Subject: Social Justice
Justice is not always easily won for exploited children, women’s struggles, civil rights, and those who fight to reconcile the inequities and right the wrongs.
4 Little Girls
- Director: Spike Lee
- Release Date: 1997
- Production Country: United States
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb went off under the steps of an African-American church, killing four African-American girls. Less than a year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law—in large part because of the national outcry after the bombing. But no matter the resulting changes in society, four families were still without their daughters and four lives had been ended, forever.
A Time to Kill
- Director: Joel Schumacher
- Release Date: 1996
- Production Country: United States
Convinced that the two white men who brutalized his ten-year-old daughter will not be convicted, an outraged father, Carl, takes justice into his own hands; however, the murder of two whites by a black man creates a firestorm of reaction in the small Mississippi town that was content to let the rape of a black child pass. As the Ku Klux Klan reunites and violence grows in the town, a young white lawyer tries to figure out how to get Carl acquitted for his crimes.
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community
- Director: Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg
- Release Date: 1984
- Production Country: United States
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, cultural attitudes and associated laws about sexuality gradually shifted and, by the 1950s, rigidly defined gender roles and often draconian laws against "deviance" and same-sex social behavior had become the norm rather than the exception in the United States, with often devastating results for the LGBT community.
Best Boy
- Director: Ira Wohl
- Release Date: 1979
- Production Country: United States
An elderly couple must figure out what will happen to their mentally handicapped son when they die, while the fifty-two-year old son discovers that he is capable of caring for himself.
Best Man: 'Best Boy' and All of Us Twenty Years Later
- Director: Ira Wohl
- Release Date: 1997
- Production Country: United States
In the twenty years since his elderly parents sent him to live in a group home, Philly has established a life for himself and attained some independence. But there are two things the 72-year-old mentally-challenged Billy has yet to do: fly in an airplane and have his Bar Mitzvah.
Beyond the Call
- Director: Adrian Belic
- Release Date: 2006
- Production Country: United States
Three men take it upon themselves to go in and deliver aid to areas in the world that most NGOs won't or cannot access, delivering medical supplies, equipment, food, and sometimes cold hard cash to groups where even the smallest help from outside can mean the difference between life and death.
Black Gold
- Director: Jeta Amata
- Release Date: 2011
- Production Country: Nigeria
In the Niger Delta, corrupt government officials and the greedy oil corporations compete with armed militants for control of rich petroleum reserves, for the fuel of the modern world. Shut out from the wealth generated by the oil but forced to live in the environment of violence and pollution it creates, the local residents seem to have no hope and no voice—that is until one woman, who is determined to stop the fighting and draw the world's attention to her beleaguered people, steps forward.
Born into Brothels (Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids)
- Director: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
- Release Date: 2004
- Production Country: United States
In India to film a documentary about the sex workers of Kalkota, filmmakers find themselves intrigued by the children of those workers and give them cameras at first so they could record their parents; eventually, however, they make the controversial decision that photography could be a potential route out of poverty for these children.
Boys Don't Cry
- Director: Kimberly Peirce
- Release Date: 1999
- Production Country: United States
Threatened by his ex-girlfriend's brother, Brandon Teena leaves home, building a new life for himself in a small Nebraska town. But when local law officers place him in the women's prison, his new friends are outraged that Brandon has concealed a secret from them; the violent solution they concoct in order to "correct" his "deviant behavior" results in great tragedy.
Chicago 10
- Director: Brett Morgen
- Release Date: 2007
- Production Country: United States
Violence gradually escalates at the rallies held during the 1968 Democratic National Convention to protest President Lyndon B. Johnson's policies on the Vietnam War. The 20,000 police and National Guardsmen called in to keep the peace exacerbate the emotions and anger of the 15,000 or so protestors until full scale rioting breaks out—but only 8 people were ever charged, all of them from among the protestors.
Children Underground
- Director: Edet Belzberg
- Release Date: 2001
- Production Country: United States
Victims of Nicolae Ceaușescu's social engineering, the unwanted children of Romania struggle to survive on the streets... fighting, stealing, and inhaling glue for a few moments of relief and euphoria each day. Even those children who attempt to maintain some dignity in their lives face an uphill battle in a country seemingly too overwhelmed with the poverty and the numbers of these children to effectively accomplish any significant changes in their circumstances.
Darwin's Nightmare
- Director: Hubert Sauper
- Release Date: 2004
- Production Country: Austria, Belgium, France, Canada, Finland, Sweden
Beautiful Lake Victoria is at the center of a brutal cycle of survival of the fittest. Illegal guns are flown in and fish, the imported Nile Perch, is flown out. The perch is an expensive delicacy, but its importation has devastated the local ecosystem, leaving families in the are struggling to survive, causing the destruction of communities and governments, which feeds the unrest of the people, which feeds the need for guns...
Ehky ya Scheherazade (Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story)
- Director: Yousry Nasrallah
- Release Date: 2009
- Production Country: Egypt
Convinced by her husband that his future career at a large newspaper depends on her discretion, a young Egyptian woman turns her talk show away from political topics and focuses instead on the stories of local women and their lives. However, what originally seemed to be a safe choice of topics turns out to be far more disruptive than any political story might have been.
El Norte (The North)
- Director: Gregory Nava
- Release Date: 1983
- Production Country: United States, United Kingdom
When their father is murdered and their mother is "disappeared" by soldiers, two Guatemalan teens decide to head North to the United States in order to make a better life for themselves. Alas, arriving in California after a harrowing and dangerous trip, the brother and sister find out that the rich are rich and the poor are poor even in el norte.
Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters
- Director: Ban Zhongyi
- Release Date: 2007
- Production Country: China
During World War II, women living in Japanese-occupied territories were forced into slavery as "comfort women," providing sexual favors for Japanese soldiers at military-run brothels. Gai Shanxi is one of these women, a survivor who sets out to seek justice for herself and her "sisters" who were enslaved with her.
Gaza Strip
- Director: James Longley
- Release Date: 2002
- Production Country: United States
During the Second Intifada, ordinary Palestinians struggle every day for survival and freedom in the Gaza Strip. One such Palestinians is Mohammed, a 13-year-old, second-grade-dropout who now leads his own gang of angry, hungry boys in rebellion against the Israeli occupying forces.
Hunger
- Director: Steve McQueen
- Release Date: 2008
- Production Country: United Kingdom, Ireland
When their demand to be classified as political prisoners is refused, Irish Republicans imprisoned in the Maze, a prison infamous for brutal treatment of its inmates, find their only weapon is noncompliance with orders, wearing uniforms, and finally, refusing to eat, a decision which leads to a months-long hunger strike and to the government gradually conceding to their demands one by one, even though it might be too late.
Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story
- Director: Michael Apted
- Release Date: 1992
- Production Country: United States
In 1975, FBI agents illegally entered the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; One Native American and two FBI agents died as a result, and Leonard Peltier is serving a life sentence in prison.
Iron Jawed Angels
- Director: Katja von Garnier
- Release Date: 2004
- Production Country: United States
Believing that other suffragettes are not pushing hard enough to accomplish their goals, two young women take on both the U.S. government and their sister protesters, determined to gain the right to vote for all women. But in a world where women are chattel, the men who make the rules do not want these "iron-jawed angels" to have any power outside the home, and they will do everything they can to force women to accept their "proper" place in the world.
Kimjongilia
- Director: N.C. Heikin
- Release Date: 2009
- Production Country: United States, France, South Korea
Refugees from North Korea describe escaping, being hunted by Chinese forces, and the brutal reality of living in a country devoted to glorifying the life of one man: Kim Jong Il, for whom the lovely kimjongilia flower was named. Original interviews are interwoven with documentary footage and original interpretive pieces.