Project Censored the Movie is more than relevant: should be required viewing to keep your mind functioning well according to me. Trailer at: “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF-DAJlvX4E”
http://www.bohemian.com/binary/9555/1366141896-pc_the_movie.jpg
Great conversation followed Metta Center’s showing of this brilliant movie last Sunday night at Aqus Cafe, part of a film series created by Petaluma Grange and Daily Acts with Metta Center with help from John Crowley and Diane Gentile, Aqus Community. Most of us missed the showing awhile ago at Boulevard, so packed Aqus (again) to chew through Some of Life’s Persistent Questions (apologies to Garrison Keilor’s Guy Noir). Look for upcoming film listings at Aqus News or on the Aqus Calendar.
Some issues we dug into together:
– How Project Censored and other independent media keep us in touch with what actually goes on in our world when major media is corporate-owned
– How Project Censored inspiries youth across the country to find (and report) real news (media literacy)
– (and question from our son, Day Waterbury) If teenagers don’t read or even use Facebook “it’s for older people” do reach out to kids on Instagram, creating our own memes?
These just scratch the surface of all that needs doing to keep our heads on straight. Hard enough to hear the same stories over and over on radio (I’m a constant NPR listener, esp. Michael Krasny on KQED, find KPFA more engaged – but harder to listen to.) We keep searching for hard-hitting and honest media; it’s hard to sort through – but who on earth would really like the version of human life we nearly all recall from Farenheit 451 – books all burned; some committed to memory by individuals so some semblance of the body of our knowledge is preserved.
Don’t believe we’re doing a very good job of passing wisdom on to youth or even saving it for ourselves. Less and less often we share in-depth conversation about anything at all…just sound bites. Bytes. If the world is what we make it, in mine there will continue to be classical music, reggae, world music, live music of many genres – and as many as possible of the great books, ancient and current, throughly chewed through. But I want even more: to share all this with my son, Wayne’s grandchildren, children in Bangladesh. The internet reaches so so many – but one has to keep current with that, definitely!
I’ll want to publish more and support those who do. In Paris, Shakespeare Books became a brief hang-out; very much looking forward to visiting her sister store, City Lights, San Francisco, in May. Copperfields Books also does a remarkable job bringing authors to meet readers – THANK YOU!
And Project Censored does a remarkable job of presenting the whole realm of media literary by researching in depth the stories that change our lives but aren’t convenient to publish for those in power or money. So that we have more grist for our own, personal, internal mills. When it comes down to it, our relationship to ourselves is what we have left end of life – and a mind is a terrible thing to waste. So, thank you, Project Censored for opening our minds and for many years!
A media guy among the questioners at Aqus felt Project Censored should take on the whole of major media – so I pointed out what they continue to DO is pretty amazing, crossing the country to inspire students in many colleges and communities; publishing the top 25 uncovered stories each year in an affordable paperback (still $20 – I bought 2015.) And you can order a cc of the movie for $20, too. So I bought both. Encouraging people to think independently requires your own mind to work well – have references – so am pulling together a small, current progressive film collection to be lent out and shared.)
All reminscent (once again) of the infamous Margaret Mead quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”