DIY: ironic* film fest

*colloquial/modern usage; "perverse appropriateness"

::all films are available from your nearest netflix shipping facility::

feauturing 8 documentaries and 2 docudramas
showcasing 2 foreign films!!!

FEAR
-september 11 (2002)
11'09''01: onze minutes, neuf secondes, un cadre (france)

i first saw this film in a cineopolis in mexico and left the theater wondering whether it been suppressed or simply ignored in the united states (perhaps because of the indignant/insensitive japanese contribution?). sean penn directs one of the 11 short films.

-united 93 (2006)
-world trade center (2006)

FREEDOM
-gunner palace (2004)
-occupation dreamland (2005)
-in the shadow of the palms (australia 2005)
-baghdad ER (2006)
-operation filmmaker (2007)
-operation homecoming: writing the wartime experience (2007)

FORENSICS
-uncovered: the whole truth about the iraq war (2003)

i screened this film at a now-defunct independent coffeeshop called ashton's in decatur, georgia. it spurred a year of war protests and a lifetime of political activism for me.

-iraq for sale: the war profiteers (2006)
-no end in sight (2007)

i sat alone in a nearly empty theater in la jolla, california to see this film. i gave it a standing ovation. for sensibility's sake.

dancing on your desk in 1988

i need more than a leaky bucket metaphor.

total federal expenditures increased from $118 billion to $946 billion in current dollars between 1965 and 1985, by a factor of eight. total redistributional expenditures, however, increased from $36 billion to $465 billion, by a factor of thirteen. by comparison, national defense expenditures, long thought to be large and burdensome, increased from $51 billion to $253 billion, by a factor of only five. this massive redistribution, however, hasn't made much of a dent in income distribution. [robert] haveman* concludes that 'the incidence of poverty today is only slightly lower than when the War on Poverty was announced in 1964 and inequality is, if anything, greater.'

Stevens, Joe B. (1993). The Economics of Collective Choice. Boulder: Westview Press.

*economist; poverty expert

the t-shirt would be rad/horrific

Eight years ago, in France, a "post-autistic economics" movement erupted in protest against the excesses of formal economics discourses. Over 800 university economics students and 150 professors signed a petition demanding reform of the curriculum to incorporate a "plurality of approaches adapted to the complexity of the object studied".