As many as 5,000 Arab- or Muslim-Americans have been detained by the U.S. government since 9/11, some for longer than a year, without any connection to terror attacks being established. Alison Maclean and Tobias Perse interview a few of them and their family members for this 2003 documentary, shooting from a single camera position in a single, mainly empty room, though at the end the subjects all appear together and their various situations are updated. The facts of their grim treatment, often exacerbated by their estrangement from their countries of origin, sometimes recall the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and one isn’t exactly reassured by John Ashcroft’s disclaimers, which are periodically intercut with the stories. 63 min. (JR) Read more
A German TV documentary by Helmut Grosse, The Cartel (2002, in English and subtitled German) offers a concise and lucid account of the multiple ties between the second Bush administration and the oil and energy industries, many of which date back to the president’s membership in the secret Skull and Bones Society at Yale. Some of the material is familiar and obvious, but Grosse makes a strong case for the disproportionate influence of Texas on the national agenda, and defuses likely charges of Eurocentric bias by limiting his interviews to American experts. Carlos Mendoza’s Tlatelolco: Keys to the Massacre (2002, in Spanish with subtitles) is an investigative report on the October 1968 shooting of well over 150 student demonstrators, and the wounding or arrest of hundreds more, by soldiers in Mexico City. Aptly described as Mexico’s Tiananmen Square, the massacre may have been the worst human catastrophe to befall the international student left during that era, and Mendoza walks us through the known facts, drawing on archival footage, eyewitness reports, and recently declassified documents from the U.S. Defense Department that suggest possible CIA involvement. The subtitling’s occasionally awkward, but the story is chilling nonetheless. 143 min. (JR) Read more
The underrated William Wellman made many neglected classics during the Depression, and this 1933 feature is one of the very besta Warners social drama with Frankie Darro as a boy who leaves his parents to save them the burden of his support and joins up with a gang of similarly disenfranchised kids who wind up riding the rails. Pungent stuff. 68 min. (JR) Read more
Clouds of May, the second feature of Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, struck some viewers as belonging to the school of Kiarostami, a mistake they wouldn’t make with his masterful third feature. An industrial photographer in Istanbul (Muzaffer Ozdemir), who hasn’t recovered from his busted marriage, finds himself the reluctant host of a country cousin (Mehmet Emin Toprak) looking for work. Ceylan uses this slim premise to build a psychologically nuanced relationship between the men as an uncomfortable domestic arrangement leads to irrational spats. The narrative, capped by a brief bad dream and the capture of a mouse, isn’t always legible, but it feeds into a monumental, luminous visual style like no other. The nonprofessional leads won top honors at Cannes in 2003; shortly afterward Toprak died in an auto accident. In Turkish with subtitles. 110 min. Music Box. Read more
