|
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Yap: Bugler II
By Januar E.Yap
Meanwhile
I wrote about Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine a few weeks back. The film, which won an Oscar, was a dissection on the United States’ affair with guns, posing the question, “Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?” But let’s leave it at that for now.
In 1934, American Pare Lorentz, along with a young crew, followed dust storms across Montana and Texas. He shot terrifying images of blizzards turning farmlands into deserts. Nature alone was not to be blamed. They believed the storms were results of land misuse, on top of which a social system reeking of inequality.
To answer a world demand for wheat, government pushed the farmers into turning barren steppes into farmlands. Lorentz, along with like-minded composer Virgil Thompson, who provided a haunting musical score, shot tractors descending from the hills with a marching song of the American troops as background. The statement: that farmers were becoming part of the American war machine. The result, Lorentz’s controversial docu, “The Plow That Broke the Plains.”
“The Plow” irked congressmen critical of Roosevelt’s farm policies, seeing it as propaganda, an “election-year stab in the back.” The film infuriated politicians who thought it damaged their states being depicted as wastelands.
Lorentz faced litigation from many directions. A former Paramount executive, then operating a theater in New York, released the film capitalizing on its controversy with an advertisement: “The film they dared us to show! Yet Hollywood has turned its manicured thumb down!”
Fastforward: Bad enough for the Republicans, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911” recently earned the prestigious Cannes festival’s top prize, placing it as the first documentary in fifty years to ever get the distinction. It was the film whose release Disney turned down through its Miramax division.
A New York Times editorial suggested giving Disney the “gold medal for cowardice” “A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political commentary,” it said.
“…Those who see this movie will never view the Bush administration in the same way again,” says Moore.
(e-mail: januaryap@yahoo.com; text: 0927-4908875)
(May 27, 2004 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
