didn't feel like being a woman limited me in any way. > from article : Out of Control? - Is there truth in journalism?  If so, who's telling it? Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim's new  documentary "Control Room" unearths a fresh perspective  on Middle Eastern news media and the war that still rages  out of American earshot. By Sara Faith Alterman [NewEnglandFilm.com] photo by Robin Holland / Magnolia Pictures "Control Room" site controlroommovie.com

 

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We share a passion for spotlighting a different kind of protagonist - "social entrepreneurs" - empowered individuals driven to change the world around them. Through the media, I am trying to amend societal inequities by portraying stories that demonstrate the struggle to overcome injustice and highlight people who are making a difference. We know that there are positive things going on in the world and we hope that by showing empowered individuals who are making a difference, it will serve as an inspiration for others. philanthropist and former eBay president Jeff Skoll quotes from site of his new film company Participant Productions

 

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We're also developing a script about the filmmaker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, whose film Triumph of the Will some people argue was responsible for Hitler's rise.  It's a great morality tale about artists' responsibility. Fascist art makes form and beauty more important than anything else, which is basically superficial thinking.  But artists need to be deeper thinkers. Because if you just stay on the surface, like all sorts of things we do in Hollywood, without realizing it you can move the consciousness of the country in a direction that's not only dangerous but cruel. Jodie Foster - from interview by Amy Wallace, Los Angeles Magazine, March, 2002

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"If we understood that this is a time of national emergency, we would quickly limit the sheer volume of products that contribute to the culture's atmosphere of violence and incivility... [we'd] create a wealth of movies and programs that inspire and challenge teens, cause them to think and question, that help to counter the national funk of cynicism, and show human beings solving problems without resorting to violence. It's our responsibility to help reverse the current negative forces -- but the good news is that we know we have the power to do so. Stories and images do change lives."   Robin Swicord  **[LA Times, May 30, 1999] ****screenwriter :*Little Women

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"She's able to take global problems or political issues and boil them down to human emotions." Liz Garbus [right] about her partner filmmaker Rory Kennedy in their documentary  production company Moxie Firecracker Films.  [People, June 23, 2003] Film projects include: Together: Stop Violence Against Women; Pandemic: Facing AIDS (HBO, June 15, 2003); The Nazi Officer's Wife (A&E, June, 2003); Girlhood, which chronicles.. two young girls within the juvenile justice system (TLC, Fall 2003)...  [from Moxie Firecracker Films website]

The Spiritual Cinema Circle

If, like me, you love movies, but you find it harder and harder to go to theaters because of the violence, emptiness and overall lack of quality and imagination that most of the current crop represents, The CIRCLE is a wonderful opportunity. Stephen Simon..- [Producer of What Dreams May Come]

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