“We’re number one! We’re number one!”

“War stands for We Are Right.”

Chants like these are heard across America at sporting events, religious activities and in schools.

Named Best Documentary at the Santa Cruz Film Festival in 2008, The Listening Project attempts to uncover answers to the question, “What does the world think of the United States of America?” To find out, filmmakers Dominic Howes and Joel Weber traveled to fourteen countries around the globe, listening to people. Individuals from all walks of life and myriad cultures freely express their stark opinions — both complimentary and condemning — of a nation that may not be loved by all, but leaves few lives untouched. One man said there are many good aspects of the US but it is like complimenting the delicious food served in the restaurant of a sinking ship.

You will not want to miss this film on Tuesday, May 15 at 4:30 pm.

By Lu Schilling

In celebration of Earth Day, Movies That Matters will screen the award winning documentary Rivers and Tides about the British artist Andy Goldsworthy, who creates intricate and ephemeral sculptures from natural materials. The film received a number of awards, including the ‘Best Documentary’ awards of the San Diego Film Critics Society and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Showtime is 4:30 pm on Tuesday, April 17 at the UU Fellowship.

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In conjunction with the Justice Sunday service March 25 titled “Justice is the Human Right to Water”, the documentary Blue Gold: World Water Wars will be screened March 20 at 4:30 pm.

The film will expose these destructive practices that threaten our future safe water supply:

• In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows.
• The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.
• Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit.
• Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain.
• Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.

Join us as we gather together to seek knowledge that gives meaning direction and to our lives.  Free.

By Lu Schilling

Inside Job will be screened February 21 at 4:30 pm at the Fellowship. The film exposes the shocking truth behind the economic meltdown of 2008, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians, and journalists, Inside Job traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships that have corrupted politics, regulation, and academia.

Filmmaker Charles Ferguson gives an unflinching look at some deep-rooted deceptions and shines a light where our focus is needed for enlightenment.  Narrated by Matt Damon, Ferguson begins and ends in Iceland, a flourishing country that gave American-style banking a try–and paid the price. Then he looks at the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of deregulation in the United States.  Ferguson builds his narrative around dozens of players, interviewing authors, bank managers, government ministers, and even a psychotherapist, who speaks to a culture that encourages “greed-is-good” behavior. The number of those who declined to comment, like Alan Greenspan, is even larger. Though the director isn’t as combative as Michael Moore, he asks tough questions and elicits squirms from several participants, notably former Treasury secretary David McCormick and Columbia dean Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush’s economic adviser. Their reactions are understandable, since the borders between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League dissolved years ago; it’s hard to know whom to trust when conflict-of-interest runs rampant. If Ferguson takes Reagan and Bush to task for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he criticizes Clinton for encouraging derivatives and Obama for failing to deliver on the promise of reform.

By Lu Schilling

January 17 at 4:30 pm the documentary Forks Over Knives will be screened and followed by a discussion.

In symbols, this logo means food choices tops surgical stopgaps.

Focusing on the research of two food scientists, this documentary reveals that despite broad advances in medical technology, the popularity of modern processed foods has led to epidemic rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer and simultaneously  harms the environment. Caldwell Esselstyn of Cleveland Clinic, Colin Campbell nutrition scientist and former USDA whistle-blower, Neal Barnard, M.D. of Physicians for Responsible Medicine, Gene Baur from Farm Sanctuary, and Mac Danzig, body builder and Ultimate Fighter Champion are featured.

We are dealing with more than just food addiction. Advertising makes us think unnaturally about food products. Chronic degenerative disease can be prevented and reversed by eating whole, unadulterated foods, primarily plants.

This movie covers the basics and is really great at pointing out the tremendous flaws in the USDA food pyramid as well as the American Dietician Association’s guidelines for healthy eating.  I hope all dieticians and physicians will see this documentary.

By Lu Schilling

For the Holiday Season MTM will suspend the chatter and enjoy extraordinary visuals of our world on December 20 at 4:30 pm. Described as cerebral and mind-bending, Baraka will engage you.

Shot in 24 countries on 70mm film, this mesmerizing visual study conveys the relationship between humans and the environment, with images ranging from the daily devotions of Tibetan monks to time-lapse views of the Hong Kong skyline. Accompanied by diverse world music — without narration or dialogue — the scenes capture nature’s glory as well as its destruction, all expertly photographed by director and cinematographer Ron Fricke.

Visually compelling, intelligent, moving, awe-inspiring — the images alone make this no-dialogue film one of the few you’ll talk about, recommend to friends you care about, and continue to replay in your mind months after you’ve seen it. Global thinkers, naturalists, humanists alike will be thankful that they stumbled upon this informative and emotionally disturbing gem.  There are several scenes in this film that made me believe again that I haven’t seen it all yet! Don’t miss this one.  Highly recommended.

By Lu Schilling

“Fixing the Future“, a PBS documentary of hopeful people taking positive actions to pull together in the wake of 2008′s financial meltdown, will be screened November 15 at 4:30 pm. From Maine to Washington State, stories of regular Americans reinventing their way out of the Great Recession, including leaders of banking cooperatives, entrepreneurs, and activists committed to buying and hiring locally. Nobel Prize winners and economists also offer reflections on this new era’s challenges.  This is a really inspiring look at stories of people reinventing their economies in a way that benefits everyone. I love it when Stephen Beckett says “Community is more like something that we are remembering, than something we are creating all over again.” So true!  Join us for learning and discussing solutions.  Free and casual.

Movies That Matter tackles topics of substance at the  UU Fellowship of Door County every 3rd Tuesday, 4:30 pm.

A groundbreaking documentary that provides an engaging and inspiring look at public education in the United States and has helped launch a movement to achieve a real and lasting change will be screened at the UU on Tuesday, October 18 at 4:30 pm.

Waiting for “Superman” is a 2010 documentary film from director Davis Guggenheim (Academy Award-Winning Director of An Inconvenient Truth) and producer Lesley Chilcott. The film analyzes the failures of American public education by following several students such as Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth-grader who is afraid of being labeled as unfit for college and Francisco, a Bronx first-grader whose mom will do anything to give him a shot at a better life.The film received the Audience Award for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film also received the Best Documentary Feature at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

The film has earned both praise and criticism from commentators, reformers, and educators. One criticism of note: “The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money’s not the answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care, decent housing, and a living wage. Particularly dishonest is the fact that Guggenheim never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the Harlem Children’s Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to.” – Rick Ayers, Adjunct Professor in Education at the University of San Francisco.

You will be invited to voice your opinion in a post-screening discussion.