Starting next Monday and ending on Sunday March 21^st , the Socially
Relevant Film Festival <https://www.ratedsrfilms.org/> will present
dozens of films through a virtual theater. Like last year, the pandemic
has had an impact not only on this festival but all theaters in New York
that cater to leading edge independent work. The big commercial theaters
like AMC have opened under conditions of social distancing but the best
leading-edge houses like Film Forum are streaming only. On the plus
side, people everywhere will be able to see SR Festival films for $7
each, with a festival ticket
<https://srff.sparqfest.live/en/index.html> available for $75. If you
need any motivation to see one or all the films and have also found
yourself appreciating films I recommended on CounterPunch, let me repeat
my testimonial to the SR Film Festival in 2015. I would only add the
words “unending economic crisis and pandemic”:
I had an epiphany: “socially relevant” films have a higher
storytelling quotient than Hollywood’s for the simple reason that
they are focused on the lives of ordinary people whose hopes and
plight we can identify with. With a commercial film industry
increasingly insulated from the vicissitudes of an unending economic
crisis, it is only “socially relevant” films that demand our
attention and even provide entertainment after a fashion. When the
subjects of the film are involved in a cliffhanging predicament, we
care about the outcome as opposed to the Hollywood film where the
heroes confront Mafia gangsters, CIA rogues or zombies as if in a
video game.
The four documentaries s under review below constitute just a tiny
minority of the festival offerings. As is universally the case, I found
all of them compelling. Except for the last, they deal with issues close
to my heart and I suspect that they will be close to yours as well.
*The Boys Who Said NO! (Monday, March 15, 4:00 PM)*
Directed by Judith Ehrlich, who made the superlative “The Most Dangerous
Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” in 2009, the
film is a history of the anti-draft movement that began in 1964 and
lasted until 1972. While focused on the civil disobedience wing of the
antiwar movement, it also serves as a terrific overview of the war and a
reminder of why people my age were willing to go to prison for up to
five years for burning a draft card or joining a “subversive”
organization and risk careers because of a COINTELPRO. Hoover’s FBI
provocations even caught me in its web.
<https://louisproyect.org/2007/08/19/encounters-with-the-fbi/>
full:
https://louisproyect.org/2021/03/12/socially-relevant-film-festival-2021/
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