DVD: Internationally Speaking
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DVD-IS
This is the second film made by this feisty Texas maverick (after "Liberty Bound") In it, filmmaker Christine Rose asks all the right questions.
The U.S. is the world's only super-power. Some say we are benevolent. In the light of growing anti-American sentiment around the world, we must now ask ourselves, "Are we really a benevolent empire?" Citizens in the U.S. live in a media bubble, isolated from much of the reality and news events that occur in the world, evemn within our own nation. Unless we actively seek out foreign and/or laternative news sources, we have no idea what is happening in the rest of the world. We have no idea how the rest of the world views us or our government. All we get is the biased charge from President Bush's speechwriters, "They hate our freedoms." Is it really our "freedom" that they hate, or is it our foreign policy?
We can offer this DVD at a deep discount, since they are the last of the filmmakers' self-distributed copies.
Renowned international analyst and linguist Noam Chomsky speaks on the International Criminal Court and America's place in the world community. Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Michael Ratner talks about his clients from both Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Global Exchange co-founder and Code Pink activist Medea Benjamin, shares her experiences on humanitarian trips t both Afghanistan and Iraq. Together with individuals around the globe, they voice their views on the internatinal stage for the first time in a documentary of this scope. The voiceless are finally give the chance to speak and be heard. People are people the world over. U.S. citizens empathesize with the worldwide community when they see them as individuals instead of as cultural stereotypes. Just as we do – they all love their families. They all want to be safe. They all want to be happy. They shop for food, they tend their gardens, they eat and they sleep. Listen to the voices of ordinary people from around the world tell America what they really think.
The filmmaker organized this global documentary without funding, through the internet, by contacting filmmakers in various countries to send her videotape of people speaking directly from their hearts and minds to us. A genuine people-to-people, grassroots international documentary project. Unique in the way in which it was created, it shows juyst how much one person can accomplish when she puts her mind and heart to the task.
"Internationally Speaking" is an historically significant and wonderfully presented wake-up call to Americans who rfuse to see America from a global perspective.
(Filmmaker) Christine Rose dares to tread where America's arrogant angels will not. (The film) is an unspun character witness of prior, and in particular, this Bush administration's foreign policy. Rose asks simple questions of ordinary ciizens around the planet. She asks regular folks, "What do you think of America?"
These folks, in return, offer profound commentary worthy of consideration by all Americans.
Rose's "one earth" introductory theme sets, perfectly, the context of "Internationally Speaking." The musical introduction to her documentary will draw you in to a beautiful world many seldom enter. The music and klyrics warm ne;s heart as the mind's eye is opened, or, opened perhaps just a bit wider.
What Rose does not do is as important as what she does do with this documentary. She does not ask politicians, our own or others', what they think about America. She does ask various ciizens and activists [here and abroad] what they think about America. [AShe] reminds us that here in America, the government is "We The People," at least in theory and by Constitutional decree.
In no sense does the film give way to capricious "political correctness"
Respondents are allowed a refreshingly total freedom to respond. No lead-in or trap-door questions are presented. "Internationally Speaking" presewnts a resultant "drumbeat" of prevailing perspectives on the current state of America's foreign policy. Between beats, [the film] offers various historians and activists a bit of air time they are ill-afforded in today's mainstream media.
"Internationally Speaking" gives voice to [those] voices effectively quelled by mainstream media. For example, do you know who James Zelton or Medea Benjamin are? Do you know their stories? I didn' think so.
How the world views America may or may not surprise you, but... what will surprise you is how incredibly close the world watches, and subsequently, characterizes America.
One's rose-colored perception of one's own moral character is not necessarily how others view that same moral character. Which view, really, is more mportant? More universally accuarte?
So it goes with nations.
Christine Rose's "Internationally Speaking" takes the rose out of the rose-colored glasses we all tend to wear.
review from the International Movie Data Base; posted online 24 Sept. 2005 to www.imdb.com.
