The World is Watching is a political documentary about the ethical dilemmas of news gathering in the electronic age. Focusing on international journalists in Nicaragua during the negotiations of the Arias Peace Plan in November 1987, the film follows an ABC News crew in the field and their interaction with editors in New York, offering a rare look at how news is reported, shaped, and broadcast.
Tag: 1980s
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was a revolutionary thinker whose ideas were to have a profound effect on the way governments plan their economic policies. Described by Bertrand Russell as one of the cleverest men he had met, Keynes was concerned with the collapse of prosperity between WWI & WWII, and urged a policy of expansion rather than austerity. The program follows his personal life and work using still and moving picture documents, paintings and cartoons in illustration.
Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two elderly residents at a nursing home for senior citizens, strike up an acquaintance. Neither seems to have any other friends, and they start to enjoy each other’s company. Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy, and they begin playing a series of games that Fonsia always wins. Weller’s inability to win a single hand becomes increasingly frustrating to him, while Fonsia becomes increasingly confident. While playing their games of gin, they engage in lengthy conversations about their families and their lives in the outside world.
With fast changing visuals and moods, an artist presents his family’s twentieth-century story. Although Stalin’s sour image is in the background, a boy’s childhood is a dreamlike world of colors and a butterfly. War interrupts youth and romance. Hitler, concentration camps, and conflagration finally give way to a mother and child (father is missing in the war), birds, beauty and more butterflies. The child grows. Pop culture arrives from America, but the grim shadow of Stalinism remains. The artist leaves to study in the West. Art, animation, sex, and love nourish him. He earns a diploma!
A fictional account of Orson Welles’ real passage to Brazil where he was supposed to film a cultural film called “It’s All True”, to present a positive image of Brazilian people and the country’s grandiosity’s to the U.S. government, a project that was part of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. But Welles got enchanted with everything around him and got distracted from the project, that never got fully made. This movie speculates what really happened to Welles that prevented him from fulfilling his work.
Set in 1894, when Oscar Wilde’s close friendship with Bosie Douglas provokes a quarrel with Bosie’s father, Lord Queensberry. Oscar eventually charges Lord Queensberry with criminal libel. However, the libel suit spectacularly backfires. This BBC miniseries charts the steady slide into disrepute of the notable author and playwright, and stars (a very young) Michael Gambon in the title role.
Policeman Jack Welles finds himself in possession of the pay off from a huge drug deal. He decides to keep the money but his plans turn sour when he discovers his wife with her young lover. In the ensuing struggle the lovers mistakenly believe they have killed Jack. They take the money and run, pursued by Jack and a hit man from the drug syndicate. The action explodes as they each fight for their own desires and obsessions.
When a deranged janitor announces his plot to hold a university to ransom, a plucky young student and her police bodyguard find themselves pushed to the limit as the killer pursues them across campus. Hungarian director Jenő Hódi captures the seamier of New York City circa 1989 in a film reminiscent of the work of his mentor Brian De Palma.