The People's Movie Night: July-August Schedule

Here's the July through August 2008 Movie Schedule for the People's Movie Night at Wooden Shoe Books.

It's pretty hot in the city of brotherly love, so for the rest of the summer, we're switching from popcorn to giving out free lemonade! Don't forget that the Wooden Shoe has AC too for a break from the heat!

The People's Movie Night is always free!

Wooden Shoe Books
215-413-0999
508 s. 5th street
Philadelphia PA 19147
sabot@woodenshoebooks.com
www.woodenshoebooks.com

July

Saturday July 5th 7:30PM
Made in LA
PLUS: Dorian Lam from Sweatfree PA and Quyen Nguyen from United Students Against Sweatshops (Temple)

Made in L.A. follows the remarkable story of three Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections from trendy clothing retailer Forever 21. In intimate observational style, Made in L.A. reveals the impact of the struggle on each woman's life as they are gradually transformed by the experience. Compelling, humorous, deeply human, Made in L.A. is a story about immigration, the power of unity, and the courage it takes to find your voice

Lupe Hernandez, a five-foot tall dynamo who learned survival skills at an early age, has been working in Los Angeles garment factories for over 15 years since she left Mexico City at age 17. Maura Colorado left her three children in the care of relatives in El Salvador while she sought work in L.A. to support them. She found that the low-paid work came with a high price - wretched conditions in the factories and an "undocumented" status that deprived her of seeing her children for over eighteen years. María Pineda came to Southern California from Mexico in hopes of a better life at 18, with an equally young husband. Twenty three years later, substandard working conditions, a meager salary and domestic abuse have left her struggling for her children's future and for her own human dignity. (70 Minutes)

Dorian Lam and Quyen Nguyen will be on hand to talk about the PA Sweatfree Campaign and Temple U Sweatfree Campaign and how you can ensure workers are treated with fair labor practices, who supply public employees and Temple students with clothing.

Saturday July 12th 7:30PM
SHUTDOWN: The rise and fall of Direct Action To Stop the War

SHUTDOWN is a in-depth and action packed documentary exploration of how
20,000 San Franciscans successfully organized to blockade and shutdown
their financial district in March, 2003 to protest the US attack on Iraq.
A inspirational, informative, and engagingly honest look at the
difficulties they faced in maintaining militant opposition. Created by
people directly involved with the organizing, utilizing on the street
footage, news clips and interviews with eighteen key participants. It is a
peoples history made in support of the movement against war and empire,
aiming to galvanize resistance and further critical analysis in cities and
towns throughout the country.

Saturday July 19th 7:30PM
Black And Gold: The Story of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation

In 1994, the Latin Kings - the largest and most powerful street gang in New York - became the Latin King and Queen Nation. They claimed to have abandoned their criminal past and to be following in the footsteps of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. With over 3,000 members in New York, some saw the Latin King and Queen Nation as the most important political voice to rise from the streets in decades. The NYPD did not agree, calling them a vicious gang with a PR campaign. One thing is certain, the City was never the same after the Nation went downtown. (76 Minutes)

Saturday July 26th 7:30PM
Oh, Saigon

Airlifted out of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, Doan Hoang's family was on the last civilian helicopter out of the country at the end of the war. Twenty-five years later, she sets out to uncover their story. The film follows her family as they return to Vietnam after decades of exile, where her father, a former South Vietnamese major, meets his brothers again to confront their political differences: one was a Communist, the other a pacifist. Meanwhile, Hoang tries to reconcile her own difficult past with her half sister, who was mistakenly separated from the family during the escape. (57 Minutes)

August

Saturday August 2nd 7:30PM
Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

Imagine a kung fu flick in which the martial artists spout Situationist aphorisms about conquering alienation while decadent bureaucrats ply the ironies of a stalled revolution. This is what you'll encounter in René Viénet's outrageous refashioning of a Chinese fisticuff film. An influential Situationist, Viénet stripped the soundtrack from a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong export and lathered on his own devastating dialogue. A brilliant, acerbic and riotous critique of the failure of socialism in which the martial artists counter ideological blows with theoretical thrusts from Debord, Reich and others. Viénet's target is also the mechanism of cinema and how it serves ideology. (90 Minutes)

Saturday August 9th 7:30PM
Busted! The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters

Created by Flex Your Rights and narrated by retired ACLU director Ira Glasser, BUSTED realistically depicts the pressure and confusion of common police encounters. In an entertaining and revealing manner, BUSTED illustrates the right and wrong ways to handle different police encounters and pays special attention to demonstrating how you, the viewer, can courteously and confidently refuse police searches. (45 Minutes)

Aaron Marcus, a local criminal defense attorney, will be following up the video with a brief know your rights talk concerning issues of search and seizure and police confrontation. There will also be a question and answer session regarding the video.

Saturday August 16th 7:30PM
Baraka

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky. (96 Minutes)

Saturday August 23rd 7:30PM
The Jena 6

Jena, LA - In a small town in Louisiana, six families are fighting for their sons' lives.

Two nooses are left as a warning to black students trying to integrate their playground, fights break out across town, a white man pulls a shotgun on black students, someone burns down most of the school, the DA puts six black students on trial for attempted murder, and the quiet town of Jena becomes the site of the largest civil rights demonstration in the South since the 1960s.

The Jena 6 is the story of hidden racial inequality and violence becoming visible. It is a powerful symbol for, and example of, how racial justice works in America – where the lynching noose has been replaced by the DA's pen. (30 Minutes)

Saturday August 30th 7:30 PM
"Abortion Democracy" & "The Coathanger Project"

This night, we have a double-feature of two Feminist Films, with directors Sarah Diehl and Angie Young on hand to talk about their films!

Abortion Democracy, directed by Sarah Diehl of Berlin, Germany, contrasts the differences in abortion policies in South Africa and Poland. In the 90's, Poland banned abortion due to the increasing influence of the Catholic Church after the fall of communism; around the same time South Africa legalized it, reforming the health system after the fall of apartheid.

The film reveals how the legal status of women is a direct result of the silencing or empowering of women's voices. In the Polish society and media, women's perspectives were made invisible; in South Africa, on the other hand, they were invited to give public hearings in the parliament about problems in the realm of reproduction.

The film aims to emphasize the need for safe abortions and liberal abortion laws. It also, however, illustrates the paradox that the implementation of such laws may have little effect on the accessibility of abortion services. In Poland, for example, illegal abortions are quite available and relatively safe; in South Africa, where the law is very liberal, women have a harder time getting information and services in public hospitals due to jugmental behaviour of the health staff. Only a change in the fundamental social and cultural attitudes towards abortion, contraception, and reproductive health can ensure a woman's right to choose.
(45 min)

The CoatHanger Project directed by Angie Young, is about abortionand the current state of the pro-choice movement 35 years after Roe vs. Wade.

Since the passage of Roe vs. Wade in 1973, anti-choice forces have been making it their mission to dismantle women's reproductive freedom. They came together, brilliantly strategized, pooled their resources, and slowly but steadily they have been implementing their attack. Their weapons: money, the legal system, the government, the media, the church, and - this is the scariest of all - you.
Armed with their slogans and their chants and their gigantic bloody posters, they got to you, too. And by "you" I mean the post-1973 generation. They took advantage of the fact that you never lived during a time when abortion was illegal so you had no frame of reference for the plight of desperate women with unintended pregnancies whose only option would be to carry to term or self-abort. As a result, we have conceded much hard-won ground the women's and pro-choice movements fought so desperately hard to win. Despite all of the gains we have made, we are still living in a world that hates the idea of women having control over their reproductive lives. (40 Minutes)