Must see film for Louise and you:
Hi Thom,
Mark your calendar for a date this July 26 through August 1 to go to the Landmark E-Street Cinema in D.C. to see this historic and important film.
This morning I saw an incredible interview with the filmmaker of THE ACT OF KILLING on Democracy Now! Transcript & video here: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/19/the_act_of_killing_new_film
The film is set in Indonesia where beginning in 1965, military and paramilitary forces, backed by the United States and led by General Suharto, slaughtered up to a million Indonesians after overthrowing the democratically elected government.
See http://TheActOfKilling.com
Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer said, "it’s as though I am in Nazi Germany 40 years after the end of the Holocaust, and it’s still the Third Reich, the Nazis are still in power. So the official history says nothing about the killings. But, and yet, the aging SS officers have been allowed to boast about what they’ve done, even encouraged to do so, so that they’ve become these kind of feared proxies of the state in their communities, in their regions, and also perhaps that they can justify to themselves what they have done. And I realized at that point that this was a reality so grave, so important, that I would give it whatever it took of my life."
This is a fascinating study in how humans are able to perpetrate extreme acts of evil. I'm going to make a point to go see it when it comes to LA next week.
~ Charell
(P.S. I'm the one who stood up and requested a debate between you and Brad Friedman on IRV when you came to Hollywood last Spring... and who gave you the "Robot Pigeons" song that I and my two best friends, Holly and Sanchez, recorded the night before.)
http://www.facebook.com/charellc