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Odd FridaysOn odd Fridays in the Fall Semester (August 31 - December 7), SPNA will present the second The Administrative Evil Film Festival. The film festival is inspired by the book, Unmasking Administrative Evil by Guy Adams and Dan Balfour. "What is different about administrative evil ... is that its appearance is masked. Administrative evil may be masked in many different ways, but the common characteristic is that people can engage in acts of evil without being aware that they are in fact doing anything wrong. Indeed, ordinary people may simply be acting appropriately in their organizational role - in essence, just doing what those around them would agree they should be doing. ... Even worse, under conditions of what we call moral inversion, in which something evil has been redefined convincingly as good, ordinary people can all too easily engage in acts of administrative evil while believing that what they are doing is not only correct but, in fact, good." (p.xx) August 31 When the Levees Broke, A Requiem in Four Acts (Acts I and II) (6 pm, 109D DeVos) September 7 When the Levees Broke, A Requiem in Four Acts (Acts III and IV) (6 pm, 109D DeVos) September 21 The Last King of Scotland (6 pm, 109D DeVos) October 5 The Devil's Miner (6 pm: 109D DeVos) October 19 Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (6 pm, 109D DeVos) November 9 Ikiru (6 pm, 109D DeVos) December 7 The Human Behavior Experiments and Human Remains (6 pm, 109D DeVos) When the Levees Broke, A Requiem in Four Acts2006 documentary directed by Spike Lee
Melanie McFarland wrote in Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE is a beautiful elegy for the city, set to a haunting original score by jazz composer and NOLA native son Terence Blanchard. Simultaneously, it is a tapestry that connects the disaster to sources beyond the hurricane. Engineering neglect may have been the primary cause of New Orleans' destruction, but in Lee's documentary, political ignorance, corporate greed and inhumane, unethical behavior by oil, insurance and land developers join forces to stymie its restoration. And there are sequences that rob you of any words, like watching Blanchard walk his elderly mother through the muddy shell she once called home. The acute pain in her sobs has no name. You can only cry along with her.... One might think that four hours of this is too much; by the end, you realize that it's barely enough."
The Last King of Scotland2007 drama directed by Kevin Macdonald
Ruthe Stein wrote in San Francisco Chronicle: "Now that Hollywood belatedly has gotten around to Amin, he shares screen time with a fictional character, something the self-aggrandizing general surely would have found galling. But the brilliance of THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND -- an immediate contender for Oscar consideration and a spot on critics' top 10 lists -- is the way it shows his dangerous allure through the eyes of an innocent.... At its heart of darkness, the film is about the lure of power. It's a condemnation of all the dictators' men over all time. Surely some of those who served a Nero or Hussein or Ceausescu had the moral sense to realize that they were aligned with a force of evil. Yet they stuck. Emboldened by Whitaker's unforgettable performance, THE LAST KING daringly puts forth reasons for such complicity."
The Devil's Miner2005 documentary directed by Kief Davidson Richard Ladkani
Carina Chocano wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "The straightforward simplicity of Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani's moving documentary, THE DEVIL'S MINER, is deceptive at first — especially as documentaries have lately taken such quirky, variegated forms. But 15 minutes into it, you are spellbound, heartbroken and unaccountably cheered — your faith and admiration in humanity restored. It's a testament to the filmmakers' sensitivity and steady hand but mostly to the extraordinary intelligence and courage of their subject, a 14-year-old boy named Basilio Vargas, who lives and works with his 12-year-old brother, Bernardino, in the nearly depleted Cerro Gordo silver mine near the colonial Andean city of Potosí, Bolivia....A beautifully shot and scored journey into a remote, forgotten world, THE DEVIL'S MINER should be experienced by all but especially by Basilio's adolescent contemporaries. This is social documentary at its best."
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple2006 documentary directed by Stanley Nelson
Glenn Whipp wrote in the LA Daily News: "Nelson shows Jones' appeal to blacks, the elderly and young whites, promising to create not just a church, but a utopia that would abolish the lines of race and wealth. Some say the '60s died at Altamont, but Nelson makes a case that Jones put the final nail in the coffin in Guyana. The movie features interviews with surviving Peoples Temple members — those who got out before the move to Jonestown and two of the five members who escaped to the jungle on the day of the mass suicide. (Another 80 or so were away that day, including Jim Jones Jr.) What emerges is a portrait of good people so starved for community that they were willing to surrender their sanity for a sense of belonging. Nelson's movie makes the tragedy of that day all the more poignant. "
Ikiru1952 drama directed by Akira Kurosawa
Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times: "I saw IKIRU first in 1960 or 1961. I went to the movie because it was playing in a campus film series and only cost a quarter. I sat enveloped in the story of Watanabe for 2 1/2 hours, and wrote about it in a class where the essay topic was Socrates' statement, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' Over the years I have seen IKIRU every five years or so, and each time it has moved me, and made me think. And the older I get, the less Watanabe seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every one of us."
The Human Behavior Experiments2006 documentary directed by Alex Gibney
Brian Lowry wrote in Variety: " 'Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they're capable of anything,' says John Huston's character, Noah Cross, in the movie CHINATOWN -- dialogue that seems especially apt watching this engrossing docu.... The cable nets tap filmmaker Alex Gibney (ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM) to craft this thought-provoking examination of three controversial psychological studies whose chilling results still resonate today.... At times, the grainy research footage almost humorously brings to mind the Dharma Initiative from ABC's LOST, but the underlying issues -- including the willingness to follow orders, even when people implicitly know what they are doing is wrong -- remain as fascinating and significant now as when these experiments were conducted. As Philip Zimbardo, mastermind of the Stanford study, notes, certain environments 'elicit the worst from good people' -- a more complex and troubling scenario than the popular 'monsters on the loose' image that dovetails with our collective desire for justice and retribution." Human Remains2004 mockumentary directed by Jay Rosenblatt
Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times: "The program, which opens today at the Film Forum, could be described as a unblinking, surreal post-Freudian meditation on evil from a Jewish perspective. For all its surface lightness, HUMAN REAMINS is anything but frivolous. Accompanying the dictators' off-camera voices (actors narrate their remarks in native languages that are simultaneously translated into English by other voices) are grainy black-and-white photos and news clips of the dictators at work and play. Occasionally a horrific observation is slipped in, like Stalin's remark about his first wife's suicide: "With her died my feeling for all humans." The monologues are spliced together with recurrent images of a gravedigger turning over the earth. These images give the film a ritualistic gravity that gathers force, so that by the end you feel the oppressive weight of the 20th century and begin to realize that many of its deepest mysteries can never be solved. How was it that tyrants played such a large and devastating role in 20th-century history? And what, if anything, separates them from the rest of us? The apparent banality of their lives suggests that far from being different from everybody, they were ordinary people. This is a painful idea to swallow, but in the context of the program's other films it makes a tragic kind of sense."
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As the world watched in horror, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Like many who watched the unfolding drama on television news, director Spike Lee was shocked not only by the scale of the disaster, but by the slow, inept and disorganized response of the emergency and recovery effort. Lee was moved to document this modern American tragedy, a morality play witnessed by people all around the world. The result is WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. The film is structured in four acts, each dealing with a different aspect of the events that preceded and followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New Orleans.
A Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world’s most barbaric figures: Idi Amin. Impressed by Dr. Garrigan’s brazen attitude in a moment of crisis, the newly self-appointed Ugandan President Amin hand picks him as his personal physician and closest confidante. Though Garrigan is at first flattered and fascinated by his new position, he soon awakens to Amin’s savagery--and his own complicity in it. Horror and betrayal ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs and escape Uganda alive. 
THE DEVIL’S MINER is the story of 14-year-old Basilio Vargas and his 12-year-old brother Bernardino, who work in the ancient Cerro Rico silver mines of Bolivia. It is believed that over eight million workers have perished in the mines since the 16th century. Raised without a father and living in extreme poverty with their mother and six-year-old sister on the slopes of the mine, the boys assume many adult responsibilities. It takes two months’ work just to afford the clothing and supplies vital to their education. Without an education, the brothers have no chance to escape their destiny in the silver mines. The Vargas boys chew coca leaves to stave off hunger and keep their wits about them during their long hours in the mines, where they also present offerings to El Tío, the malevolent spirit that is believed to reside there. Each mine has its own statue of the horned demon who guards the mine’s riches. According to local legend the mines are the exclusive province of El Tío, the protector and destroyer of the miners. El Tío is a miner’s only hope of salvation in this heavily Catholic region, where the people believe that the spirit of God does not exist in the hellish underworld inside the mountain. 
On November 17, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to an isolated rain forest in Guyana to investigate the concerns of his San Francisco-area constituents. Their alarming stories focused on a jungle compound known as Jonestown, a group called the Peoples Temple, and its leader, Rev. Jim Jones. According to news filtering back to America, U.S. citizens were being held against their will in prison camp conditions. There were allegations of physical and sexual abuse and even rumors of a planned mass suicide. Congressman Ryan, an impassioned human rights advocate, decided to get the facts for himself. Within forty-eight hours, Ryan, Jones, and over 900 Jonestown settlers were dead -- casualties of the largest mass murder-suicide in history. In the next few days, horrifying details of cyanide-laced soft drinks and disturbing images of children poisoned by their parents emerged from the jungle. American Experience goes beyond the salacious headlines to provide a revealing portrait of Jones, his followers, and the times that produced the calamity in the Guyanese jungle. The film's compelling narrative is told by the people who know the story firsthand, including Jonestown survivors, Temple defectors, and the families of the dead.
IKIRU is a classic Japanese motion picture written and directed by the acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (RASHMON, SEVEN SAMARAI). IKIRU, which means 'to live,' is about Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a Tokyo office chief whose stamp of disapproval falls on almost any project, regardless of merit. Gray and unemotional, he's less a man than a stolid piece of furniture, a bureaucrat who might as well be a bureau. Then he learns he has stomach cancer, and takes stock of all he has left undone. Replaying IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but in reverse gear, the movie sends him on a journey through Tokyo's nighttown to demonstrate that, no, his life as husband, father, worker didn't make a difference. He might as well never have been born. Kurosawa makes Watanabe's conversion, revival, resurrection as inspiring as it is pure. And Shimura, a superb actor, makes his character a plausible saint, who can find poetry in a simple song, or sitting on a playground swing.
Take current scandals such as the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or Enron’s financial collapse ... you’d like to think you’d act differently. But when put in certain situations, are you actually powerless to choose good over evil? With THE HUMAN BEHAVIOR EXPERIMENTS Sundance Channel and Court TV team up again to shed new light on the persistence of such evils as racism, abuse and corruption by focusing on four fascinating behavioral experiments from the last 50 years. 
Human Remains is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of this century’s most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives -- their favorite foods, films, habits and sexual preferences. There is no mention of their public lives or of their place in history. The intentional omission of the horrors for which these men were responsible hovers over the film. Human Remains addresses this horror from a completely different angle. Irony and even occasional humor are sprinkled throughout the documentary. This darkly poetic film is based entirely on fact, creatively combining direct quotes and biographical research. Though based on historical figures, Human Remains is contemporary in its implications and ultimately invites the viewer to confront the nature of evil.
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