War is focus of documentary screenings this week

Aside from the occasional “Bowling for Columbine,”
documentaries often don’t get media attention.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, along with the
UCLA Film and Television Archive, is combatting this with its
annual series on outstanding contemporary documentaries. Chosen
from the pool of applicants from the previous years’ Academy
Awards, two films of a similar theme are given a free screening
each Tuesday at the James Bridges Theater.

The first part of the series continues until Dec. 17. War is the
focus of this week’s films with “Sisters in
Resistance” and “Unfinished Symphony,” screening
tonight at 7:30 p.m.

“Sisters in Resistance” tells the story of four
young women actively involved in the French resistance against the
Nazi occupation. After passing messages, hiding refugees,
code-breaking, and distributing underground newspapers, they are
captured by the Gestapo and sent to a labor concentration camp for
women.

“I was so taken by the whole story,” said director
Maia Wechsler. “These women weren’t Catholics or Jews,
they were Christian, they could have stayed home and done
absolutely nothing “¦ like so many other people
did.”

Told almost entirely through group and individual interviews,
the film chronicles their journey to the camp and the extreme
hardships that formed lifelong friendship between the women.

“In documentary film you get to see the faces,”
Wechsler said. “You get to experience what the subject
experiences and hear in his or her words what happened.”

Previously a journalist by trade, Wechsler entered the field of
documentary film making in 1993, and “Sisters in
Resistance” was the first film she directed.

Bestor Cram, producer and co-director of “Unfinished
Symphony” also uses an emotionally anchored film style.

“I was always interested in using films to change hearts
and minds “¦ bring a world unknown to people to be understood
in its most empathetic and horrific ways,” Cram said.

Vietnam veterans are the focus of “Unfinished
Symphony,” specifically in a 1971 protest march tracing Paul
Revere’s ride in reverse. Told in three sections, the film
combines archival footage of the Vietnam War with recent interviews
and rarely seen footage of the march itself.

The march went smoothly until Lexington, where town officials
refused to let the veterans sleep on the Battle Green (site of the
first battle in the Revolutionary War). In a historic act of civil
disobedience, over 400 veterans and townspeople were arrested, the
largest arrest in the history of Massachusetts.

“The film is a way not only to recall something that
happened 30 years back, but also present the role of dissent in
democracy, which may be more urgent in the political times we live
in then ever before,” Cram said.

When the project originally came to Cram he rejected it since he
had already made several films about Vietnam, but after
reconsidering the impact of the incident and the 1971 march footage
shot, he changed his mind.

“It was interesting both in its raw nature and the way it
was disturbingly authentic because it captured the nation, the
issues and the times all at once,” Cram said.

These films both work towards capturing the visceral and
political power the documentary form allows, and the series hopes
to capitalize on that.

Information on other upcoming films can be found at
www.oscars.org, including show times and synopses.