Dialogic Cinephilia - January 19, 2021

Armstrong, Karen. "The Lost Art of Scripture." Radio West (December 31, 2020) ["Sacred text – with their often ambiguous wording and metaphorical meanings – are ready-made for differing interpretations from various groups. In her book, The Lost Art of Scripture, Karen looks into the history of these texts, showing how religious practitioners' relationships with them have changed, and how many of us have lost sight of what they were originally written for."]

Edwards, Lydia and Fred Wiseman. "Documenting Democracy: Fred Wiseman’s City Hall." Open Source (November 19, 2020) ["What Fred Wiseman found in Boston City Hall is not what he was looking for. The master of documentary film is famous for his almost innocent camera eye that unlocks visual drama in big institutions — the New York Public Library, the Paris Opera, or in his early days: Bridgewater State Mental Hospital in 1960s Massachusetts. So why not finally get inside the modern brick and concrete fortress of official life in his hometown, and see what’s going on in the faces, the meeting rooms, the tone of voice in local affairs. What he found was simpler than all that. It was the un-Trump in the un-Washington. An almost astonishing civility, good humor, what looks like good faith in the hundreds of negotiations every day that keep a community going, and growing."]

Lee, Jason. Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ["This timely book takes an original transnational approach to the theme of Nazism and neo-Nazism in film, media, and popular culture, with examples drawn from mainland Europe, the UK, North and Latin America, Asia, and beyond. This approach fits with the established dominance of global multimedia formats, and will be useful for students, scholars, and researchers in all forms of film and media. Along with the essential need to examine current trends in Nazism and neo-Nazism in contemporary media globally, what makes this book even more necessary is that it engages with debates that go to the very heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth."]

Thompson, A.C. "From Charlottesville to the Capitol: Trump Fueled Right-Wing Violence. It May Soon Get Even Worse." Democracy Now (January 15, 2021) ["As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list — including many white supremacists — were in Washington on the day of the insurrection. “This was something that had been coming for a long time,” ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, who covers right-wing extremism, says of the January 6 riot. “If you looked at the rhetoric online … it was all about revolution, it was all about death to tyrants, it was all about civil war.”"]

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Think on this, for 19 years we have been repeatedly torturing and imprisoning hundreds of people without a trial or defense, on no more evidence than hearsay from people that were paid large sums for turning them in. 19 years later there are still 55 prisoners there. This is just the tip of iceberg of rendition centers we have operated around the world. This systemic imprisonment and torture is a horrific state act that is symbolic of the rot in our democracy. Every time you think why are they doing this when you reflect on bad things happening in our culture/nation, think to yourself, we have let Guantanamo Bay Detention Center remain functioning for the last 19 years.