Global Views
This page is a list of mostly films and some books from a more global perspective which have had lasting impact on my thinking. They are worth reading and seeing, especially as part of the Model UN class.
Other films can be found on the Japanese Literature and Indian Literature or Tibetan Literature pages.
Books
General
Cooper, Anderson. Dispatches from the Edge (2006). CNN correspondent's memoirs of 2005, tracing events from the Asian tsunami to Hurricane Katrina. Interspersed with stories of his family and personal angst, Cooper reports on scenes and people which never reached the media--Somalia, Niger, Iraq, and others--revealing part of the media bias which works to promote American isolationism. He argues implicitly for human responsibility. A sometimes graphic display of humanity. A quick read, not in-depth on any issue, just a different lens than we might be used to.
Africa
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007). Beah's book follows his young life through the long civil war of Sierra Leone and through his rehabilitation and work at the UN. I found it interesting how he distanced his narrative from the psychological trauma created by the soldiers who recruited him (brainwashing, addiction to brown-brown {a cocaine-gunpowder mixture}, etc.), reporting it distantly, objectively, and in fragments. Nevertheless, his fortune in surviving countless times while his friends and family around him are killed make this an incredible read. I also listened to the audio book version which he reads himself.
Asia
Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones. (2004). This is the third book on China I'm reading in preparation for our summer trip, and so far it's the best. Hessler digs into the politics from the view of various Chinese minorities.
Films
Africa
Battle of Algiers (1965). Banned in France for years, this French film examines the crackdown on Muslims in 1957, a tactic which could only have backfired against a people determined to exercise the right to self-determination. A disturbing look at the insurgent side of a war on terror.
Lost Boys of Sudan. (2003). Documentary on two young men who were refugees from Sudan's civil war with its south in the 1990s. ("Jesus Christ is in my hand. SPLA is in my hand.") They find their way to a Kenyan refugee camp and are selected as part of a limited UN refugee relocation program, to come to America. ("Don't act like those people in baggy jeans.") As eye-opening as the African scenes are, seeing our country through their eyes is moving.
A Panther in Africa. (2004). In 1969, a Kansas-city man is arrested for transporting guns, but flees to Tanzania to live instead. He considers himself at war with the US government, but belongs neither to Africa nor America.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2004). Commander of UN forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, Dallaire returns 10 years later to see the country's progress and to re-live those events. A stunning portrayal of political impotency and bureaucracy.
Sometimes in April (2005). While Shake Hands with the Devil reveals the political debacle of Rwanda, this HBO film shows the human side from the perspective of two brothers on two sides of the conflict, a powerful and disturbing film. Taken together, the two films uncover a tragedy of seemingly inevitable human failure.
Eastern Europe
The Brooklyn Connection: How to Build a Guerrilla Army.(2005). Albanian Muslim Florin Krasniqi raised $30 million to outfit the Kosovo Liberation Army, exploiting liberal American gun laws. The hour-long documentary reveals his funding of the John Kerry campaign and the seeming innocence of his opaque family life while shipping major arms to renew fighting with the Serbs. Disturbing in how casual the movement is both about its use of the weapons against civilians and its movement of the weapons wrapped in privately-raised humanitarian supplies.
Middle East
Paradise Now (2005). Disturbing and human film about two men who volunteer to be suicide bombers in Israel-occupied Palestine. The issues are hardly simple, the terrorists hardly brainwashed automatons. And the tragedies are many.
Topics
The Future of Food. (2005). Frightening documentary on genetically-modified organisms (GMO) crops and how its politics works. Includes details on Monsanto Corporation's techniques and US policy along with discussions of Canadian and Mexican farmers. The most frightening is the terminator gene which prevents plants from yielding seed at all. A great introduction on GMOs.