Woodstock (1970), Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), Gandhi (1982), Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018), The Corporation (2003), Lakshya (2004), Bowling for Columbine (2002), Good Bye Lenin! (2003) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Political Activism movies.
Storyline: An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.—Dan Hartung <dhartung@mcs.com>
Plot Keywords: drugs, concert film, counter culture, new york, anti war, year 1969, 1960s ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: This film showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading linguists and political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of their populations. The key examples featured for this analysis are the simultaneous events of the massive coverage of the communist atrocities of Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia and the suppression of news of the US supported Indonesian invasion and subjugation of East Timor.—Kenneth Chisholm <kchishol@execulink.com>
Plot Keywords: media, media coverage, media manipulation, vietnam war, intellectual, theory, speech ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1893, Mohandas K. Gandhi is thrown off a South African train for being an Indian and traveling in a first class compartment. Gandhi realizes that the laws are biased against Indians and decides to start a non-violent protest campaign for the rights of all Indians in South Africa. After numerous arrests and the unwanted attention of the world, the government finally relents by recognizing rights for Indians, though not for the native blacks of South Africa. After this victory, Gandhi is invited back to India, where he is now considered something of a national hero. He is urged to take up the fight for India's independence from the British Empire. Gandhi agrees, and mounts a non-violent non-cooperation campaign of unprecedented scale, coordinating millions of Indians nationwide. There are some setbacks, such as violence against the protesters and Gandhi's occasional imprisonment. Nevertheless, the campaign generates great attention, and Britain faces intense public pressure. Too weak...
Plot Keywords: india, independence, hindu, peace, world war two, brutality, year 1948 ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A look at the life, work, activism and controversies of actress and fitness tycoon, Jane Fonda.
Plot Keywords: title directed by female, adoption, movie producer, feminism, political activism, father daughter relationship, mother daughter relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Keywords: globalization, advertising, corporate corruption, political activism, political protest, reference to gandhi, reference to mahatma gandhi ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Karan is a lazy good-for-nothing who lives on the generated income of his father and elder brother at their family business. Karan's days: hang out with buddies and romance a woman named Romi. When he watches an action movie, he decides to enlist in the army with a friend, but basic training proves to be too much of a bother and he shortly abandons it, thus making him lose respect on the home front. Romi also stops respecting him. Karan decides he must re-join the army and show his family and Romi that he, too, is focused upon the path he has to take in this lifetime, but will he be resilient enough to carry out this task?
Plot Keywords: cult film, military parade, laziness, helicopter, ex girlfriend, engagement ring, deadline ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The United States of America is notorious for its astronomical number of people killed by firearms for a developed nation without a civil war. With his signature sense of angry humor, activist filmmaker Michael Moore sets out to explore the roots of this bloodshed. In doing so, he learns that the conventional answers of easy availability of guns, violent national history, violent entertainment and even poverty are inadequate to explain this violence when other cultures share those same factors without the equivalent carnage. In order to arrive at a possible explanation, Michael Moore takes on a deeper examination of America's culture of fear, bigotry and violence in a nation with widespread gun ownership. Furthermore, he seeks to investigate and confront the powerful elite political and corporate interests fanning this culture for their own unscrupulous gain.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Keywords: firearm, journalism, social commentary, paraplegic, media coverage, gun, animated sequence ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: East Germany, the year 1989: A young man protests against the regime. His mother watches the police arresting him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some months later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she has to avoid every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again for her in their flat. But the world has changed a lot.
Plot Keywords: coma, capitalism, political activism, berlin wall, death of mother, communism, berlin germany ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The Popes are a family who haven't been able to use their real identity for years. In the late sixties, the parents set a weapons lab afire in an effort to hinder the government's Vietnam war campaign. Ever since then, the Popes have been on the run with the authorities never far behind. Today, their eldest son wants a life of his own although he is aware that would mean that his parents would either get caught or he will never see them again.
Plot Keywords: teenage romance, fugitive, music teacher, piano, aspiring musician, fleeing, fire ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: While doing a series of reports on alternative energy sources, an opportunistic reporter Kimberly Wells witnesses an accident at a nuclear power plant. Wells is determined to publicise the incident but soon finds herself entangled in a sinister conspiracy to keep the full impact of the incident a secret.
Plot Keywords: radiation, reporter, cover up, los angeles california, california, geiger counter, control room ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Based on an actual strike against the Empire Zinc Mine in New Mexico, the film deals with the prejudice against the Mexican-American workers, who struck to attain wage parity with Anglo workers in other mines and to be treated with dignity by the bosses. In the end, the greatest victory for the workers and their families is the realization that prejudice and poor treatment are conditions that are not always imposed by outside forces.—Bob Shields <rshields@igc.apc.org>
Plot Keywords: strike, political activism, eviction, feminism, women's rights, labor strike, national film registry ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: John Cassellis is the toughest TV-news reporter around. His area of interest is reporting about violence in the ghetto and racial tensions. But he discovers that his network helps the FBI by letting it look at his tapes to find suspects. When he protests, he is fired and goes to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.—Mattias Thuresson
Plot Keywords: bare chested male, television reporter, journalist, male underwear, briefs, white briefs, year 1968 ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: American journalist John Reed journeys to Russia to document the Bolshevik Revolution and returns a revolutionary. His fervor for left-wing politics leads him to Louise Bryant, then married, who will become a feminist icon and activist. Politics at home become more complicated as the rift grows between reality and Reed's ideals. Bryant takes up with a cynical playwright, and Reed returns to Russia, where his health declines.
Plot Keywords: year 1917, russian revolution, revolutionary, communism, american abroad, bolshevik, jail ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgium overlords. Lumumba emerges here as the heroic sacrificial lamb dubiously portrayed by the international media and led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the United States, the international community, and Lumumba's own administration; a true story of political intrigue and murder where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.—L. J. Allen-2
Plot Keywords: brutality, scapegoat, faith, colonialism, greed, heroism, power struggle ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: This film relates the story of a tightly connected Afro-American community informally called Colored Town where the inhabitants live and depend on each other in a world where racist oppression is everywhere, as told by a boy called Cliff who spent his childhood there. Despite this, we see the life of the community in all its joys and sorrows, of those that live there while others decide to leave for a better life north. For those remaining, things come to a serious situation when one prominent businessman is being muscled out by a white competitor using racist intimidation. In response, the community must make the decision of whether to submit meekly like they always have, or finally fight for their rights.—Kenneth Chisholm <kchishol@execulink.com>
Plot Keywords: segregation, based on book, coming of age, racism, mississippi, prejudice, race relations ...
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