Study Guide Themes Archives: History

Legacy

Legacy tells the story of a Chicago family living in the projects and their transcending of hardships. Shot over a five-year period, this emotional feature looks, with an intimate eye, into three generations of powerful women – how they winter through the murder of a son, welfare, drug addictions, and the violence of their community and life in the projects.

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The Last Just Man

An examination of the Rwandan Genocide through the eyes of Lt. General Romeo Dalaire, the Canadian commander of UN peacekeeping operations at the time, The Last Just Man is a compelling and revealing historical deconstruction of the forces behind a tragic failure to achieve peace

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Lalee’s Kin

Lalee’s Kin takes us deep into the Mississippi Delta and the intertwined lives of LaLee Wallace, a great-grandmother struggling to hold her world together in the face of dire poverty, and Reggie Barnes, superintendent of the embattled West Tallahatchie School System. The film explores the painful legacy of slavery and sharecropping in the Delta.

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Good Morning

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists.

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Cronos

In 1536 during the the Inquisition, a mysterious device designed to provide its owner with eternal life resurfaces after four hundred years, leaving a trail of destruction in its path.

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