Category Archives: Releases

Coming to PBS’s America ReFramed tomorrow, Tuesday, March 31: YELLOW FEVER

Sophie Rousmaniere’s investigation of the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo debuted via a screening tour of the Navajo Nation in August 2013. Other screenings have included Vision maker, Native Spirit, American Conservation, LA Skins, and the International Uranium film fests.

Rousamaniere’s guide is Tina Garnanez, a young Navajo woman and US Army veteran, who returns home trying to cope with PTSD. When she discovers that multiple family members have died from cancer that could be traced back to radiation exposure from uranium mining, she sets out to explore the dangerous nuclear legacy on her people, as well as the controversy around the potential restarting of mining on Navajo lands. The generally conventional film is most compelling when it keeps its focus on the historical exploitation of the Navajo, who, despite possessing one of the world’s richest stores of uranium, have never benefited financially, and instead seem fated to once again pay for their land with their lives. Rousamaniere unfortunately often follows unrelated threads about Garnanez’s PTSD and other personal matters, which prove an unnecessary distraction from the core story, weakening it as a whole.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, March 24: SIN FRONTERAS/WITHOUT BORDERS

Giorgio Serafini’s look at the plight of deported individuals in Mexico had its premiere at the Atlantic City Cinefest last year.

Mexicali, near the US/Mexico border, is one of the major sites in Mexico where people deported from the US are released. Recognizing that many have no means to make it out of Mexicali, no contacts there, and often not even anywhere else to go to – making them easy prey for criminals – Sergio Tamai opened the Hotel Del Migrante to offer support and shelter. Newly deported individuals may stay for a brief time to get their bearings, or, should they wish to remain on, become volunteers for the hotel and the support group Tamai founded, Angeles Sin Fronteras/Border Angels. When Serafini stays focused on Tamai and the hotel, his doc is its most successful, though still workmanlike at best, but he unfortunately attempts to expand his remit to tackle larger issues around immigration and deportation. The result is a well-intentioned but scattered treatment of a topic that has already been covered extensively elsewhere.

Coming to PBS today, Tuesday, March 24: JAMES BAKER: THE MAN WHO MADE WASHINGTON WORK

Eric Stange’s portrait of the political life of former Secretary of State debuted at Worldfest Houston last year. It now comes to PBS stations around the nation.

Stange and producer John Hesse pull together a remarkable number of political heavy hitters for this interview and narration driven biography, including George and Barbara Bush, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Lesley Stahl, Condoleeza Rice, Mikhael Gorbachev, Thomas L Friedman, Colin Powell, Shimon Peres, and narrator Tom Brokaw. While very conventional in its approach, the film is comprehensive and watchable as it recounts Baker’s influential, if often behind-the-scenes, roles in the halls of Washington DC power, including Ford, Reagan, and both Bush administrations, from overseeing the negotiations of the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, to the beginnings of a would-be peace in the Middle East and the strategy that saw George W Bush contentiously claim the White House.