Every nine seconds, an American teen drops out of high school. But it doesn't have to be that way. Ten9Eight, an inspirational new film underwritten by the John Templeton Foundation, shows us how entrepreneurship is helping urban kids transcend their impoverished backgrounds--creating hope, teaching lessons, and generating all kinds of opportunity. Sign up to learn more-- and watch for this film in a theater near you.
The Stoning of Soraya M. opened in select theaters on Friday. Don't miss this moving and terribly important film about an Iranian woman who was stoned to death after being falsely accused of adultery. It's a reminder to us all how important individual rights and the rule of law are -- and of how the absence of freedom translates into a devaluing of human life.
This Saturday, The Cartel will screen at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. The screening is at 10 pm at the Philadelphia Soundstages, 1600 N. 5th Street. Director Bob Bowdon will host a Q&A afterward. Get tickets here.
The Jersey Film Festival has named The Cartel a featured film, and has given it a select slot on opening night. The film will screen at 8 pm at the Axelrod Theater, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Monmouth County, 100 Grant Avenue, Deal, NJ. There will be a director Q&A afterward. Buy tickets here.
Additional screenings at the Jersey Shore festival will take place on July 14, at 8 pm, also at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Monmouth County, and on July 15 at 7 pm at the Showroom, 708 Cookman Avenue, Asbury Park.
Be there!
"Liberty on the Big Screen" Roundtable - Part 1 from America's Future Foundation on Vimeo.
Last march, the America's Future Foundation hosted a roundtable discussion entitled Liberty on the Big Screen. MPI fellow and 2081 director Chandler Tuttle joined Duncan Scott (Duncan Scott Productions), Maura Flynn (documentary producer, publicist, and board member at American Film Renaissance), Michael Pack (Manifold Productions) and Tanja Stumberger (research associate at the Cato Institute) to talk about recent movies that promote the values of freedom, and to assess how the 2009 Oscar nominations stack up against free market values.
Check out the video above.
The Cartel ran away with the Audience Award at last month's Hoboken International Film Festival--and is coming soon to the Jersey Shore Film Festival and the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. Check out audience reactions in the clip above.
Meanwhile, critics keep raving.
The Hudson Reporter says that filmmaker Bob Bowdon "can connect the dots."
In a review that ran in seven papers across New Jersey, Trenton bureau chief for Gannett City Newspapers, Bob Ingle, says "Reading about [the problem] is one thing. Seeing it makes you want to yell at the screen."
And Canada's Society for Quality Education says, "While this documentary looks at American education, there are still enough parallels to Canadian education that might make it worthwhile viewing. Let's hope the Toronto Film Festival and other Canadian film venues think so too. While school kids in Canada are force-fed "An Inconvenient Truth", this one looks as if it might shake things up on the education scene."
Watch for this important film coming to a theater near you.
The Cartel has been named an official selection of the 2009 Jersey Shore Film Festival. It will screen on the evening of July 8 -- and we'll post times and venues and ticket information once it becomes available.
MPI is proud to announce that The Cartel, Bob Bowdon's unrelenting and eye-opening look at the failure of our K-12 schools, enjoyed a highly successful screening Saturday at the Hoboken International Film Festival.
Bob Ingle, the Trenton Bureau Chief for Gannett New Jersey newspapers, raved about the film:
The audience was spellbound at the jaw-dropping corrupti0n and waste that has resulted in New Jersey's property taxes being the worst in the nation and our kids getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop. The audience laughed as the NJEA president tried to explain why tenured teachers seldom are fired no matter how bad they are. They snickered at Corzine's education commissioner, Lucille Davy, who couldn't explain why charter school applications are turned down. They saw Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts tell reporters there are no sacred cows in Corzine's budget then saw Corzine brag about adding more education money, probably headed for some rat hole.There were the kids crying because they lost out in the lottery to get one of the open seats at a good charter school. They laughed as the film demonstrated if car manufacturers were assigned districts like schools some people would have no choice but to buy a Yugo.
This film is like a sharp stick in the eye. It should be seen by anyone who votes or pays taxes in New Jersey or plans to. More than that, it should be seen by Davy, Corzine and the members of the Legislature who stand behind this fraud of a "thorough and efficient system" of education.
My guess is Corzine lacks the courage to sit for it. It will be shown at more film festivals, then theaters then dvd. Watch it before you vote.
Coming soon: The Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, where The Cartel has just been named an official selection. The festival runs from June 25-28; details will be posted here when they become available.
From a staff editorial in this morning's New York Times:
American law, with its strong First Amendment traditions, makes it hard to sue authors for libel. To get around these protections, book subjects have been suing American authors in England, where the libel law is much less writer-friendly. Two states -- New York and Illinois -- have already adopted laws prohibiting "libel tourism," and several more, including Florida and California, may soon join them.That is a good start, but it still leaves writers with only a patchwork of protection. Congress needs to pass a law that makes clear that no American court will enforce libel judgments from countries that provide less protection for the written word.
The dangers to authors and free speech are clear in the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, who wrote a book in 2003 alleging that a prominent Saudi businessman financed terrorism. The book was published in the United States, but because a few copies were sold over the Internet in England, the British courts allowed the businessman to sue for libel.
In British law, writers are at a distinct disadvantage. In some cases, the burden is on them to prove the truth of what they have written, rather than on the subject to prove that it was false. Ms. Ehrenfeld decided not to defend herself because she did not believe she should have to appear before a British court. The Saudi businessman was awarded more than $200,000 in damages.
The House of Representatives passed a bill against libel tourism last year. Peter King, Republican of New York, and Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, are sponsoring a stronger bill, which would, among other things, allow writers in Ms. Ehrenfeld's position to countersue for treble damages. Congress should pass one of these versions of the law, preferably the tougher one, which has a companion bill in the Senate.
If authors believe they are too vulnerable, they may be discouraged from taking on difficult and important topics, like terrorism financing, or from writing about wealthy and litigious people. That would not only be bad for writers, it would be bad for everyone.
On Sunday, citizens of Wichita, Kansas, held a demonstration to protest government-run health care. MPI's FreeMarketCure.com project, which features four short films on health care alongside sharp commentary from policy experts, anchored their efforts. Read about it and see photos at WichitaLiberty.org -- and check out the video footage above.
If you aren't following the Motorhome Diaries, you should. These are the chronicles of three friends who took to the road last month to try to track down what freedom means to Americans. They are talking to all kinds of people -- and have their fingers, and their cameras, on the pulse of how the American people are currently thinking about and living out their conceptions of freedom. Increasingly, they are finding an America filled with people who deplore big government and who long for a restoration of individual liberty.
Recently, they sat down with Ron Paul. Check it out.