— by BEV QUESTAD — We’ve heard that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in incurable. This documentary, featured at this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, puts this assumption and the very description of PTSD into question. This outstanding doc follows two US veterans from t[...]
Author Archive
Review: Mending the Line
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is the perfect Veteran Day’s film. It is the story of a WWII vet named Frank Moore and his reconciliation with the unspeakable inhumanity he suffered in war interwoven with his passion for a fishing rod, nature and a beautiful wife. Miraculously, there is a save[...]
Review: Seeds of Hope
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is the story of Masika Katsuva, a Congolese woman of extraordinary resolve and resiliency. Though she has wanted to kill herself many times, and though she sometimes prays to God to take her life just so she can get some rest, Masika is a transformer of spirits an[...]
Review: Return to Homs
— by BEV QUESTAD — The new Homs sidewalk is a passage through the crashed out walls of uninhabited apartments inside bombed-out buildings. If you want to get somewhere, just take a mallet and make holes in a series of walls. Eventually you will make it to the end of the block where you c[...]
Review: Reaching for the Stars (aka Sepidah)
— by BEV QUESTAD — So we finally have it in an innocent documentary about a young girl interested in astronomy. “If you do something wrong I’ll kill you. I swear to God. Whether it’s my own daughter or my sister’s. I mean it.” Dialogues like this are just one reason for the imp[...]
Review: Private Violence
— by BEV QUESTAD — The most quizzical thing about women who are being abused is their reticence to get out of their situation. Some people think it’s because they are poor and dependent upon the man. “Where else can they go to support their children?” we wonder. But in this film, t[...]
Review: Big Men
— by BEV QUESTAD — “Is there some society that you know that doesn’t run on greed?” Executive produced by Brad Pitt, “Big Men” opens with this question. It also tells the true story, with impressive access and documentation, about a little Texas company that finds oil in Ghana.[...]
Review: Rocks in My Pockets
— by BEV QUESTAD — In “Rocks in my Pockets,” writer/director/animator Signe Baumane investigates a familial trail of five suicides and her own dark challenge. Coincidentally, as soon as I finished watching this film, a respected friend messaged me that his Nepali colleague, with a wi[...]
Review: Song of the New Earth
— by BEV QUESTAD — Tom Kenyon is a sound healer who does not expect anyone to believe his story. He has even investigated the possibility that his visions, voices and experiences might be signs of mental illness. But what is universally agreed upon is that Tom Kenyon is extraordinary and[...]
Review: Casualties of the State
“Treason is inciting war and profiting from it at the expense of American lives.” – statement from “Casualties of the State.” — by BEV QUESTAD — Back in the ‘70s, US protesters claimed patriot status. Brought up by World War II dads who survived unspeakable ha[...]
Review: Half-Brother
— by BEV QUESTAD — Invited to a dinner party, Sarah and Michael just don’t seem to be on the same page. Sarah is an attractive, self-confident New York City gal. Within hours Michael is going to lose her, his job and apartment. With nowhere else to go, he ironically returns to his fami[...]
Review: I Believe in Unicorns
— by BEV QUESTAD — “I Believe in Unicorns” is a lovely coming-of-age story. It’s based on that transition from what we hope and think might be possible, that fairytale mindset, to reality. We expect that overcoming challenges will result in reaching our goal. But writer/dir[...]
Review: Second Opinion
— by BEV QUESTAD — We’ve heard it before, the search for cancer has grown to such proportions that finding a cure would actually be counter-positive for an entire industry earning millions from the research. That Ralph Moss should innocently uncover in the 1970’s an example of this p[...]
Review: A Play of Bullets: Ram-Leela
— by BEV QUESTAD — Having read the original Shakespearean version of “Romeo and Juliet” more than 100 times with my high school English students, who would think that a campy Indian rendition would break me down to tears? “A Play of Bullets: Ram-Leela” is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’[...]