Films for Teaching Peace

Over a decade ago Bush administration forced the United States into a war so poorly prepared and executed it soon turned into a complete catastrophe. The fact of how the bureaucrats misled the country has been already expressed, but they couldn’t have done it by themselves; they needed an obedient and docile press, to propagate their disinformation as actual news and encourage them to continue to do so.

Call of the Peace Pagoda is an intimate portrait of the Japanese and American Buddhists who live at the first Peace Pagoda built in the United States, located in rural western Massachusetts.

The film stars Marlee Matlin (in an Oscar-winning performance) and William Hurt as employees at a school for the deaf: a deaf custodian and a hearing speech teacher, whose conflicting ideologies on speech and deafness create tension and discord in their developing romantic relationship.

In the 53-minute documentary film Coexist, Rwanda’s unprecedented social experiment in government-mandated reconciliation is revealed for the first time through the eyes of a diverse range of survivors: victims, perpetrators, and those who bore witness to the 1994 genocide.

Control Room is a documentary film about Al Jazeera and its relations with the US Central Command (CENTCOM), as well as the other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Crash features racial and social tensions in Los Angeles.

Traces the grassroots strategies of education and organization against rape in India after Jyoti Singh’s death.

To avoid a potentially explosive scandal when the U.S. President goes into a coma, an affable temp agency owner with an uncanny resemblance, is put in his place.

A nun, while comforting a convicted killer on death row, empathizes with both the killer and his victim’s families.

The story of a heroic Lutheran youth leader, pastor, and theologian, in Nazi Germany.

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

The rise of musical singing group The Supremes and their battles to control their own destiny.

The story of an Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their lives in order to press for a grassroots movement for nonviolence and peace.

Bolivian film extras launch a protest against the privatization of their water supply, which parallels the Spanish conquest and exploitation of the New World.

A documentary about modern and creative forms of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.

Eyes on the Prize tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Winner of numerous awards, Eyes on the Prize is the most critically acclaimed documentary on civil rights in America.

Faces of the Enemy follows social psychologist Sam Keen as he unmasks how individuals and nations dehumanize to justify the inhumanity of war.

An 18-year-old boy joins 92 squadron of Her Majesty’s Air Force.

For centuries, the United States government has taken Native American children away from their tribes, devastating parents and denying children their traditions, culture, and identity. First Light documents these practices from the 1800s to today, and tells the story of an unprecedented experiment in truth-telling and healing for Wabanaki people and child welfare workers in Maine.

Palestinian nonviolent struggles in the town of Bi’lin. Shot entirely by Palestinians.