Part 14 (continued)

The top rad movies available on DVD

by Dr. John Ruhland

The movies on this list are well suited to watching as a group to stimulate political discussions. All can be found on DVD through independent video stores. In Seattle, try Scarecrow Video. A few are also available at Seattle Public Library.

*highly recommended ** must see

**SALT OF THE EARTH Herbert Biberman, 1953. Striking mineworkers. Entire movie, as well as its director and actors, were blacklisted by FBI during McCarthyism.

*SAFE Todd Haynes, 1995. Woman becomes chemically sensitive, and takes control of her life one step at a time.

*SALVADOR Oliver Stone, 1985. James Belushi. El Salvador as created by US intervention.

**SEVEN DAYS IN MAY John Frankenheimer, 1963. Flag-waving military leaders lead a coup against a president who signed an anti-nuclear treaty. Interesting in light of the assassination of President Kennedy by similar conspirators.

THE SILENT ENEMY, W. Douglas Burden, 1972. Restoration of 1930's documentary on Native American Ojibway tribe.

*SILKWOOD Mike Nichols, 1983. Brave woman is silenced because of her organizing efforts and for speaking out against dangerous nuclear fuel processing plant. Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher.

SOLDIER OF ORANGE Paul Verhhoeven, 1977. Follows six Dutch college students under German occupation who take different paths, including resistance and collaboration.

*THE SORROW AND THE PITY Marcel Ophuls, 1969. Documentary interviewing people from a French city and describing life under German occupation.

SOUTH CENTRAL Steve Anderson, 1992. A gang member strives to prevent his son from taking the road he took.

**SPARTACUS Stanley Kubrick, 1960. Powerful story of a Roman gladiator slave who fights to end slavery.

**STORM OVER ASIA, V.I. Pudovkin, 1928. Tremendous story of the creation of a native revolutionary by exploitative colonial conditions.

**STRIKE Sergei Eisenstein, 1924. The brutally defeated strike under the Czar.

THIRTEEN DAYS Roger Donaldson, 2000. The Cuban Missile Crisis from the American point-of-view, most notable for its description of the military industrial complex's attempt to provoke a full-scale war. See also THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER, a 1974 version of the same events.

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL Leni Riefenstahl, 1936 Stylized filming makes this a ground-breaking propagandistic documentary of the Nazi Congress.

THREE SONGS ABOUT LENIN Dziga Vertov, 1924.

UNDER FIRE, 1983. Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte. News reporters in Nicaragua depict US involvement during the revolution.

UTU Geoff Murphy, 1988. Native New Zealanders annihilated by British colonialists in American Western style adventure film, unusual in that it has a non-colonial point-of-view.

*WAG THE DOG Robert DeNiro. President starts a war to divert attention and to increase his popularity.

**WHEN WE WERE KINGS Leon Gast, 1997. Biography of Muhammad Ali and the fight between Ali and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974.

**WHITE MAN'S BURDEN Desmond Nakano, 1995. Moving film depicting what it would be like if African-Americans and Anglos had their roles reversed.

THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL, 1993. World's most famous and controversial female director, who made propaganda films for Hitler.

**"Z" Costa-Gavras, 1969. Opposition party deputy, a Dr. and humanist, murdered during reign of military junta in Greece.