Film Series and Book Club Schedules

FILM SERIES

Films are shown first Monday of every month at 2 pm. The Travelling UNAFF is at the Avenidas Senior Center in Mountain View.  Admission is free.

Download PDFs of schedule for July - September 2010.
 
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June 14, 2010 – Monday:
Speaking in Tongues
Directors/Producers: Marcia Jarmel, Ken Schneider (USA) 60 minutes
In a time where thirty-one states have passed English Only initiatives, one urban school
district is exploring the provocative notion that speaking a foreign language can be a
national asset. We follow four diverse students and their families as they encounter the
challenges and delights of becoming fluent in two languages. As we witness their journey,
we see how speaking more than one language changes them, their families, their
communities, and maybe even the world.

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July 12, 2010 – Monday, 2pm: American Outrage
Directors / Producers: Beth Gage, George Gage
(USA) 56 minutes
Carrie and Mary Dann are feisty Western Shoshone sisters who have endured five
terrifying livestock roundups by armed federal marshals in which more than a thousand of
their horses and cattle were confiscated—for grazing their livestock on the open range
outside their private ranch. That range is part of 60 million acres recognized as Western
Shoshone land by the U.S. in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, but in 1974 the U.S. sued
the Dann sisters for trespassing on that land, without a permit. That set off a dispute
between the Dann sisters and the U.S. government that swept to the U.S. Supreme Court
and eventually to the Organization of American States and the UN. The U.S. Bureau of
Land Management insists the sisters are degrading the land. The Dann sisters say the real
reason is the resources hidden below this seemingly barren land, their Mother Earth. It so
happens that Western Shoshone land is the second largest gold producing area in the
world.

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August 9, 2010 – Monday, 2pm: Tapestries of Hope
Director: Michealene Cristini Risley Producers: Michealene Cristini Risley, Anand
Chandrasekaran, Ray Arthur Wang, Christopher Bankston (Zimbabwe) 74 minutes
Zimbabwe is the number one AIDS-infected country in the world. Part of the rapid
increase in AIDS in Zimbabwe stems from a single barbaric practice: traditional healers
counsel that in order to cure his AIDS, all a man needs to do is rape a virgin. As a result,
young girls and even infants are being raped and thereby contracting AIDS. Betty Makoni
is a 34-year-old African woman, a child abuse survivor, activist and founder of the Girl
Child Network (GCN) formed to assist in the rescue of girls from rape and abuse, and to
create a strong path for them back to a normal life. The core focus of this nonprofit is to
create a total physical, emotional, and spiritual renewal for these girls as well as to
eradicate all forms of abuse. Part of that mandate includes ensuring that girls return to
school should they choose to do so.

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September 13, 2010 – Monday, 2pm: Houston We Have a Problem
Director: Nicole Torre Producers: Nicole Torre, Eric Mofford
(USA) 83 minutes
Houston We Have a Problem steps inside the energy capital of the world to see the hard
truths about oil, from the Texas oilmen themselves. For decades American presidents have
cried the woes of our nation’s addiction to foreign oil. Hollow campaign promises project a
future that can be independent and sustainable. Yet the truth is, the energy policy of the
USA has only been a strategy of defense, not offense. We are fighting a cold war on
energy, and both Wall Street and Main Street have no idea what to do. We will see a new
form of Wildcatting in alternatives, and learn how many oilmen believe that being shackled
to cheap oil is only destroying our empire. Many old timers realize that the oil industry must
change, advising that it is going to take everything to meet America’s future energy needs.

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BOOK CLUB

Meetings are on the 3rd Tuesday of every month 7:30 - 9pm. Hosted by the UNA-USA Midpeninsula Chapter, the book club focuses on United Nations issues and related topics. Read the book and join us for the discussion! Free admission.
Meeting location: 1945 Mount Vernon Court #15, Mountain View ( meeting location phone: (650) 968-1174 )

Download PDFs of schedules for July - September 2010.


June 15, 2010: The Sewing Circles of Herat by Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb, at 21, left suburban England for Peshawar on the frontier of the Afghan war. Captivated, she
spent two years tracking the final stages of the mujaheddin victory over the Soviets, as Afghan friends smuggled
her in and out of their country in a variety of guises. Returning to Afghanistan after the attacks on the World
Trade Center to report for Britain's Sunday Telegraph, Lamb discovered the people no one else had written
about: the abandoned victims of almost a quarter century of war. Among them, the brave women writers of
Herat who risked their lives to carry on a literary tradition under the guise of sewing circles; the princess whose
palace was surrounded by tanks on the eve of her wedding; the artist who painted out all the people in his
works to prevent them from being destroyed by the Taliban; and Khalil Ahmed Hassani, a former Taliban
torturer who admitted to breaking the spines of men and then making them stand on their heads. Christina
Lamb's evocative reporting brings to life these stories. (Summary from publisher’s website: www.harpercollins.com)

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July 20, 2010: One Minute to Midnight (Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War)
by Michael Dobbs
Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and
Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour
chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came
to Armageddon. Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev’s plan to destroy the U.S. naval
base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of
Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside
Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board. Dobbs takes us inside
the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev—rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean
of ideological suspicion—agonize over the possibility of war.
Summary from publisher’s website: www.randomhouse.com

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August 17, 2010: The Land Between Two Rivers (A Novel of Ancient Babylon) by Jo Ford
When the young girl, Nitocris, leaves her village to live in the Babylon harem of King Nebuchadnezzar, she
enters a Palace life filled with concubines and courtiers, princes vying for the throne, and scribes serving warring
gods. Although a favorite of the King, Nitocris finds harem life confining. By law, she is to become a queen, but a
shocking event changes that. When she proposes the building of a garden mountain, the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon, the King approves the project. The challenges of building a mountain in the desert and watering its
grandiose gardens bring the temptations of forbidden love to three couples who test the boundaries set by
tradition, the king and religion. The oracular priestess and the royal Overseer try to maneuver skillfully through
the perils of Palace treachery as the improbable gardens begin to rise above the converging Tigris and Euphrates
rivers. Jo Ford is a professor emeritus, retired from teaching English at Mission College in Santa Clara, California
and lives in Sunnyvale, California. Summary from publisher’s website: www.iuniverse.com

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September 21, 2010: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang – By Zhao
Ziyang – Editor: Adi Ignatius Translated and Edited: Bao Pu and Renee Chiang
Prisoner of the State is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to China and
who was dethroned at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 for trying to stop the massacre.
Zhao spent the last years of his life under house arrest. An occasional detail about his life would slip out, but
scholars and citizens lamented that Zhao never had his final say. But Zhao did produce a memoir, secretly
recording on audio tapes the real story of what happened during modern China’s most critical moments. He
provides intimate details about the Tiananmen crackdown, describes the ploys and double crosses used by
China’s leaders, and exhorts China to adopt democracy in order to achieve long-term stability. The China that
Zhao portrays is not some long-lost dynasty. It is today’s China, where its leaders accept economic freedom but
resist political change. Zhao might have steered China’s political system toward openness and tolerance had he
survived. Summary from publisher’s website: www.simonandschuster.com