the doc hound

One look at this couple and you think, a love story about an 80 year old guy and a 40 year old woman? There must be something weird going on there. No thank you. Skip. Next. But what you come to realize from this film is that love is not something that makes sense or fits into societal norms.

This is a story of Ushio Shinohara and Noriko Shinohara. Their story is quite unique - two working artists with a large age gap - but at the same time, their story is much like everyone else's - just like any other married couple who squabbles. You see the sacrifices Noriko makes in order to support Ushio, but also the struggle to work on her artwork and share them with others.

Free Angela and All Political Prisoners tells the story of Angela Davis, well-known for her political activism in the 1960s when she was a Civil Rights leader with ties to The Communist Party and the Black Panthers. This doc is an intimate look into the life of a young, black female activist whose ideas landed her on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List and in jail for crimes that, if convicted, would lead to the death penalty. The amount of global support to free Angela, while she was incarcerated, speaks volumes of the power in her ideas. Angela Davis is a rare find in America's history - a political leader and philosopher with boobs and an afro to boot.

If you are a woman, this film will inspire you. If you are a black woman, this film is a must see. For everyone else, I think you'll like it too.

Sidenote: Although Angela is a retired professor, she will be a guest lecturer at UCLA in Spring 2014. She will teach at the school that kicked her out in 1969. What a full circle.

The story is of Tanzania and the fish they have in Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the world. The huge fish are caught and then packaged as fillets in the factories and sent on big airplanes back to feed the West. Meanwhile, the people of Tanzania are faced with famine and dependent on food aid. The new fish market has given Westerners a reason to come to Africa and throughout the film, Hubert asks what kind of cargo come into Africa in the airplanes. At the end, it is suggested that the cargo contains the weapons that continue the long and deadly war in the Congo. One of the Russian pilots even said, “For Christmas Day, children in Europe got grapes and children in Africa got weapons.”

The most memorable scene for me came towards the end of the film when a kid who couldn’t be more than 10 years old sat down next to his friend in the street alley in the dead of the night. He hands his friend a plastic bottle filled with freshly melted plastic. The children got hold of the plastic from the fish packaging that fell into the lake. This particular scene shows the two kids holding a cigarette in their right hand and sniffing the bottle with their left. They breathe the poison in and out and under two minutes flat, one of the kids collapse on his side, now in a deep sleep that snuffing induced. The melted plastic gives you a high, then puts you out like a coma. For hungry kids, it helps pass the time and forget their situation.

Sean Carasso volunteered at an org whose mission is to give shoes to kids in Africa. He ended up finding out more than he could have imagined and starting Falling Whistles, a non-profit fighting for peace in the Congo. While in the Congo, he learned that the kids too young to carry a gun carry a whistle around their necks instead. They use it to scare off the enemies during battle and at the same time, alert the enemies of their presence. The kids who blow the whistles are in the front lines, in between the two warring sides. They are the first to hit the ground, and die. Hence, the falling whistles.

Though it's not a documentary, this short video has the quality of a documentary and is worth watching. 

Very Young Girls is a film about trafficking girls in NYC. You might have heard of human trafficking in countries with weak justice systems, but in one of the most progressive cities in the world, girls as young as 13 years old are taken by 30 to 40 year old men to become prostitutes. Rachel Lloyd, the founder of GEMS (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services), tells her story of being on the streets and how she has now become an activist and founder of an organization that gives girls an option besides from prostitution and a safe haven from their pimps.

While watching the film, it can be hard to imagine why they are addicted to men who sell them, rape them, drug them, and beat them. The cons outweigh the pro by a long shot. But you come to realize that a majority of these girls come from homes where domestic violence is routine and feeling comfort is hard to find. Sadly, the first person to make them feel loved and special are people with no real intentions of taking care of them. 

Colin Beavan and his family say no to electricity, heat, trash, new stuff—basically anything that would leave a footprint on the earth—for an entire year. That means composting their food in a box of worms, hand-washing the family’s laundry, living without a fridge, and biking everywhere. To add to it all, they live in NYC. Call him crazy, but he will make you re-think the way you live and the things we take for granted. To be honest, after the screening was over, I felt rather sheepish drinking out of my plastic water bottle.