Crime & Conspiracy

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West

Obsession is a film about the threat of Radical Islam to Western civilization. Using unique footage from Arab television, it reveals an 'insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. The film also traces the parallels between the Nazi movement of World War II, the Radicals of today, and the Western world's response to both threats. Featuring interviews with Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Alan Dershowitz, a former PLO terrorist, and a former Hitler Youth Commander

The Devil Came On Horseback

The Devil Came on Horseback presents a first-person account of the genocide in Darfur. Former Marine Captain Brian Steidle joined the African Union in 2004 to help monitor the cease-fire in Sudan. As he puts it, "All I had was a camera, a pen, and paper. I was totally unprepared for what I'd see." An unarmed military civilian, he describes his observations, via voice-over and audio recordings, as filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern alternate between their contemporary footage and his images of slaughtered civilians and incinerated villages. When his contract ends, Steidle leaves in disillusionment. He wrote his reports and took his pictures, but nothing changed. Since reporters lacked the same degree of access, he goes to The New York Times, and they publish his photographs. The soldier-turned-activist proceeds to spread the word everywhere he can. Aside from Steidle, the film features his sister Gretchen Wallace, founder of Global Grassroots (an organization working with female victims in Sudan and Rwanda), and Senator Barack Obama, who has also made Darfur his personal mission. The title comes from a loose translation of janjaweed, the government-backed Arab militias behind the atrocities to which Steidle bore witness. (Steidle and his sister use the same title for the book they wrote together.) As in their previous documentary, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, Sundberg and Stern maintain a measured tone, but their subject's horrifying images speak for themselves. The Devil Came on Horseback is accompanied by Wallace's Supporting Survivors, a short film about Global Grassroots. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

An up-close honest and uncompromising look at the crisis in Darfur THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK exposes the ongoing tragedy in Sudan as seen through the eyes of one American witness.Using the exclusive photographs and first hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle the film goes on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur Sudan where in 2004 Steidle became witness to a genocide that to-date has claimed over 400000 lives. As an official military observer Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate. Unprepared for what he would witness and experience Steidle returned to the U.S. armed with his photographs intent on exposing the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed.A 2007 world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this astonishingly propulsive and dramatic film from award-winning filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (The Trials of Darryl Hunt) is a heartfelt account of what this particular American witness saw and just as important what he did afterward.System Requirements:Running Time: 85 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/HISTORY Rating: NR UPC: 767685101988 Manufacturer No: NNVG101982

The Better Hour: The Legacy of William Wilberforce

This documentary explores the 20 year effort of William Wilberforce to lead the abolition of the British slave trade, a business that was key to the country's economic strength. The film focuses on how strength of character is harnessed in the service of high and seemingly unattainable goals for society. Character and community join together to bring into the world what the English poet William Cowper described as the better hour. The work highlights William Wilberforce s drive and love for humanity and reveals how he and his colleagues took up the cause of abolition of the slave trade at a time when the British economy depended upon slavery.

American Drug War: The Last White Hope

Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media

Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar made this penetrating documentary about the career and views of linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky. While the man is the subject of the movie, the filmmakers wisely and carefully choose not to make Chomsky more important than his insights into the way print and electronic journalism tacitly and often willingly further the agendas of the powerful. We learn a lot about Chomsky's formative experiences as a child, student, academic, activist, and politician (he has campaigned for office), but we learn just as much about the media institutions that deny him access today, from ABC to PBS. The centerpiece of the film, arguably, is a long examination into the history of the New York Times' coverage of Indonesia's atrocity-ridden occupation of East Timor, reportage that (as Chomsky shows us) was absolutely in lock step with the government's unwillingness to criticize an ally. --Tom Keogh

Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, MANUFACTURING CONSENT explores the political life and ideas of world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist Noam Chomsky. Through a dynamic collage of biography, archival gems, imaginative graphics and outrageous illustrations, Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick's award-winning documentary highlights Chomsky's probing analysis of mass media and his critique of the forces at work behind the daily news. Available for the first time anywhere on DVD, MANUFACTURING CONSENT features appearances by journalists Bill Moyers and Peter Jennings, pundit William F. Buckley Jr., novelist Tom Wolfe and philosopher Michel Foucault. This Edition features an exclusive ten-years-after video interview with Chomsky.

Serial Killers 2-pack

Former FBI agent John Douglas, the inventor of criminal profiling, leads a journey into the minds of the 20th Century's most notorious killers, including Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Steal a Pencil for Me

The true story of the troubled marriage of Jaap and Manja Polak who lived in German occupied Amsterdam. During the war Jaap met and fell in love with Ina Soep. In the Westerbork transit camp they found themselves in the same barrack as well as later in Bergen Belsen. The husband the wife and the girlfriend. This is their story as documented in Jaap and Ina s epistle memoir Steal a Pencil for Me.System Requirements:Running Time: 94 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 798622357625 Manufacturer No: WLV3576

Murder City: Detroit, 100 Years of Crime and Violence

This DVD is the story of Detroit's history of violence and its portrayal in the national media. Filled with archival film & TV footage from the rum wars of the roaring 20s to the drug wars of the 80s and 90s, from the corruption of Jimmy Hoffa and La Cos

Terror's Advocate

In a free society, even the baddest of the bad are entitled to their day in court. Just ask French attorney Jacques Verges, the central figure in director Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate and a fellow who has befriended and defended, with varying degrees of success, a lengthy list of terrorist bombers, serial killers, mass murderers, dictators, Nazis, and other villains. Born in 1925 in Thailand, the offspring of a French father and Vietnamese mother, he came to prominence in mid-1950s Algeria, when he agreed to represent accused bomber and anti-French militant Djamila Bouhired (after helping to get her death sentence repealed, Verges married her). Verges' style and tactics were established early on; viewed by his own government as a mercenary, traitor, and provocateur, he specialized in what he called the "rupture defense," in which he and his associates essentially refused to participate in the court proceedings. His clientele since then has included some of the most notorious scoundrels in 20th Century human history, among them Nazi war criminal Klaus "Butcher of Lyon" Barbie, the leftist revolutionary known as "Carlos the Jackal," Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević, and an array of Palestinian hijackers and "freedom fighters," Islamic terrorists, African dictators, and so on. The Verges interviewed extensively in Schroeder's documentary is a smug, cigar-smoking, and utterly unapologetic man; as passionately as he may believe in the causes he's espoused, and there's little doubt of that, he's clearly quite comfortable with the notoriety, too. As for the documentary itself, what could have been fairly riveting at, say, 90 minutes is laborious, if edifying, at 137. Schroeder (whose previous credits include the likes of Reversal of Fortune and Barfly) uses considerable file footage to provide background and context for Verges' various cases, but with much of the running time occupied by static interviews with long-winded talking heads, Terror's Advocate too often makes your average PBS doc look like an episode of 24. --Sam Graham

Barbet Schroeder takes us down history's darkest paths in his attempt to illuminate the mystery behind an enigmatic figure, Jacques Vergès.

At the height of an illustrious career, Vergès disappeared without trace for eight years. When he returned, Vergès defended unpopular figures from all political fronts and monsters like Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

Superfly: The True, Untold Story of Frank Lucas, American Gangster

In interviews with those who knew him and those who prosecuted him this documentary investigates the life times and criminal career of Frank Lucas one-time Harlem drug leader. The documentary explores some of the claims to fame made about him in the movie "American Gangster" including his connection to La Cosa Nostra the money he made in the drug trade and the development of the Asian drug pipeline. The film makers also investigate Lucas's controversial life as an informant. Anyone wanting to learn the real story behind the Hollywood making of the American Gangster legend should see this documentary.System Requirements:Running Time: 60 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/BIOGRAPHY UPC: 689076177085 Manufacturer No: SC17708