Sicko

Documentary look at health care in the United States as provided by profit-oriented health maintenance organizations (HMOs) compared to free, universal care in Canada, the U.K., and France. Moore contrasts U.S. media reports on Canadian care with the experiences of Canadians in hospitals and clinics there. He interviews patients and doctors in the U.K. about cost, quality, and salaries. He examines why Nixon promoted HMOs in 1971, and why the Clintons' reform effort failed in the 1990s. He talks to U.S. ex-pats in Paris about French services, and he takes three 9/11 clean-up volunteers, who developed respiratory problems, to Cuba for care. He asks of Americans, "Who are we?"

Paper Dolls

Paper Dolls is a documentary film by award winning filmmaker Tomer Heymann about a group of transvestite Filipinos who emigrate to Israel to take care of elderly religious Jewish men. On their one day off per week, they perform as drag performers in a group called the Paper Dolls. On the political level, it explores the perils of global immigration. In this case, after the second Intifada, the Israeli government unofficially opened its doors to illegal workers to replace the Palestinians who were no longer allowed in the country. As tensions with the Palestinians eased, the government changed its policy and began to forcibly deport these foreign guest workers with dramatic consequences for our characters. On the human level, the film is about people who are rejected by their own families for being gay/transvestite and who emigrate and end up with jobs taking care of other people's parents who have been rejected by their own children because they are old, difficult, etc. They work grueling hours to send money back to the Philippines to support the families that have rejected them. As unbelievable as it may seem, these very different people (old religious Jews and transvestites from the Philippines) form very deep, quasi familial bonds.

Made Over in America

Made Over in America is a filmic foray into the cultural complex surrounding America‘s fascination with surgical makeover. Bringing together an often funny, sometimes touching array of voices, Johns Hopkins University researcher and MIT Press author Bernadette Wegenstein and experimental filmmaker Geoffrey Alan Rhodes join forces to explore the contradictory and at times anxious motives of the producers and consumers of American makeover culture. From their journey emerges a profound question: what have our bodies and our selves become in an age of seemingly limitless transformation?

The Revolution Will Not be Televised

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (a.k.a. Chavez: Inside the Coup) is a 2002 documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. A television crew from Ireland's Radio Telifís Éireann happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002. Shifting focus, they followed the events as they occurred. During their filming, the crew recorded images of the events that they say contradict explanations given by Chávez's opposition, the private media, the US State Department, and then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. The documentary says that the coup was the result of a conspiracy between various old guard and anti-Chávez factions within Venezuela and the United States Intelligence”.

Arlington West

105 interviews with soldiers and marines en route to and returning from war in Iraq, plus interviews with military families.  [More to come.]