SiCKO - 2007 - Film

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Michael Moore has gotten a lot of grumbles from critics in the past, but his latest documentary on the ailing U.S. healthcare system, SiCKO is an exception to his truth-bending past. Whereas a film like Fahrenheit 9/11 played out more like a personal vendetta against President Bush, SiCKO is a lot less vindictive, and whole lot more substantial, and most importantly, relevant. The profiles of U.S. citizens who were forced to pay thousands of dollars for emergency healthcare juxtaposed against those in Canada, Britain and France who pay not a single cent out of pocket, indeed brought the audience I was with to frequent cheers, applause, gasps, and by the end, plenty of tears.

The thesis of his film is centered on one question: How could the richest nation in the world have one of the poorest healthcare systems?

The short answer is capitalism. Healthcare companies make buckets of cash in the business, and because the unhealthy are a risk to company profits they don't qualify for coverage. What makes Moore's film so compelling is that the issue he dissects is one that effects everyone rather personally: we all need to go to the doctor, and we all deserve to be cared for in an equal way, despite our class or social status.

Personally, I find this the most satisfying and inspiring of Moore's films, partially because he is absent for most of the first half, letting the film's characters reveal their stories a little less forcefully. This was also his funniest film to date, highlighted by his Canadian aunt and uncle's trip to buy traveler’s health insurance before they cross the nearby border in Michigan, and finally, his trip to Guantanamo Bay with disease-stricken 9/11 rescue workers. The latter also shows us the most touching stories of the film, in particular, a woman who pays hundreds of dollars for a medical inhaler in the U.S. pays nickels for the same product in Cuba.

That woman lost her job after 9/11, is on disability, and pays 20% of her monthly income on only one of her medications. It's a supreme injustice, and Moore tells it sympathetically without alienating the audience with political diatribes (perhaps he got most of that out of his system in Fahrenheit 9/11.) And that's the best part of his film, that after years of ranting and venting about the state of U.S. politics he's ready to make change. Leaving the film, there was a genuine sense of productivity. I got the sense that we all knew too much to settle for how things are now. It's no coincidence that healthcare reform is one of the leading issues up for debate in next year's presidential election. Whoever wins the office, Democrat or Republican, it seems unavoidable that healthcare will be near the top of their administration's agenda.

New Film Preview: Heat Wave: An Unnatural Disaster

July 18, 2007

Please excuse my absence recently! I was hired as a research assistant for Judith Helfand, a documentary filmmaker whose newest film Heat Wave: An Unnatural Disaster is in research and production in Chicago this summer.

The work has been time consuming for sure, and that accounts for leaving this blog to rest untouched for as long as I have, though more importantly, the work has been an eye-opening re-introduction to Chicago as I approach my one-year anniversary in this city. The film looks at the 1995 heat wave in Chicago that killed over 700 people, mostly poor, black and elderly citizens living in rough social and housing conditions that prevented them from receiving basic aid, that is, a way to cool down.

I've heard from a lot of people since I began the project who lived in Chicago in July 1995, and many more who still do. I thought it proper to introduce some of the facts and history about the event to satisfy the curiosity of Chicagoans who have heard about the film, and furthermore, to bring light to the topic for a wider audience who may not know about the heat wave at all. Illuminating what happened that one week in July is more than a brief lesson in Chicago history, rather, it sheds light on the kind of social perils and inequalities that continue to haunt urban spaces still today.

The film's thesis is based on Sociologist Eric Klinenberg's book "Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago," which is widely available for interested readers. Roughly 250 pages, Klinenberg's book takes a look at a number of factors that contributed to the high death rate, including the slow response of Mayor Daley and his administration, the local media that was reluctant to cover the event as a disaster, and some very personal accounts from survivors and medical workers alike. In looking at the massive heat wave that brought temperatures as high as 106 degrees combined with a humidity factor that made it feel like it was over 120 degrees, Klinenberg was able to prove that the disaster was an abhorrent example of a severely disabled urban society and government.

People too poor to afford a fan, and too afraid to leave their homes for fear of the violence outside their front doors, literally baked to death inside. Some were too afraid to even open a window. Others refused to accept air conditioning units given out of charity because they couldn't afford the electricity bill. Meanwhile, those with enough money to own and run air conditioning, in general, a population whiter and wealthier, collectively overloaded the local utility company, Commonwealth Edison's generators; for days some went without any electricity at all.

Citywide hundreds of fire hydrants were illegally opened for respite from the heat, only compounding the disaster as the city's water pressure dropped so low that some residents didn't even have running water. Mayor Daley was on vacation when the heat hit; upon his return he spawned a PR campaign that deflected responsibility, even partially, for the matter. Police cars holding decedents outside the city morgue sat 17 in line, the morgue was full, and refrigerated semi-trucks were donated to hold the hundreds of bodies pouring in. Early on, Mayor Daley, almost 15 years later, still Chicago's most contentious political figure, told the press not to "blow it out of proportion" and doubted the Chief Medical Examiner's death toll figures, saying "You can't count everything as heat related."



The history is a devastating one and, as noted, reveals social problems that are common to all American cities. Filmmaker Judith Helfand, a graduate of New York University and an award-winning documentary filmmaker, set out to frame these social injustices with her camera in hopes of initiating social change and progress. I've jumped on board this summer to help her track characters most affected by the past (and indeed the present social circumstances), and otherwise bring the heat wave story up-to-date and in terms that matter today.

The film focuses on two South Side Chicago neighborhoods, North Lawndale and Back of the Yards--two industrial areas that once thrived with commerce and community. By 1995 these areas were beyond disrepair, full of crime and a population afraid to face it on the streets. To initiate change local community leaders gathered and have ever so slowly altered (and continue to alter) the way business is conducted, thus keeping the neighborhood economy flowing.

12 years later local greening activities like community gardening and urban beekeeping are two ways neighbors can use existing spaces (most often empty lots, traditionally a communal drug trade area), and its local citizens for labor. People have a better chance for employment, poorer areas can afford locally grown organic food (rather than packaged and processed staples that have become a detriment to their health), all the while helping to combat global warming.

One of the primary causes of the '95 heat wave was a "Heat Island Effect", essentially a phenomenon caused by too much absorption of heat on paved streets and urban structures. Greening activities effectively alter the environment so there is less absorption and more circulation of heat by plants on rooftop gardens, and in all those empty lots that sprawl across the city.

In the coming months Seen will be a good source for updates on the completion and release of Heat Wave: An Unnatural Disaster. I'd also like to thank filmmaker Judy Hoffman at the University of Chicago, Producer Brei Barr at CLTV-Chicago, and independent photographer John Wright for their assistance in my research. Thanks for the hand!

For more information on director Judith Helfand, check out her website: www.judithelfand.com

The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair - 2007 - DVD projection

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Prisoner: Or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair is in theaters March 30th. Read my review in Four Magazine!

Maxed Out - 2007 - Film

Thursday, February 15, 2007



New review! Read it now in Four Magazine!

Romantico - 2007 - Film

Tuesday, January 9, 2007



The following review will be published in the upcoming print issue of Four Magazine. Release date, TBD.

Romántico is a story about a man, Mexican immigrant Carmelo Muñiz Sánchez. He is a musician who serenades passers-by with his melodies that alternate between bright and melancholy. He is in a “trio” of two men, a keen marketing device for him and his partner, Arturo, who can pick up $50 to $100 per night, probably based on the texture of their character and charm alone.

Carmelo sends his profits home to Mexico where his family, a wife and two daughters subsist on his illegal income. In this strained, and practically estranged, familial structure, Carmelo redefines what it means to be a breadwinner.

In a cramped closet of an apartment that looks more like a garage with painted walls, Carmelo emerges from his sleeping quarters—itself a structure of found items, a kiddie fort of comfort and privacy canopied in bed sheets. This is his home in San Francisco’s Mission District. By day he guards his space from thieving neighbors who steal the milk from his fridge—the door of which is ajar, roaches skittering in and about, and calls home on a corner pay phone, listening to the daily workings of a family that he raises, but cannot see.

In Salvatierra, Mexico, “858” are the numbers of his address on an unidentified street. Here, upon his return from the States, he has a designated place of ownership. Now he is in his family’s presence, but his pride as a father shrinks with his income. $6 a day, or a handful of pesos from the sale of handmade nieves, or snow cones, is scarcely enough to cover the cost of his family’s food, school, and healthcare.

Carmelo sings one lyric, volver, which in translation means “to return.” He is a father and a man in search of a home that strikes a joyful balance among family, work, and community, but seems eternally separated from the spaces he inhabits. Reflections in windows and the traffic against a static background are the things that cross his path constantly, almost imperceptibly; they are fragile symbols that pull him out of space and transient between worlds, always in search of home.