"The documentary has always been a form that conveys urgency, especially when it lays bare the things that a society may wish to keep hidden, or when it records history-in-the-making with compelling immediacy. Stephanie Black's H-2 WORKER was filmed over a three-year period to expose the U.S. Immigration double standard through which workers from the Caribbean are given temporary visas to work dangerous jobs that no American wants in Florida's sugar cane fields, where they suffer near-slavery conditions with no rights or legal protection.[..]" -- Barbara Scharres writing in the November '90 Gazette of the Film Center at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago H-2 WORKER is among the films in the Film Center's presentation this month of "Stranger than Fiction 2 -- Documentary Truth and the Subjective View." I'm including below descriptions of H-2 WORKER and another featured documentary, BERKELEY IN THE SIXTIES, as films to watch for in your area. I will be posting next, separately, the AML resource file "videos" which lists some alternative/progressive, or advocacy videos. Please help if you can by "nominating" other videos or documentary films (I'm not sure whether the two I mentioned are available on video or otherwise for rental for college and local groups' public awareness programs), including a description of the film, and price and ordering information. Rich Winkel and I are working on starting up the AML library -he on setting up an archiver to automatically email files to you upon receiving a command, I on organizing many dozens of files I've collected and/or typed in, and organizing indices of these. People who have relevant files (and the time) are encouraged to compile indices (listings by subject, with file name, size, and terse description) of what they have (e.g. FAIR reports, NicaLine stuff, etc) and send Rich and I copies of these. Soon I hope to post indices of AML resource files and an index of some Central America-related files. Finally, a reminder to those who've still not sent in their AML bios to please do so soon (write me at harelb@zaphod.uchicago.edu if you didn't see the sample bios). Harel ------------------------------------------------------------------ BERKELEY IN THE SIXTIES 1990, Mark Kitchell, USA, 117 min. With Mario Savio, Todd Gitlin, Joan Baez, the Reverend Dr., Martin Luther King Jr., Huey Newton, Governor Ronald Reagan and the Grateful Dead. "`Six years in the making, BERKELEY IN THE SIXTIES emerges as a magnificent documentation not only of the Berkeley campus, various causes, movements and demonstration, but also of its role within (and without) the Bay Area's and the nation's social and political ferment of the tumultuous decade.' --San Francisco Examiner "Winner of the Audience Award at 1990 U.S. Film Festival, this epic saga blends archival footage with present-day interviews with 15 activists from the era (including Chicago's Jack Weinberg, who is now coordinator of Greenpeace's Great Lakes Toxics Project) to trace the rise and fall of the student movement of the Sixties in one of American's most vocal and volatile communities. Kitchell begins the story in 1960 with a campus protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee in which students are hosed down and dragged away by police. By 1964 the civil rights movement has claimed activist attention. Sit-ins by students force an end to discriminatory hiring practices at the Palace Hotel. When the University administration restricts campus political activity, it sparks a major demonstration centering on freedom of expression, and resulting in over 800 arrests. "With the escalation of the war in Viet Nam, the nature of the student protests change; a non-violent, anti-war counter culture emerges. But by 1967, the Berkeley radicals turn again to more active resistance, attempting to shut down the Oakland Induction Center during Stop the Draft week. The Black Power movement comes to the fore in 1969 with the formation of the Black Panthers, a group which becomes a focus for revolutionary hopes and strident politics. The chronicle end dramatically in 1969 with the merging of the peaceful counter-culture and the more radical element to create a People's Park on a plot of university-owned land in downtown Berkeley. Their action provokes a violent response from the police and National Guard (AS)" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - H-2 WORKER 1989, Stephanie Black, USA, 70 min. "`H-2 WORKER is that rare hybrid that succeeds as both film and advocacy. Its look and form is smooth and sophisticated...it solidly frames issues about the economy, employment, and the treatment of workers who seem just steps away from slavery.' --The New York Times "Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at this year's U.S. Film Festival, H-2 WORKER exposes the little-known travesty of justice which has taken place annually in Florida's sugar cane fields since 1943. Each year, more than 10,000 men from Jamaica and other Caribbean Islands are granted six month H-2 visas, giving them temporary guest worker status so that they may harvest the cane by hand. It is a job so dangerous -- and so underpaid -- that no American is willing to do it. Filming clandestinely over three-and-a-half years, Black documents the horrifying way in which the H-2 workers are treated by the sugar corporations. Kept in over-crowded barracks, given meager rations, paid less than minimum wages, and deported if they do not do exactly as they are told, these men must endure conditions nothing short of scandalous. (AS)" ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Film Center can be reached at: The Film Center The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard Chicago, IL 60603 Tel (312)443-3733