Films with: Puttnam, David

Brother, can you spare a dime?

This documentary juxtaposes newsreel footage, film clips and period music in an eye-opening look at the Great Depression. Many of the movies created in the 1930s featured strong social commentary, while others offered pure escapism and fed a fascination with a dazzling world out of reach to the everyday American. Through a contrast between the fantasy of film and the reality of everyday life, a fascinating perspective on the Great Depression and Hollywood's golden age is presented. Also includes political speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt and others.

DVD 839

Midnight express

This film is based on a true story. William Hayes, a naive young American vacationing with his girlfriend in Istanbul, Turkey, tries to smuggle a couple of kilos of hash out of the country. He is caught, thrown into a Turkish prison, and subsequently raped, tortured, and forced into the brutality that defines the inmates' constant struggle for survival. There are other foreigners there, many for smuggling, and word is that the only way out of the jail is by dying, or taking "the midnight express." Max, his friend and fellow inmate swears, "That train doesn't run around here."

DVD 300

Mission

An epic about a man of the sword and a man of the cloth who unite to shield the Guarani South American Indian tribe from brutal subjugation by 18th-century colonial empires.

DVD 7801

War of the buttons

No stones in slingshots. No skirmishes too late in the day. They're rules of war for the youngsters of two neighboring Irish villages. And here's another rule: if you spit-shake on something, you better follow through. Kids will be kids. But sometimes they, in their own fanciful ways, will be adults. It's a winning tale in which buttons are the spoils of a would-be war.

DVD 9824