AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM
The film is tenatively scheduled for release on July 4th 2006.
"FOUR STARS (Highest Rating). The scariest goddamn film you'll see this year. It will leave you staggering out of the theatre, slack-jawed and trembling. Makes 'Fahrenheit 9/11' look like 'Bambi.' After watching this movie, your comfy, secure notions about America -- and about what it means to be an American -- will be forever shattered. Producer/director Aaron Russo and the folks at Cinema Libre Studio deserve to be heralded as heroes of a post-modern New American Revolution. This is shocking stuff. You'll be angry, you'll be disgusted, but you may actually break out in a cold sweat and feel a sickness deep in your gut; I would advise movie theatre managers to hand out vomit bags. You may end up needing one."
--- Todd David Schwartz, CBS
Aaron Russo interview about his new movie, From Freedom to Fascism:

Now in their fourth year, the American Conservation Film Festival (ACFF) is preparing for its 2006 festival to be held November 2-5, 2006, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia (about 70 miles west of Washington, DC).

"There are by God more Washington lobbyists than tree frogs... with stickier fingers," says Granny D in Almost Level, West Virginia, a short Truthout film by Rebecca MacNeice. As the destruction of America's Appalachian Range accelerates in the mad rush for coal, activist Doris "Granny D" Haddock and former congressman Ken Hechler act as tour guides flying over regions of mind-boggling devastation.

Meanwhile at home in Sturgeon Bay it's time to tell Dave at Cinema 6... Don't Ignore 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Call him on the office line at 920.746.8371 and let him know you and forty of your friends would come see it if he manages to screen a copy.

Gore's film finished in the Top Ten in terms of overall weekend gross with $1.356 million despite its limited run, placing ninth. Indiewire reports, "...one of the most interesting statistics came out of the Dallas film-distribution region. There, the film opened at three theaters - Landmark's Magnolia in Dallas, the Angelika Film Center in Plano and the Arbor in Austin (part of the Paramount Classics' Dallas market). Exit polling showed that 80+% of viewers who consider themselves Republican said they'd recommend the film... two other encouraging trends are emerging. First, young people are going to the movie sooner than Paramount Classics assumed. Second, local corporations in various cities are calling to ask about sponsoring screenings."

Here's where An Inconvenient Truth will be playing in Wisconsin so far as of June 4:

WI Ashwaubenon 06/30/06 Bay Park 54304
WI Brookfield 06/16/06 West Point 8 Plex 53045
WI Madison 06/16/06 Eastgate 53718
WI Madison 06/16/06 Westgate 53711
WI Menomonee Falls 06/16/06 Marcus Cinemas 53051
WI Milwaukee 06/09/06 Oriental 53202
WI Milwaukee 06/16/06 Oriental 53202
WI New Berlin 06/16/06 Ridge Cinema 53151
WI Oak Creek 06/16/06 Southshore 16 53154
WI Wauwatosa 06/16/06 Mayfair Mall 53226

"President Bush will be ignoring "An Inconvenient Truth" when the movie opens in the nation's capital, just as he has ignored the inconvenient truth of global warming throughout his administration," says Alternet's EnviroHealth. Gore is launching a book, a movie, and a new environmental group with one mission: convincing Americans that climate change is real.

When Florida's Gov. Jeb Bush (R) was asked by a reporter if he would see Al Gore’s global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he said, “No, I’m not going to be doing that.” He did see the latest X-Men movie, which he described as “excellent.”

The Last Communist - Chin Peng in 1950s Malaysia

http://anystreetcorner.blogspot.com/2005/03/chin-peng-my-dad-and-me.html

It’s the end for The Last Communist

By MANJIT KAUR

PADANG BESAR: The decision to ban the screening of The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) is final.

Home Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said allowing the film to be screened in the country would give the wrong impression about Chin Peng, the exiled leader of the Communist Party of Malaya.

“It will be like allowing a film portraying Osama Bin Laden as a humble and charitable man to be screened in the United States,” he said.

Mohd Radzi said there was no violence shown in the movie and it gave a wrong impression about Chin Peng.

“People who don’t know about Chin Peng will think what a ‘poor old man’ he is. The impression given is wrong,” he told reporters after meeting with Umno members at SMK Datuk Jaafar Hassan near here yesterday.

It was reported on May 24 that the Government and not Umno would decide whether the film could be released for public screening.

Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim had said that under the Film Censorship Act, the Home Affairs Minister had the final say.

On another matter, Mohd Radzi who is also the Umno secretary-general, said Umno members must pay their annual fees to their branch representatives by October.

He said although about 30% of Puteri Umno members had registered with the party they had yet to register with the Election Commission.

“It does not mean that you are automatically registered with the commission when you register with the party,” he said.

MEDIA-MALAYSIA:
Film on Communist Leader Banned on Shaky Grounds
Baradan Kuppusamy

KUALA LUMPUR, May 11 (IPS) - The Malaysian government has banned a film on the life and times of an octogenarian communist insurgent leader, who had also collaborated with the British during World War II, setting off a hornet's nest of charges about denial of freedom and space for democratic expression.

Film makers, movie buffs and ordinary people have expressed shock and anger at the sudden and unexpected ban on ‘The Last Communist' --a semi-musical road movie that looks at life in the small towns in Malaysia that were connected with the colourful career of Chin Peng (pseudonym for Ong Boon Hua), former head of the long defunct Communist Party of Malaya.

Chin Peng, son of Chinese immigrants, collaborated with the British to resist the Japanese occupation of Malaya and was even decorated for it with the Order of the British Empire (OBE). But, in 1948 he launched a communist insurgency in what became Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Ironically, the film, by independent film maker Amir Muhammad, was treated as benign by the Censor Board which approved it for screening to general audiences without a single cut.

Amir himself described the movie as a ''semi-musical documentary road movie inspired by the places and events in the early life of Chin Peng'', the secretary-general of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya.

It was to have been shown in three cinemas from May 19.

Even a group of Special Branch political police, that has a reputation for its anti-communist stance, did not object to the film.

However, the decision to screen the film was objected to by nationalistic-minded Malays in the ‘Berita Harian', a mass circulation Malay-language daily, which launched a venomous attack on the film in early May.

It accused Amir and the film of glorifying communism. It interviewed leading personalities, including a historian who derided the director and the film and urged the government to ban it.

What many found hard to stomach was the fact that none of the critics of the film had actually seen it. Yet, in a knee-jerk reaction, the government succumbed to their demands and announced, last week, that the film was banned.

''It is truly disgusting that a Malaysian film which is showing at 14 film festivals around the world is banned in the country,'' said opposition member of parliament, S. Kulasegaran.

''The government has made a fool of itself,'' Kulasegaran told IPS. ''Even Singapore which once fought a life and death struggle with the communists is to screen the film.''

But then the difference may lie in the fact that Chin Peng's movement, for all its ideological moorings, was supported by ethnic Chinese, rather than the indigenous Malays who dominate Malaysia. In Singapore, on the other hand, ethnic Chinese form the majority.

The Malaysian government says people in this country -- a few of whom are victims of Chin Peng's atrocities -- are not ready for such a movie.

Relentless government propaganda is partly to be blamed for the public reaction to Chin Peng. It was trend that continued from colonial days when the British successfully equated communists with bandits and Chin Peng was not only branded a traitor but his name made synonymous with terror.

In his own views recorded in ‘My Side of the Story', a book compiled from interviews by journalists, Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor and released in 2003, Chin Peng speaks about the effectiveness of British propaganda in exaggerating atrocities committed by the insurgents while camouflaging their own -- such as the 1948 massacre at Batang Kali.

In Singapore, the monolithic People's Action Party (PAP) government of then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew locked up leaders of the main opposition party, the Barisan Sosialis, in the early 1960s, on the grounds that it had links with Chin Peng's movement.

Film makers, enthusiasts and critics are not taking the Malaysian ban lying down. They have launched a campaign to force the government to reverse its decision and supporters from countries like Australia and New Zealand are writing to the government and local media arguing against the ban.

Locally, supporters plan to boycott the ‘Berita Harian' and also pressure advertisers to drop the paper.

The government's explanation is that the atrocities committed by the communist are still fresh in people's mind. "I don't think it's right. I also received a lot of objections and negative feedback from the public so I don't believe Malaysians have reached a level where they are ready for such a movie," Interior Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said.

"So whether you like it or not, the underlying message is that this movie will promote Chin Peng. This is the man who was behind the destruction of property and the loss of many innocent lives,'' he said.

The movie, written and directed late last year, made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February. It has been invited to 14 international film festivals including those in London, Seattle, Vancouver and Hong Kong.

In a long and passionate rebuttal of the ban in his blog, Amir said: "I am not naive and do know that the subject of communism is taboo in Malaysia. I maintain that The Last Communist was made with a certain sense of responsibility and sensitivity to history."

"It is not a propaganda film but a rather ‘odd' documentary," he said. The film does not include any interviews with, or even photographs of, Chin Peng himself.

Amir attacked ‘Berita Harian', as a "conservative newspaper whose cultural politics verges on the ethnocentric and the semi-fascist."

"It is, to put it mildly, horribly unfair for a movie to be banned based on comments by people who had not seen it. I am dismayed that a single newspaper (and a culturally chauvinistic one at that) could cause the government to reverse the decision by the censors," Amir said.

Amir and the production company have appealed against the decision. "I made the documentary for Malaysians first of all, since it is about our own past and present. We can't let chauvinists tell us what we can or cannot see."

Human rights activists also decry the ban and demand that the government reverse it.

"It lacks accountability and transparency because it was made at the absolute discretion of the minister," said Sonia Randhawa, executive director of Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia.

"Under the current law the minister does not have to account for decisions made for the rest of us," she said, urging the repeal of sections of the film censorship act that disallow appeals against a decision.

"The fact that the minister can ban a movie because people who have not watched it have protested also demonstrates that the government is not interested in transparency," she told ‘The Sun' newspaper.

The National Human Rights Society in a statement said the ban was "another nail in the coffin" for artistic expression in the country. Its president Cecil Rajendra said it is because of such ‘'mindless censorship and repression'' that the country's creative and innovative people preferred to emigrate or stay in exile. (END/2006)

May 21, 2006 22:56 PM

Rais Finds 'The Last Communist' Film Not Offensive

KUALA LUMPUR, May 21 (Bernama) -- The banned musical documentary "The Last Communist" is not offensive, said Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

"The plot isn't controversial and there's nothing that could be deemed as offensive from the cultural viewpoint," he said.

The facts portrayed in the documentary could be read in the book about former Communist Party of Malaya leader Chin Peng sold in book stores, he told reporters after joining Members of Parliament to watch the film at the National Film Development Corporation (Finas) Sunday.

The Internal Security Ministry banned the documentary produced by independent film-maker Amir Muhammad on May 10 days before its screening in cinemas although it had been passed by the Censorship Board.

The ban followed criticisms that the film glorified the cause of the communists and Chin Peng.

The documentary was screened for the MPs at the request of parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang who wanted to see the justification for its ban.

Rais said there was nothing new in the film except for the interviews with the Communist Party of Malaya's former members.

"They were vague, not conclusive for any quarters... that's normal," he said, adding that whether the ban would be lifted was the prerogative of the Internal Security Ministry.

He said his ministry would give its views if it was asked to do so but he hoped the issue would not be blown out of proportion.

Lim said that he could not see anything controversial that could justify the banning of the film.

"When I went in, I was prepared to be outraged. But, hard as I tried, I could not find anything to be outraged about because it does not glorify the Communist Party or Chin Peng, and does not even promote communism.

"It just used the Chin Peng connection to make a documentary about life in the country and a little bit about life at the border. Some scenes such as the charcoal factory (in Taiping), petai boys (in Bidor) are an eye opener for many and highly educational," he said.

PAS secretary-general Datuk Kamaruddin Jaafar said it was a simple film portraying the life of a group of Malaysians in the 1940s and 1950s.

"It does not even tell a full story on the communist insurgency in the country nor is it a propaganda film," he said, adding that it would not leave a negative impact on the audience.

-- BERNAMA

Keanu Reeves Slams Police State As Scanner Lights Up Cannes
Media suggest films show world is in sorry state

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | May 30 2006

Keanu Reeves has slammed the modern day police state and surveillance society, a centerpiece of the upcoming film in which he stars, during promotion for A Scanner Darkly at the Cannes film festival.

In A Scanner Darkly, the government, corporations and the elite conspire together to keep free thinking, free expression, freedom itself on the outside-- to facilitate a perceptive wall confining individuality itself to a realm doomed to the fringes.

The film chronicles how power interests exploit the drug war in order to create unthinking armies of drone servants and erect police state measures to prevent the people from ever glimpsing the dark truth behind a highly mechanized surveillance panopticon.

"Certain personal rights that were protected in the (U.S.) constitution for privacy are being chipped away at under the guise of homeland security without redress, and that's not good," Reeves told Reuters.

Several years ago the media tried to create a stereotype that Keanu Reeves isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, a complete 180 from the truth. Anyone that knows Reeves and has spoken in depth with him comes back with the same impression, that Keanu is a deeply engaged thinker and cares passionately about real issues.

Media reports out of Cannes have focused on the hard-boiled edge of the productions filling the screens this year, which include Aaron Russo's eagerly awaited America: From Freedom to Fascism, saying they represent a mirror for a world in a sorry state.

In reality the overwhelming rush of influential new films tackling topics of war, government control, surveillance and dictatorship are a creative backlash to the tiresome dumbed-down verbal diarrhea dished out by the establishment propagandists.

In a nation where the White House produces fake government PR and packages it as 'news' for the indoctrination of a bewildered US television audience, movies like Scanner are a refreshing challenge to the conformist driven orthodoxy

The outstanding Scanner Darkly website is continually updated and has a new audio clip of one of Alex's rants from the movie. Click here for the website and then click 'substance D'.

A Scanner Darkly is set for release on July 7. Read producer Tommy Pallotta's Cannes blog by clicking here.

Documentary tells story of execution
by Bobbie J. Clark - The Daily Iberian

ST. MARTINVILLE — Willie Francis practiced walking up and down the hallway of the Iberia Parish Jail. He wanted to make sure his legs would be under him when he made the march to the electric chair.

He didn’t want to embarrass his family by having his legs fail him.

Francis was scheduled to be put to death May 3, 1946, for murdering Andrew Thomas in St. Martinville. However, something went wrong, and Francis survived the execution.

A long legal battled ensued, going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled another execution should take place.

Francis was finally executed in May of 1947. He was 18 years old.

Francis’ ordeal has been documented in several books and studied by many legal scholars. It is now the subject of a documentary titled, “Willie Francis Must Die Again,” written and directed by Allan Durand.

Durand lives in St. Martinville and practices law in Lafayette. He graduated from Catholic High School and went on to earn his bachelor’s degree at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He graduated from Louisiana State University Law School.

He moved back to St. Martinville in 1981, and shortly after started making movies.

“I’ve been working on this film on and off for the last five or six years,” he said. “The Willie Francis case is probably the most famous case to come out of the 16th Judicial District. It’s one of the most famous capital punishment cases to go to the Supreme Court. It’s the only time in U.S. history that anyone’s gone to the electric chair twice.”

The lawyer who took Francis’ case was Bertrand DeBlanc, Durand’s great uncle. Durand said Francis’ father paid DeBlanc with two gallons of potatoes.

“Bertrand knew he wasn’t going to get paid,” Durand said. “This offended his sense of fairness to put a kid in the electric chair a second time.”

DeBlanc’s family had kept all the files from the case over the years. Durand used those files, along with some books written about it and articles from The Daily Iberian for his research.

Since the completion of the documentary, Durand has been traveling the film festival circuit. In April, the film was named Best Documentary at the Memphis International Film Festival. At the Santa Barbara Film Festival, it was nominated for the Social Justice Award.

The next stop is the Atlanta Film Festival, where the film was nominated for best documentary short. If it wins, it will be in contention for an Academy Award. Durand was recently honored with the visual arts award at the Ninth Annual Bunkfest Arts, Heritage and Music Awards program.

Durand said his ultimate aspiration for the documentary would be for it to be made into a feature film.

“I’ve tried to pitch it as a feature film for (several) years,” he said. “Everyone says it’s a good story, but has a sad ending. It might have been made by now if it had a happy ending.”

He said Madonna’s film company, Maverick Films, has expressed interest in the film, but added he has not heard from the company about it.

PBS has decided to run the documentary regionally and maybe nationally, which could give it the publicity it needs to be made into a feature film.

“It helps when you’ve got an unusual story,” he said. “At some point, someone will see it.”

Durand knows how the film industry works. He has several projects under his belt, including the film, “Belizaire the Cajun,” staring Armand Assante and Robert Duvall.

He’s recently gotten the green light to do a documentary on a guy from Breaux Bridge who went to New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina and saved 798 people.

“I can’t point out a time where I decided I wanted to make movies,” he said. “It’s just something I grew up always wanting to do.”

In 1990 - to commemmorate Earth Day - founders launched the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair.

"Reneweable energy is a different kind of a thing," says Randy Udall. "...and we're a little divorced from it. The beauty of a fair like this is it's bringing people back in touch with... flows of energy which are always going to dwarf fuels. Flows are much bigger than fuels. The sunlight hitting all the people outside of this tent right now left the sun eight minutes ago... It's travelled 93 million miles in eight minutes. It's hauling ass, and it's not just a good idea it's the law!"

The 17th annual Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair takes place this summer from June 23-25, 2006. The Fair will again be held at the ReNew the Earth Institute, MREA’s educational facility, in Custer, WI (just 7 miles east of Stevens Point).

Udall says, "Some people would ask, in terms of our energy future, 'Why are we working on anything else?'"

Here's a great 10-minute video made possible by Focus on Energy, on the event...
The "World's Largest Renewable Energy Event" (QuickTime recommended)