Oak Cliff church putting on social film series

by Dee Stofko of Dallas Peace Times

First Tuesday Social Justice Film Series designed to raise your consciousness concerning current circumstances in the world in which we live.

In our present environment of rising gasoline, electricity and food prices, do you think there are no bargains left? Are you a skeptic who scoffs at deals because you know there’s a catch? Well, I’m writing to tell you about one of the best kept secrets of “bang for your buck” left in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area – the Unitarian Universalist Church of Oak Cliff’s First Tuesday Social Justice Film Series, presented in partnership with the Dallas Peace Center. Other organizations, including Amnesty International, also sponsor selected films. The Film Series offers movies that actually raise your consciousness concerning current circumstances in the world in which we live. After every film, lively discussions with socially-responsible individuals leave you a better and more informed member of the human race.

In the July movie, Injection, the director, Mickey Grant, travels to Kenya, Bangkok, Sofia, Libya, Rome and London in an attempt to discover hidden truths about healthcare workers in Africa. Grant will be on hand to direct the discussion.

Upcoming films include the August movie, Two Towns of Jasper, which looks into the 1998 racially-motivated murder of James Byrd. Two film crews, one black and one white, set out to record the repercussions of this modern-day lynching by following the trials of the men charged with the crime and the reactions of the community members.

September’s movie is Reel Bad Arabs, which dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters. The film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs—from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”—along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotyped images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.

Past films have included Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World, the first documentary to deeply explore the lives of gay and lesbian people in non-western cultures. In Debt We Trust, an Emmy Award winner, explores the relationship between Congress and the credit complex and how it is having an enormously negative impact on the country’s financial health. China Blue, tales us inside a blue-jeans factory in China, where Jasmine and her friends are trying to survive a harsh, slave-like working environment. And War Made Easy exposes a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. All films are shown free of charge at 7:00 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Oak Cliff.