People Before Profit blog

“Cesar Chavez” is an inspiring must see for today

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:24:00 +0000

More than anything, the Cesar Chavez film highlights the courageous commitment and unwavering dedication of one historic union organizer and his fierce companions who faced incredible odds and seemingly insurmountable opposition.

The 1965 campaign to organize farm workers in California for better working conditions, a voice on the job and the right to form a union is an important piece of U.S. history that every American should appreciate.

Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American civil rights leader who grew up working in the farm fields. It was obvious to him as a child that the poor working conditions that farmworkers endured were not acceptable and were inhumane. And the only way these exploitative conditions were going to change was to build worker power and to organize the farmworkers. Chavez' passion to organize farmworkers became the face of American labor history during the 1960s and 70s.

Throughout the film, Chavez, played by Michael Peña, narrates his experience growing up as a farmworker after his family lost their farm and were forced to work in the fields to survive. Chavez decides to leave a comfortable union office job and moves back to Delano, Calif., so he can be where the farmworkers are in order to organize them. He and his impressive team of activists, including his wife, an unknown leader in her own right, begin to talk with farmworkers at their homes. The film shows the immense poverty and lack of educational opportunities these workers and their families endured due to the horrible conditions farmworkers lived with every day they were picking in the fields.

An interesting twist on the film is the relationship between Chavez and his eldest son. The film depicts how the commitment to a social justice movement affects the family life of such activists for both good and bad. It's no secret that Chavez was immersed in his work to improve the lives of farmworkers. However viewers witness how such a life takes a toll on his marriage and his role as father.

Chavez' wife, played by America Ferrara, recognizes her valuable and inspiring role in the organizing campaign and her commitment to the movement. Although her name is never mentioned throughout the film, her role in the movement was immense and larger than life. At one point viewers note Chavez' machismo when his wife volunteers to be the first of many to get arrested during the historic strike. Chavez reacts negatively to her volunteering, saying she should stay home and look after the children. He ultimately agrees with his wife after activist and leader Dolores Huerta, played by Rosario Dawson, supports Chavez' wife.

Present day labor leaders and community organizers can relate to the challenges brought by the commitment and sacrifice an activist life can lead.

John Malkovich does an outstanding job as the wealthy farm grower who leads the union busting campaign against Chavez and the striking farmworkers. Malkovich's superb acting is very convincing and relevant. His role demonstrates many modern day employers and multimillion-dollar companies that show little respect for their workers demands to collectively bargain in good faith about their working conditions.

The farmworkers movement and their eventual victorious union campaign, which took decades to win, continues to inspire the present day low-wage worker campaigns nationwide at giant multimillion dollar companies such as Walmart and McDonalds. Present day low-wage worker's at such companies should see this film and witness the heroic obstacles farmworkers endured leading to their eventual triumph.

The film also shows the relationship between the Chavez and Democratic U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy. Using the selfless tactics of past notable civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and international figure from India, Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez goes on a hunger fast urging his supporters to commit to non-violence as a means to win their cause. Throughout the film Kennedy is portrayed as one of Chavez' strongest allies in Washington. After Kennedy's assassination, viewers get a clear depiction of the reactionary policies of Republican President's Richard Nixon and later Ronald Reagan's anti union and pro big business approach to the farmworkers movement.

Directed by Mexican born actor Diego Luna, the film is by no means Oscar worthy. The acting is exceptional, but the screenplay is mediocre at best. However the message of this film is monumental. The movie shows how Cesar Chavez and his supporters overcame incredible odds and obstacles through sacrifice and life threatening circumstances to win a union contract for farmworkers. The message of workers going on strike for decades and the tactic of the grape boycott, which became an international cause, to win their contract is a historic triumphant period of American labor history.

This film is a must see and I encourage you to support it at your local theater. It demonstrates the critical role Mexican American's like Chavez and hundreds of thousands of men and women like him who positively contributed to develop the U.S. labor movement in the South and Southwest. More importantly the film emphasizes the historic and ongoing fight against structural racism and national oppression people of color faced and continue to overcome in this day.

It underlines the power of unity among all workers. It confirms the power of union solidarity noting that unions are only as powerful as its members. Families of all nationalities and workers of all trades can learn from this important tale in American history.

Chavez' legacy will always stress how far we have come and remind us the struggle is not over -- we still have a long way to go. La lucha sigue! Si se puede!

Cesar Chavez

Directed by Diego Luna, Screenplay by Timothy J. Sexton and Keir Pearson

Starring:

Michael Peña as César Chávez

America Ferrera as Helen Chávez

Rosario Dawson as Dolores Huerta

Rated PG-13, 101 mins., 2014

"Obama Spy Drama": Big Bro' O is watching you

Tue, 25 Mar 2014 17:13:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Theatergoers here are currently reveling in a world premiere parodying Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: Obama Spy Drama at Hollywood's Acme Comedy Theater. The president (Matthew Harris) enters an Oval Office set and launches into an original song satirizing Obama as über-snooper "Big Bro' O," likening the commander-in-chief to Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984, with clever lyrics such as:

"I'm prying and peeking,
To block Wiki-Leaking,
I'm legal maneuvering,
J. Edgar Hoovering...
I'm sifting and panning,
To find Bradley Manning,
I'm searching for rodents,
Like that rat Edward Snowden."

Big Bro' O hatches "Operation Snow Job" to retrieve his bête noir Edward Snowden (Daniel Amerman) and the secrets he's absconded with from the National Security Agency. To do so the prez and CIA conspire to dispatch Dania Suarez (Beth Triffon), a stereotypical Hispanic femme fatale, to Moscow to lure Snowden away from his political asylum in Russia - with love. Suarez's sensual secret weapon is a CIA invention worthy of Q in the James Bond flicks: a chemical spray that puts the moan into pheromone, ensuring the bearer's irresistibility once it's sniffed.

During a White House demonstration Big Bro' O accidentally smells Suarez's sexy scent and they proceed to dance a bawdy "Pheromone Tango" - much to a diva-like Michelle Obama's (the voluptuous Arielle Widemon Siler) annoyance. In Act II, the First Lady is wooed and wowed by Obama lookalike Black Russian, an amorous KGB agent of African ancestry played by Max Lawrence, who beds her. The ecstatic Michelle sings Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager's "Nobody Does It Better," which Carly Simon memorably sang for the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

With these scenes of marital infidelity, Obama Spy Drama goes beyond criticizing the chief executive's hyper-surveillance policies that even reveal German Chancellor Angela Merkel's "Wienerschnitzel recipe." Indeed, the irreverent comedy dares to poke fun at the until-now taboo subject of the Obamas' highly polished image as an ideal married couple.

But America's First Family is not alone in being given the travesty treatment by lyricist/ playwright Nicholas Zill. He aims his lampooning quill at the Muscovite characters, too. Snowden croons a take-off on a Beatles ditty renamed here as "Do You Want to Know Some Secrets?" (A prerecorded tape with music performed by the four-member Rock 'N' Ridicule Band accompanies the singers.) In turnaround fair play Snowden goes not unscathed, portrayed as revealing top secret information to the Russians.

Putin (Christopher Robert Smith) is also in for a shooting. Zill spoofs another "Lenin" and McCartney classic retitled "Back to USSR," wherein Putin fantasizes about returning Russia to its Soviet-era superpower status. But once rootin' tootin' Putin gets a whiff of the pheromone mist on Snowden, the Ruskie strongman turns into borscht, falling head over heels in love with the leaker.

Obama embarks on a clandestine "Mission to Moscow" (a reference to the 1943 movie that soon became a cause célèbre during the ensuing Cold War hysteria). Big Bro' O engages in an "Olympics" arm wrestling contest with the far brawnier Putin that will decide Snowden's fate. The refugee from Uncle Sam faces the punishment of being appointed America's computer czar, tasked with the impossible job of cleaning up the Obamacare website.

Obama Spy Drama has some of the funniest politics since W.C. Fields' Klopstokia in Million Dollar Legs (which also has an Olympics subplot and a president chosen via arm wrestling) and the Marx Brothers' Freedonia in Duck Soup, with Groucho as President Rufus T. Firefly. The play also has some of the sharpest current events lyrics since Tom Lehrer sang zingers in the 1960s.

Obama Spy Drama is the third installment of Obama satires by this team, but with more political barbs likely to stick in the throats of Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike, possibly owing to the troubled Obamacare, the administration's controversial drone policies, and Snowden's devastating revelations of an out-of-control national security state surveillance apparatus that would have boggled George Orwell's mind. In fact, Barack Obama has charged more Americans with violating the Espionage Act than all other U.S. presidents combined.

The City in a Swamp Productions' Obama Spy Drama is presented Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. through March 30 at the Acme Comedy Theater, 135 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood, California. Info: (626) 274-1745; www.acmecomedy.com. For City in a Swamp comedy clips see: www.youtube.com/user/CityinaSwamp.

“Harmony”: A band in Nazi Germany, a powerful, Broadway-ready musical

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 16:30:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - The logo for Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman's new musical Harmony has the title in all caps, but the final letter is printed askew, falling off to the right, calling attention to the question "Why?"

Why indeed would the most popular Boy Band in the world from 1927 to 1935, acclaimed for their recordings, films, and international appearances, just fall to the wayside and go virtually unremembered by history?

Well, the Comedian Harmonists happened to be a cosmopolitan bunch of young men from Berlin, and it happened to be the time of rising fascism, and three of the six happened to be Jewish.

It took the creators a dozen or so years to research this show, mount some out-of-town tryout versions (La Jolla, Atlanta), and eventually hone it into the crack, snappy, polished, full-on Broadway-ready musical that's now on view in Los Angeles. The long gestation paid off handsomely: It's a stunning and powerful piece of theater.

"This Is Our Time," an extended number in the first act, goes through several avatars as the characters, talented, hopeful, forward-looking, imagine the moment of success they're ready to seize. No long-time theatergoer could miss the comparison to Stephen Sondheim's song "Our Time" from Merrily We Roll Along, about a similarly brilliant clutch of kids reaching for the stars. In Harmony, the song eventually gets turned over to the up-and-coming Nazi movement, whose time, alas, has also arrived. Another forerunner is the memorably creepy "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from Cabaret.

Although the Depression, and then Nazism were rough times in Germany, the joyful sextet brought some harmony to their world, starting from their strict policy of unanimous decisions for all career moves. In a society growing ever more polarized, they kept their differences to manageable proportions, modeling what could be for the larger community. Their material, funny, a little suggestive, apolitical, romantic, and joined to a double-jointed choreographic sense of humor, aimed at an audience far beyond the everyday concerns of social movements and ideologies. But of course it could not last.

The six men get fairly equal treatment in Harmony, although two, Erwin "Chopin" Bootz and "Rabbi" Josef Roman Cykowski, have wives who are very much part of the action. Bootz marries a Jewish Communist (whom we see agitating in the streets), and the "rabbi" marries a non-Jew who converts to be one with his people and his fate. All of the Harmonists survived the war, though they never saw each other again after their last performance in 1935, but the "rabbi" gets a central role as the last one living when he started to record his memoirs in his 80s.

Harmony is a big show, with 19 performers on stage, and nine in the orchestra (playing multiple instruments, and amplified to orchestral levels). It tells a chronological story, but always through inventive music and glorious dance movements. Manilow and Sussman's original songs are more "political" than the Harmonists': Each lyric has been vetted to yield the maximum possible import as we progress inexorably toward the inevitable demise of the group.

Choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter, direction by Tony Speciale, production design by Darrel Maloney, musical direction by John O'Neill, and a great cast, are all superb. Your ears are drawn into an absorbing tale, and your eyes delight in the quicksilver transformation of spaces - a railway station one moment, a classy nightclub the next, adjoining hotel rooms, and much more.

My mind went by comparison to a show I caught in Cape Town last year, Kat and the Kings, by David Kramer and Taliep Petersen, about a South African "Colored" doo-wop group in the 1950s, which also grasped at fame and fortune, but met the axe of apartheid laws and was forced to dissolve. In the wrong context, art can be dangerous indeed.

Besides the theme of harmony itself, another theme of Manilow and Sussman's show is regret: both living with it, and living so as not having to regret. In that sense a show about another time and place is equally about our own.

Harmony is performed at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles Tuesday through Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 and 8 pm, and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 pm through April 13 (except no 6:30 performance on April 6 or 13). Additional performances on Thursday, April 3 and 10 at 2 pm. Tickets at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org, or call 213.972.4400, or in person at the Music Center.

Photo: The real Comedian Harmonists, top, and the "Harmony" cast, bottom. Center Theatre Group Facebook page

Star-studded "Monuments Men" asks: Is art worth fighting for?

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 15:32:00 +0000

In The Monuments Men, George Clooney plays Lt. Frank Stokes, organizer of a small unit comprised of American art historians and scholars, as well as one Brit and one Frenchman, tasked with saving as much of the artistic and cultural heritage of Europe as possible, in the knowledge that Hitler had already started making off with huge quantities of art for his own Third Reich museums. And also in the knowledge that if Hitler went down, he would take with him to the grave the treasure house of Western Civilization just out of spite. In the end, maybe most was rescued, though a great deal also was lost.

Perhaps the most precious finds, the great altarpiece at Ghent and the Michelangelo Madonna and Child from Bruges, not to mention a Rembrandt self-portrait in Karlsruhe cited by one character, conveniently turn up in the last minutes of the film amongst the vast truckloads and boxcar loads of art, art, and more art. Yes, liberties have been taken: It's not a documentary, but a well told feel-good story, with appropriate suspense.

The team Lt. Stokes assembles is acted by John Goodman, Bill Murray, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Dimitri Leonidas in far more than cameo roles. The historical drama of saving 1,000 years of our cultural heritage occupies center-stage, but there's room to show the camaraderie engendered by a common purpose, with humor and considerable humanity. These esthetes were hardly prepared for war (barely passed basic training) but found themselves in the thick of it from Normandy on to V-E Day.

Cate Blanchett plays a French curator and Resistance sympathizer who regards the Allied rescuers with distinct suspicion: Will they cart off the best work to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as war booty? Certainly it is true that much looted art did find its way into private hands and some of that eventually into the collections of major museums around the world. Slowly this issue has come to the surface, although not all instances have been rectified - in many cases because the will to do so isn't there, and in others we simply cannot trace the original owners. And, as shown in the film, not entirely unsympathetically, the Soviets made off with bundles of valuable art as spontaneous, instant "reparations."

Clooney directed the American-German production as well, and co-wrote the script with Grant Heslov, based on a book by Robert Edsel. It will stand as one of his great achievements.

A running theme in Monuments Men is whether or not works of art are worth fighting for, even dying for. Is it worth human life to save a Rembrandt, a Michelangelo? The larger issue is what makes life human, if not the culture we have created, that surrounds us, that informs us, that tells us who we are. If this sounds like a tiresome cliché, I would stand by it in face of the debasement of all life that many régimes promote, and not just the authoritarian or tyrannical ones by any means.

For me this story is personal: My father Victor served in that war, in Europe, and specifically in the Battle of the Bulge during exactly the time depicted in the film. He was in the Counter Intelligence Corps, his principal assignment during the Occupation to poke around, find leading Nazis who had melted into the general population, and turn them over to the authorities for investigation and trial.

Not all treasures got restored to their legitimate owners. This we know. From my Dad, I still have albums full of Third Reich postage stamps that he liberated from post offices wherever he went, which have some collector's value but which were of course useless as soon as the Germans surrendered. For a while our family possessed some Wehrmacht knives and a sword engraved with Nazi slogans and symbols, but at some point years ago these in turn were "liberated" from our home and probably sold off. There was also a ladies' brooch Dad retrieved from some German soldier he was frisking.

Although drenched in a semi-comical bonhomie perhaps necessary for a jaded generation to watch yet another World War II movie, Monuments Men tells a fresh and important story, while showing enough blood and guts, and death, to satisfy those who seek a grittier authenticity. I'm deeply grateful this film was made.

Movie information:
The Monuments Men
Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett
Directed by George Clooney
2014, USA/Germany

Photo: Production shot showing mock-up of the The Last Supper, the late 15^th century mural painting by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. On August 15, 1943, the building was struck by a bomb; protective sandbagging prevented the painting from being struck by bomb splinters.

Today in women's history: Photographer Diane Arbus was born

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:54:00 +0000

On this day in 1933 photographer Diane Arbus was born. Arbus's photography is known for its portrayal of individuals and groups perceived as "other" or marginal. This included the disabled, sharecroppers, and people of diverse sexual orientations.

She worked first as a fashion photographer but in later years crafted her work almost exclusively in pursuit of artistic goals. in the 1960s she taught photography in New York City. She committed suicide in 1971. Selections of her photography can be seen here.

Photo: Fair use.

A dramatic meditation on freedom: "The Whipping Man"

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:42:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - The Jewish holiday of Passover, an eight-day commemoration of the Exodus of the Hebrew nation from Egyptian slavery, begins this year on April 14. Playwright Matthew Lopez has taken the Passover theme and given it a most unusual conceit in The Whipping Man. Since premiering in 2006, the play has been produced by over two dozen theaters across the country, and is currently in its premiere Los Angeles staging by the West Coast Jewish Theatre. Lopez won the John Gassner New Play Award from the New York Outer Critics Circle for this work.

The play takes place over two days, April 13-15, 1865. The Civil War is over. Slaves are being freed, soldiers are returning home, and in Jewish homes the freedom festival of Passover is being celebrated. Into the chaos of war-torn Richmond, Virginia, erstwhile capital of the Confederacy, comes Captain Caleb DeLeon, a young and severely wounded Jewish Confederate officer (the Spanish name suggests his Sephardic Jewish background - Jews who lived in Spain until their expulsion by the Inquisition).

DeLeon finds his family home in ruins, abandoned save for two former slaves who wait in the empty house for life to regain order and normalcy. News comes of the assassination of the president, "Father Abraham."

The two black characters, the older house servant Simon (Ricco Ross) and the younger, streetwise John (Kirk Kelleykahn), both sport yarmulkes covering their heads out of respect for God. Yes, they have been raised Jewish in the DeLeon household. Although Simon cannot read, one of his treasured possessions is a copy of the Passover hagadah (the text that sets forth the Passover Seder/dinner ceremony) that grandfather DeLeon once gave him. Caleb (Shawn Savage) himself, just hours distant from the mud, infection, and death of trench warfare, has lost his faith. The three men wrestle with their shared past in this house and the reality of their new environment absent masters and slaves.

I kept imagining a 10-part miniseries with all the other characters fleshed out, and an author's assignment to reduce it all to a three-man play in two acts. The material is that rich, now densely concentrated in crackling, often terrifying dialogue that unravels a shocking new revelation every few minutes. There are more skeletons in this plot than in the cemetery on Halloween.

The Whipping Man - the guy employed for the sadistic work of disciplining the family slaves - is summoned up in vivid recall, but is not seen on stage. His handiwork is, however: the crosshatch of severe scarring across Simon's back, "the family legacy," as he puts it.

I got to thinking: The Civil War was really not so long ago. When I was a kid in the 1940s and '50s, I'd visit my mother's family in Virginia. I don't recall that I actually did meet such individuals, but it would have been possible for me then to hear Civil War stories directly from people who experienced them as children. The Whipping Man's legacy is, historically speaking, still pretty fresh - and revived every time a Black person is lynched one way or another.

The ironies of a Southern Jewish slaveholding family celebrating Passover literally tumble forth in a mighty stream. (At the threesome's makeshift Seder, complete with army hard tack substituting for matzoh, John wonders if in the past they were Jews or slaves as he slyly asks, "What makes this year different from all other years?") But most people, perhaps all, have their blind spots - injustices, crimes, cruelties we somehow manage to rationalize or overlook. All the while, naturally, we notice every flaw in our neighbors. The Whipping Man asks us to examine our own contradictions and our own enslavement, whether to power, greed, or addiction.

The cast is superb, and delivers a gripping ensemble performance bathed in nuanced detail and considerable humor. I loved the black hood John wears when he goes out "discovering" food, household goods, whiskey and wine for the three men's survival, the mask turning the Ku Klux Klan outfit inside out. Howard Teichman, artistic director of West Coast Jewish Theatre, directed. It's an achievement to get non-Jewish actors to render Hebrew prayers credibly, though I wondered if the Eastern European pronunciation would have been correct for Sephardic Jews.

Lopez gives us a high-drama meditation on freedom, painfully earned. How will we use it?

The Whipping Man runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. through April 13. Tickets are available online at www.wcjt.org or by phone at (323) 821-2449. The Pico Playhouse is located at 10508 W. Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, 90064.

Photo: Scene from The Whipping Man. West Coast Jewish Theatre Facebook page

Oscars, shmoscars, here are the 2013 Progie film awards

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:36:00 +0000

In an attempt to draw attention to films of social significance with progressive content, I developed The Progie Awards. A collective of international film writers, The James Agee Cinema Circle (JACC), named after the prominent 1930s film writer, nominates films and actors for these awards. They're timed to catch some of the Oscar buzz, hoping to influence Academy members and film lovers about progressive films that have much to offer but risk being overlooked. This year's Progie nominees are discussed here.

And here are the winners.

1. THE TRUMBO: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Picture is named after Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood Ten, who was imprisoned for his beliefs and refusing to inform. Trumbo helped break the Blacklist when he received screen credit for "Spartacus" and "Exodus" in 1960.
"Fruitvale Station" (See trailer here.)

2. THE GARFIELD: The Progie Award for Best Actor in a progressive picture is named after John Garfield, who rose from the proletarian theatre to star in progressive pictures such as "Gentleman's Agreement" and "Force of Evil," only to run afoul of the Hollywood Blacklist.
Chiwetel Ejiofor for "12 Years a Slave" (See trailer here.)

3. KAREN MORLEY AWARD: The Progie Award for Best Actress in a film portraying women in a progressive picture is named for Karen Morley, co-star of 1932's "Scarface" and 1934's "Our Daily Bread." Morley was driven out of Hollywood in the 1930s for her leftist views, but maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for New York's lieutenant governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She died in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.
Barbara Sukowa for "Hannah Arendt." (See trailer here.)

4. THE RENOIR: The Progie Award for Best Anti-War Film is named after the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, who directed the 1937 anti-militarism masterpiece "Grand Illusion."
"The Act of Killing" (See trailer here.)

5. THE GILLO: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Foreign Film is named after the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who lensed the 1960s classics "The Battle of Algiers" and "Burn!"
Three-way tie:
China's "A Touch of Sin" (See trailer here.)
Italy's "The Great Beauty" (See trailer here.)
Slovenia's "Class Enemy" (See trailer here.)

6. THE DZIGA: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Documentary is named after the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who directed 1920s nonfiction films such as the "Kino Pravda" ("Film Truth") series and "The Man With the Movie Camera."
"The Act of Killing"

7. OUR DAILY BREAD AWARD: The Progie Award for the Most Positive and Inspiring Working Class Screen Image.
"The Angels' Share" (See trailer here.)

8. THE ROBESON: The Progie Award for the Best Portrayal of People of Color that shatters cinema stereotypes, in light of their historically demeaning depictions onscreen. It is named after courageous performing legend Paul Robeson, who starred in 1936's "Song of Freedom" and 1940's "The Proud Valley," and narrated 1942's "Native Land."
"12 Years a Slave"

9. THE SERGEI: The Progie Award for Lifetime Progressive Achievement On- or Offscreen is named after Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet director of masterpieces such as "Potemkin" and "10 Days That Shook the World."
John Sayles (See a "Matewan" clip with James Earl Jones and Chris Cooper here.)
Robert Redford (See "The Way We Were" trailer here.)

10. THE BUNUEL: The Progie Award for the Most Slyly Subversive Satirical Cinematic Film in terms of form, style and content is named after Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealist who directed 1929's "The Andalusian Dog," 1967's "Belle de Jour" and 1972's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie."
"The Wolf of Wall Street" (See the trailer here.)

11. THE PASOLINI: The Progie Award for Best Pro-Gay-Rights Film is named after Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who directed 1964's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" and "The Decameron" and "The Canterbury Tales" in the 1970s.
TV movie: "Behind the Candelabra" (See the trailer here.)
Theatrical release: "Reaching for the Moon" (See the trailer here.)

12. THE LAWSON: The Progie Award for Best Anti-Fascist Film is named after John Howard Lawson, screenwriter of 1938's anti-Franco "Blockade" and the 1940s anti-Nazi films "Four Sons," "Action in the North Atlantic," "Sahara" and "Counter-Attack," and one of the Hollywood Ten.
"Hannah Arendt"

13. THE LANGLOIS: For Best Progressive Picture Deserving Theatrical Release in the U.S. and distribution in other countries and platforms is named after film archivist Henri Langlois, co-founder of Paris' Cinémathèque.
Gore Vidal: The United States of America
Story of Film: An Odyssey
Happy
Stranger by the Lake
A Field in England
It Felt Like Love
Swim Little Fish Swim
Lily
Forty Years From Yesterday
Bluebird
Meeting Leila
When I Saw You
The Liberator: Simon Bolivar
My Sweet Pepper Land
Valentino's Ghost
Jodorowsky's Dune
Me and You
Machsom
Drones
Winter in the Blood
The Untold History of the United States

See progressive commentary about film, theater, TV, poetry and more at Hollywood Progressive.

Photo: Michael B. Jordan in a scene from "Fruitvale Station," winner of the Progie Award for Best Progressive Picture. Fruitvale Station Facebook page

"Calpurnia Tate": a girl comes of age in Texas

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 12:03:00 +0000

The state of Texas has one of the largest school systems in the country. Textbooks there are a big deal, because national publishers often oblige the state's "born again" politics and pseudoscience in the interest of big sales. A textbook approval by Texas opens markets in many other states. It's always news when creationism and Darwinism duke it out (yet again) to see which worldview will be transmitted to public school students this year.

There's just about no one alive today with an active memory of the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee, which raised that very question: Can we teach modern science to our children? Yet that case is seared into American history as the archetype of the great debate between obscurantism and rationality. Evidence surfaces almost every day that those battles are still being fought all across the land.

Switch to a generation before the Scopes trial, just at the turn of the 20^th century, when a girl is growing up on a Texas cotton and pecan farm about 50 miles south of the state capital at Austin. Jacqueline Kelly's engrossing young adult novel, with 338 pages that seemingly turn themselves, is a coming of age tale with vast relevance for today's readers. Although the genre prevents the introduction of fully "adult" themes, it is a satisfying excursion into time, and a strong addition to the literature for young people.

The year 1899 brought much that was new to that part of the world: the telephone, the auto-mobile [sic], commercial photography, new fashions in clothes and music. And new for Calpurnia Tate are the love-struck moonings (and mistakes) of the older adolescents around her. Kelly takes the turn of a century to emphasize the turning over of a new leaf of wisdom, awareness, and self-confidence, on the part of her 11-year-old heroine.

She is helpfully guided along by her cantankerous grandfather, a proud Civil War veteran (on the Confederate side of course) who also is a serious dabbler in the ecology of his local surroundings. If he has his faults, well, he also has his virtues. A serious commitment to Darwinian principles, not common in those parts, is one of them. Another is his humanitarian banning of the backbreaking short hoe on his property.

Calpurnia struggles with her starched, strait-laced family and their pedestrian expectations for her, the one girl among six brothers. She'd much rather be out at the pond collecting scum samples to view under Granddaddy's microscope. As she looks through the eyepiece, "Something with many tiny hairs rowed past at high speed; something else with a lashing tail whipped by; a tumbling barbed sphere like a medieval mace rolled past; delicate, filmy ghostlike shadows flitted in and out of the field. It was chaotic, it was wild, it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen."

We won't know what becomes of Calpurnia, but we can only imagine a life for her that busts the hell out of boring housewifery. As a confirmed "tom-boy" with a serious interest in scientific pursuit, who knows, maybe her eventual sexuality is not going to be so standard either.

Kelly introduces the reader to a wide range of local characters, starting with the household help, both African American and Mexican American, and reaching out to the other denizens of small-town Texas more than a century ago. The Civil War is still very much a living memory. An incident or two of horrific racism crops up, so this subject is not ignored, but the close relationship between the poignantly drawn resident cook Viola and the Tate family strikes me as less than fully rounded - perhaps a casualty of the grades 5-7 the book is aimed at. At one point the New Zealand-born author uses the term "flesh" as a color, a superannuated faux pas some editor should have corrected.

But these are small quibbles. If reading is mind-expanding at any and every age, young readers, especially girls, will experience a growth spurt with this thoughtful, well-crafted novel, a Newberry Honor Book and the winner of the 2010 Bank Street - Josette Frank Award.

Book information:
"The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate"
By Jacqueline Kelly
2009, Henry Holt, paperback $7.99, eBook $5.70

Ayn Rand, U.S. government, and censoring of Hollywood dissent

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 13:55:00 +0000

In Dennis Broe's excellent book "Film Noir, American Workers and Postwar Hollywood," there is an attempt to categorize the film noir movies of different time periods. His time frames are slightly different from Paul Schrader's three periods theory from his seminal "Notes on Film Noir." Broe likely does this to drive home his point about the rightward political shifts of the United States after the Second World War.

His numbers for 1945-1950 film noir included significant numbers of movies in categories such as "working class fugitives" (28 films), "social problems" (16), "war veteran " (16), and "depression-era drifters" (nine).

The sub genre that might have been the most determined by the time frame of when it was made was the war veteran genre (which were set in the present day as opposed to the backwards looking depression drifter style films.) Act of Violence is an underrated war veteran film noir - it features a "war hero" who has returned home and is on the run from his former POW comrade (who blames him for selling out his squad to the Germans). The protagonist is dealing with his own survivor guilt as well as help from underground figures including a prostitute and a hit man. It's impressive in what it was able to get past the Hays Office of the Motion Picture Production Code (more accurately at that time, it would have been the Breen Office, as it was being run by the heavy hand of Joseph Breen.)

Even in an on-its-face "apolitical" movie such as the incredible Double Indemnity, there are currents of discontent towards the wealthy - including Edward G. Robinson's detective openly mocking the executive of his insurance company in hilariously insubordinate fashion. The core of the movie may be the James M. Cain story of a femme fatale, but the assumption of the time is that the man in the big office doesn't know what's going on in the trenches.

However, by 1950-1955, in the wake of increased House Un-American Activities Committee activity and McCarthyism, the sub genre of film noir shifted significantly. In those years, Broe measures the rise of the "mainline procedural" (95 films) as well as the "psychotic fugitive" (50), and the logical conclusion of the psychotic fugitive - the "vigilante cop" (14).

What happened? Why the shift in sub genres from the '40s to the '50s?

Broe makes pages and pages of very compelling arguments, but at the center of most of them was McCarthyism. HUAC pulled in workers from across the Hollywood guilds to question their political affiliation, purge suspected Communists, and stifle movies with a progressive bent from being made in the first place. Roughly 8,000 Hollywood craft workers lost their jobs after the war (many were financial layoffs while others were layoffs obscured by blacklists; others were jobs that had been failed to be protected in three strikes from 1945 to 1948, and the generally weak national economy in 1949.)

John Sbardellati's "J Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood's Cold War" covers some similar ground in terms of McCarthyism, expanding the HUAC argument to also include the FBI. Dozens of other books specifically cover the Hollywood blacklist in detail. Something many of them love to include, for good reason, is this remarkable quote by Eric Johnston, head of the Motion Pictures Producers Association, directed at screenwriters and to signal his friendliness to HUAC:

"We'll have no more Grapes of Wrath, we'll have no more Tobacco Roads, we'll have no more films that deal with the seamy side of American life. We'll have no more pictures that deal with labor strikes. We'll have no more films that treat the banker as villain."

No other than Ayn Rand was enlisted by Ronald Reagan, Johnston, and others to write "A Screen Guide for Americans," which instructed writers on how not to "smear the free enterprise system," not to "deify the common man," and reminded artists not to "show that poverty is a virtue" or "that failure is noble." The guide might have been ignored by many screenwriters, but it remains a fascinating document of the time and was light years away from the "popular front" ethos of only a few years earlier, where the vast majority of noir movies had working or middle class protagonists and a classic like Casablanca embraced the need for collective action (as opposed to individualism) behalf of the allied nations.

Warner Brothers, once known as the "writers studio" (they would only hire a director after a script had been finalized), also reduced the power of the screenwriters, who included a disproportionate number of those attacked by HUAC. Power was turned over to loyal producers and directors, often as a sort of managerial enforcer of the financial backers desires, while several of the more left-leaning "auteur" writer-directors who existed somewhat outside of that studio system had careers ruined (Charlie Chaplin, maybe the most popular director of his era, was not even allowed to reenter the United States after a trip to Europe.)

In earlier years, the censorship of the Hays Production Code meant a good noir film like Crossfire had to be changed to be about the perils of anti-Semitism (also at the time, that meant a statement against fascism) as opposed to homophobia, as in the novel. Still, even though progressive politics had boundaries in the Hollywood of the 1940s, such politics were basically considered acceptable. But by the early 1950s, the economic reality of trying to make such a film within the system (or even to get a movie made outside the studios to be shown to any sizable audience, as was the case with the explicitly radical Salt of the Earth) was increasingly impossible.

There were even a dozen or so explicitly anti-communist hysteria movies in that time, including I was a Communist for the FBI, a noir commercial failure, though it picked up an academy award nomination for "best documentary." The movie was to some extent inspired by an actual agent's work in Pittsburgh in the internal fight in the United Electrical Workers, greatly aided by McCarthyist and even liberal forces (including Pittsburgh "Labor Priest" Father Owen Rice) intent on removing Communists and their allies from that strategic union. But research today seems to indicate that the actual informer did almost no notable work within that fight and the movie is widely considered more fiction than "documentary" in retrospect.

Orson Wells managed to keep some of the popular front spirit alive for a time, but less explicitly and less frequently than before the war ended - and others who came from the New York City's left wing 1930s theater tradition often ended up with no careers at all. Welles' 1958 Touch of Evil is widely considered to be the last movie of the noir cycle, dating back to 1941.

However, just like the detective novel, there was a return to movies that had more progressive and international trends, in "neo noir", which could be applied broadly to any film noir oriented movie after the 1950s.

The 1961 Blast of Silence bucked the tendency towards the procedural early on, probably because it was a small independent film that broke out of the studio system.

Jean Luc-Godard's 60s movies such as Breathless and Band of Outsiders, anticipated the arrival of angry youth subculture, while being rooted in a film critics' encyclopedic knowledge of earlier American classics, while his Alphaville extended noir to science fiction.

The 1970s took audiences to Harlem in the noir-ish Across 110^th Street, a return to Los Angeles in the properly cynical and masterful Chinatown, and even Robert Altman updated Phillip Marlowe into an era of yoga, youth protest, and cocaine in his The Long Goodbye, which seemed to have a subversive disdain for the genre it was being made in.

However, it was the 1980s and 90s that may have been the definitive period of neo-noir, especially in total number of films made. There were plenty of derivative neo-noir movies, sequels, and failed updates (1981's The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1988's D.O.A., and 1990's The Two Jakes) but also the arrival of a few significant talents: John Dahl (Red Rock West and The Last Seduction) the Coen brothers (Blood Simple and Fargo) and David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, and Lost Highway.)

These new talents brought influences such as surrealism (especially Lynch and David Cronenberg as North America's mainstream envoys to the avant garde), overt homages to genre films, and references to the original source material for film noir. The Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski specifically used story lines from Hammett's The Glass Key and Chandler's The Big Sleep respectively.

The Big Lebowski may be best known for its cult following as a "stoner noir" flick, but also is a good example of how the Coens' combined their referential style with a philosophical or political point, using their two main characters as a commentary on an aging 1960s hippie who claimed to co-author the "original Port Huron statement" (not the later compromised draft, perhaps edited by Michael Harrington) and his neo-conservative veteran bowling buddy who rejected pacifism in the face of the Vietnam and Gulf wars. "The Dude" and Walter were colorful characters in their own right, but they were also a throwback to archetypes of the unemployed drifter and war veteran from classic noir.

From the 1940s to the present, film noir and neo noir has consistently been contested ideological territory, with artists, studios, producers, and censors responding to -- or ignoring -- the issues of its day.

Photo: Demonstrators join one of many protests against the Hollywood blacklist and the jailing of the Hollywood 10, a group of screenwriters and directors who stood up to government attacks on freedom of speech and association (via Free Film School).

“Stand-Off at HWY #37”: Mixed loyalties, motives in great Native drama

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 13:04:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - A world premiere by Native Voices, the Native American Theater Company that specializes in presenting original aboriginal plays, has come to the Autry Museum in Los Angeles. Tuscarora dramatist Vickie Ramirez's Stand-Off at Hwy #37 is a powerhouse of a production about the struggle for tribal rights with searing, hard-hitting moments that recall the best of the "proletarian theater" writers of the 1930s.

Inspired by actual events that affected the playwright's family and tribe, the plot revolves around a bypass road being built on reservation land in upstate New York, against the will of the area's indigenous people, who diminutive Aunt Bev (LaVonne Rae Andrews of the Tlingit-Raven Clan) explains consists of members of what has been called the Iroquois Confederacy. American Indian activists, including the goofy but sincere Darrin Jamieson (the spot-on Kalani Queypo, who is Blackfeet and Hawaiian) and the strident Sandra Henhawk (the stellar stage/screen actress DeLanna Studi, Cherokee), join Aunt Bev in protesting the road.

The National Guard is dispatched to the contested site under the command of an archetypal "paleface," Captain Donald Hewitt (TV/film actor Matt Kirkwood). His uniformed, armed troops include the African American female Linda Baldwin (Tinasha LaRaye of Oklahoma City) and the linchpin character, Thomas Lee Doxdater (Eagle Young, Hopi), who belongs to the besieged Tuscarora tribe and was raised nearby, with Darrin. As the tension of the impasse rises Ramirez tosses a scoop-seeking New York Times reporter of Hong Kong Chinese ancestry, Evelyn Lee (Fran de Leon, a Filipina), into the combustible mix. Seemingly innocuous Aunt Bev places her chair near the reservation boundary, right in the line of the (offstage) construction crew, which becomes a major bone of contention.

As Captain Hewitt tries to physically relocate the elder woman, Doxdater takes action. His revolutionary deed sets the stage (literally) for the rest of the play, as the dramatis personae, including offstage tribal and women's councils, the National Guard and press, must decide how to respond.

No doubt Ramirez is exploring a "ripped-from-the-headlines" indigenous clash, as Natives must, once again, fight off what is referred to as "an occupying force." But she also has something else up her tricky dramatist's sleeve: Every one of her characters is beset by divided loyalties and mixed motives, which is the real leitmotif of her all-too-human drama.

Doxdater wears a U.S. uniform, and has sworn to uphold Uncle Sam. But he also feels a tribal allegiance. Aunt Bev is a longtime activist for Native rights, but she is willing to wash her hands of Doxdater if his bold deed might place the cause and herself in jeopardy.

Sandra Henhawk tries to stand by Doxdater, even as this becomes more and more difficult to do, as she strives to be the proverbial high woman on the totem pole. Baldwin, too, is divided: As a Black woman, she pointedly reminds all that she was not one of the "invaders" who stole a continent away from its original inhabitants. Nevertheless, she views the military as a civil service stepping stone out of the 'hood.

Evelyn Lee is likewise divided within herself; the Asian American reporter, too, knows discrimination. But getting a New York Times front page story that may win her a Pulitzer is nearest and dearest to her opportunistic heart. Even Captain Hewitt is not one-dimensional: He can see the Native side of the story, although he is duty bound to pursue his oath as a soldier who knows the chain(s) of command. Oddly enough, the most stalwart of the characters is none other than Queypo's lovable goofball, Darrin, the classic fool who speaks the truth.

Ultimately the playwright, too, may be bedeviled by divided loyalties. Ramirez courageously unleashes the dogs of war and sets her characters on a collision course. And as they head for the brink, she struggles to rein them in.

Jon Lawrence Rivera ably directs the ensemble cast on a simple yet effective set by scenic designer Jeff McLaughlin. Los Angeles has North America's largest urban Indian population. This play is for anyone who thrives on great drama, fabulous acting, quirky characters, and a theater of conscience and consciousness.

Native Voices at the Autry presents Stand-Off at HWY #37 on Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 and 8:00 p.m. through March 16 at the Wells Fargo Theater, Autry National Center, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA 90027. (323) 667-2000, ext. 299. www.NativeVoicesattheAutry.org.

“Redefining Realness”: Janet Mock’s compelling memoir about gender, race, identity

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 12:49:00 +0000

Prolific feminist scholar Bell Hooks not only praises Janet Mock's memoir Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, & So Much More on its cover, but also says that she read the book in a mere evening.

While I am a fast reader, it typically takes me a week or so to finish a book due to distractions and obligations. I sat down last weekend, intending to read for 30 minutes or so, and ended up devouring Redefining Realness cover-to-cover in five hours.

To call this book a memoir seems too little of a word. It is a personal narrative of racial identity, abuse, sex work, poverty, medical transition, and survival. Thus, the "and so much more" in the title is more than appropriate.

Redefining Realness is Janet Mock's story of growing up in California and Hawaii as a low-income trans girl of color. Throughout the book she richly recounts exploring and embracing both her black and Hawaiian identities. She details the painful sexual abuse that she experienced at a young age. She talks at length about her time as a teen sex worker and honor roll student. She discloses deeply personal information about her medical transition and her journey to become the woman that she always knew she was. And she does it all unapologetically.

The fearless way in which Janet explores and embraces her womanhood is perhaps my favorite thing about the book. In her new home in Hawaii and in the throes of often painful adolescence, she slowly but surely engages with her female identity in front of a large audience of her family, friends, and community.

Along the way she also recalls the development of her familial relationships, friendships, and the hurdles faced in each domain. We see a complex narrative of a geographically divided family struggling with poverty and drug abuse. We also meet a large community of trans women in Hawaii who are fiercely grappling with sex work, street harassment, and financial stability. One thing shines through these struggles - a constant theme of determination and survival.

Mock also weaves sociopolitical commentary throughout her narrative, connecting her personal experiences to the historic oppression and dehumanization that trans women have faced.

She strongly confronts and challenges the concept that trans people are merely "passing" as another gender, and rejects the notion that the lived experience of trans womanhood is somehow inauthentic. Simultaneously, she engages in a frank discussion about the privileges that "passing" as cisgendered (someone whose gender identity is the same as their socially recognized sex) has brought to her life.

Although detailing its challenges, Janet unpacks the stigma of sex work with brutal honesty, explaining how it empowered her and became a means of survival.

Miraculously, Mock takes on these complex conversations with clarity and a conversational tone that carries on throughout the book - a true testament to her talent as a writer.

Overall, I cannot say enough good things about Redefining Realness. It enlightened me, taught me, and brought me much joy - my only regret is that I finished it so quickly.

Book information:
"Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, & So Much More"
By Janet Mock
2014, Atria Books, hardcover, 288 pages, $24.99; e-book $12.99

"Billy Budd": sex, revolution and sea in jaw-dropping opera

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 14:25:00 +0000

When the American writer Herman Melville died in 1891, he was all but forgotten. After his first novel Typee, published in 1846, became an instant bestseller, the young New Yorker who had called a whaling ship his Harvard skyrocketed to literary acclaim. But just a few years later, after he published the metaphorical Moby Dick, Melville lost his audience and spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity, working as a Manhattan customs inspector. But he continued to write. In 1888 the undaunted scribbler began the philosophical novella Billy Budd. Perhaps one could say that composer Benjamin Britten and his librettists E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier "completed" it with their adaptation.

Los Angeles Opera's production of Billy Budd is among the grimmest, most dramatic works ever seen on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage. The beatific title character has been press-ganged to serve aboard the British warship the H.M.S. Indomitable in the year 1797, when England and revolutionary France clashed. Unlike his other comrades who chafe at being coerced to go to sea, Billy Budd (the stellar six-foot-four baritone Liam Bonner) is pleased to serve king and country, perhaps because the former foundling finds his place among the 700-man crew. With his beauty, agility, and enthusiasm, Billy quickly rises in popularity and rides the sails as a foretopman.

Billy's beauty, however, is marred by a speech defect, which leads him to stutter. Both prove to be his undoing, as the cruel Claggart, the Indomitable's master-at-arms, menacingly portrayed by bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, conspires to crush Billy. Claggart charges Billy with high crimes, setting innocence on a collision course with wickedness. Struck dumb by the unfounded allegations, Billy strikes out. This places Captain Vere (tenor Richard Croft), a decent man who is an eyewitness to the act, between the proverbial rock and a hard place, as he must choose between hewing closely to Britain's Articles of War or a more humane response.

Why does Claggart set out to destroy the sublime Billy? Billy must be obliterated because his presence ignites Claggart's libidinous impulses. By eliminating the cause of his yearning, the master-at-arms "conquers" his homoeroticism and thusly proves he isn't one of "them." (Winston Churchill, who'd served at the Admiralty, reputedly quipped that "buggery" was an old British naval tradition.)

In addition to the subject of sexuality, Britten and his librettists injected a slew of anti-"Frenchy" slurs as an important political angle into the opera, which is set against the tempestuous tide of the French Revolution. Billy has the misfortune of having previously sailed aboard a ship named the Rights O' Man; when he naively repeats these words his superiors fear that the foretopman is stirring up a mutiny by proclaiming the ideology of the French revolutionaries. Of course, that revolution's great champion, Tom Paine, wrote the radical manifesto called The Rights of Man, so amidst the paranoia the misunderstood, apolitical Billy, despite his steadfast loyalty to His Majesty, is doomed.

During his drumhead court martial Billy is interrogated about his political views, and his inquisitors almost ask him: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Jacobins?" - Robespierre's radical party. Britten's opera was first produced in 1951, during the height of the Red Scare: The composer and his librettists were quite possibly making a clever reference to the anti-communist hysteria of the era.

LA Opera's well-acted production, as directed by Julia Pevzner, with an all-male cast of about 75 performers, ends with a tip of the hat toward the mass revolts sweeping the world. While Act I sets up the plot and provides necessary exposition, the second act is a theatrical tour-de-force, with a near nautical battle as the Indomitable swoops down on a French frigate and more. Billy Budd's seafaring set, hydraulics and all, is nothing less than stunning. The imaginative, jaw-dropping stagecraft is magnificent to behold.

Britten's music is often appropriately portentous, but some sea shanties help lighten the mood. Grant Gershon is the chorus master. According to James Conlon, Billy Budd - which requires 200 people to present and stage - is the 100th opera his wand has commanded - an appropriate number for Britten's centennial.

Billy Budd is performed Sundays March 2 and 16 at 2:00 pm and March 5, 8, and 13 at 7:30 pm by LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: (213)972-8001; www.laopera.com.